Save Early, Save Often

I learned this mantra back in the days of Infocom's text adventures. It means that you lose nothing but a bit of time by saving or backing up, and you gain so much more. Save before disaster happens; Save when you're thinking about it; Don't put off saving; Keep extra disks (or CDs, DVDs, hard drives, servers, iPods...) for the express purpose of saves; Always double-check your saves; Don't overwrite an old save if you can help it.

This is doubly true now, when the majority of the world's information is on little magnetic platters with one-year warranties.

I use Synk for backups on my Mac, and I really like its one-click backup once you've set it up. Once I get a dedicated backup machine with the space, it'll be even easier; I can just set up real archiving and synchronization as a cronjob. It's cheap (free if you have a .edu address) and it works.

I just backed up my laptop. When was the last time you backed up your computer(s)?