| Firstly, sorry to hear about your backup woes. There's nothing worse than losing data. Three tricks that have worked for me: 1) Reduce the resistance in your brain to making backups Easy wins can be made here without changing anything. Keep the external drive ready to go on your desk at any time, have it start backing up as soon as you plug it in, etc. Reduce the dissonance you feel in your brain to making backups regularly. 2) Automate it as much as possible Take the resistance entirely out of the equation by automating it. For example, in your case you might want to try plugging the external drive into an always-on raspberry PI, and use Syncthing to constantly send your files there. 3) Have a process that keeps you accountable You need something to make you feel guilty for not having backups, that overpowers the resistance in your brain with shame! Even a recurring calendar entry can work well. I've taken it a step further by writing software to solve this very problem. I've seen and heard about way too many backup failures in my short career, and determined to help bring good backup practices to more people. Check out the idea at https://backupshq.com - we'll be launching privately soon and always interested in feedback on the idea. |
Make that “Keep an external drive”
If you only have one backup drive, and it’s on your desk, it can easily be destroyed in a disaster that destroys the hard drive in the computer on your desk.
You need at least one off-site backup.