Backup

In a recent occasion, I was amazed to find a young colleague of mine never backup his files in the computer. It comes with no surprise to learn he lost some of his important work when his computer was accidentally formatted by others.

I must say I am exceedingly paranoid in this respect. Twenty years ago, when I bought my first personal laptop for work, I used to backup all files in 1.44" disks every month. That soon turned out to be inadequate; I had the experience of having the hard disk burn (to charcoal, almost) when I turned on the computer, and the whole laptop broke into pieces (literally) when it fell onto the floor by accident.

Following traumatic experience of this kind, over the past 15 years, I keep 3 copies of all my files - one in the desktop computer of my office, another in my laptop at home, and a third in a portable hard disk. The latter two are updated every week, usually on Saturday. Like the senior executives of some famous enterprises (for example, Coca Cola), these three copies are never put in the same room - just in case the place is on fire.

You can never be too cautious.