Stolen Laptop Contains Man's Dreams

[michael_dorfman]

I remember writing my thesis, back in the days before the web. I left (5.25" floppy disk, WordPerfect 4.2) copies with friends in as many diverse locations as I could manage. I copied it onto any hard drive whose owner would let me, and a few who wouldn't (like the college card catalog system--sorry!). I did everything in my power to make sure that my work-in-progress could survive a nuclear attack.

Why didn't this guy, exactly?

[noonespecial]

I learned this lesson with a lousy floppy on my C64 in 5th grade. I still remember the awful sound of the 1541 struggling to read that lost file into "Paperback Writer".

It haunts my dreams and reminds me to always back up, always.

[RBerenguel]

I even did this with some large assignments while on High School. He was just plainly oblivious to data management. Currently I have something like 4 copies of my WIP thesis... All up to date +- 3 days (my USB keychain drive, my netbook hard drive, my office computer who has automatic backup already by the sysadmin and my MacBook, all my running backups being managed through this script: http://www.mostlymaths.net/2009/09/my-backup-script-in-macli...).

I know I could add a few more, but it is working as it is, and if all get wiped, probably the problem would be so big I wouldn't mind losing everything.

[cperciva]

Stories like this make me wonder if I should add a free "graduate student writing a thesis" flag to Tarsnap accounts.

[scrrr]

And I wonder if I should write an ebook on "How to write your thesis with a computer".

PM me if you want to collaborate. :)

[cturner]

When I studied they had some small coursework you had to do in the first few weeks to indicate you understood what plagiarism was so there were no excuses if you got busted. Perhaps something similar for backups would be good.

I lost data on the weekend whilst trying to resolve differences between directories on machines. I was using meld (at 2 o'clock in the morning) and clicked 'delete' on a selection when I meant to click 'right'.* Spent several hours after that scanning sda1 for byte segments resembling the beginning of xlsx files (no luck). Serves me right for using dumb binary formats that don't lend themselves to diff-based source control.

* Brilliant the way the app places those buttons right next to one another.

[joezydeco]

There definitely seems to be a disconnect between schools forcing laptops and tablets on students without any education in backing up their media.

I'd think there's an opportunity to collaborate with universities and offer a system that's available (and maybe even mandatory) to every student.

[gaius]

This can't even be true - surely the last version he sent to his supervisor to review, so they'll have a copy.

[jacquesm]

The story says it contains his research and notes as well.

[holman]

I'm continually amazed at the number of people who don't back up their most important data. I'm not shaming this particular guy- the majority of my non-techie friends make no real backups. Of those that do, very few of them make regular, incremental backups (like Time Machine, for example).

With more and more data getting hosted on the cloud, maybe this concern becomes (thankfully) less relevant.

[jacquesm]

> With more and more data getting hosted on the cloud, maybe this concern becomes (thankfully) less relevant.

Typically as the frequency of the incidents goes down due to centralization the seriousness of the incidents that do happen goes up.

[Tichy]

It's still really complicated to do backups. Except perhaps with time machine (the external box that is connected via WiFi). I recommended the Time Capsule to a friend with a Mac, but she considered it too expensive at the time. Why there are no competing products for other OS is beyond me.

I also still have backups for my home networks on my TODO list... Most work is duplicated on Servers (email, git), but music and photos are still endangered.

[tomjen3]

The majority of technical people I know don't back up stuff either, even stuff that is important.

Why that is, I have not idea.

[aw3c2]

Cloud storage is not a backup. "Oops, I deleted that file" deletes it in the cloud too.

[oyving]

In my user support days at the university I studied at, I remember receiving many students on the brink of crying and with a corrupt 3.5" disk in hand. They had their only copy of their thesis on this floppy and were desperate for help.

Most of the time the only thing we could do was to dd what was available and pipe it through strings, and sometimes not even that. We tried telling them they should store things on the university servers (which had backups), but it took some time before students learned this.

[sachinag]

Every personally important file I have lives in Dropbox (I'd be fucked if this went bad; most recently, Missouri tried to get $30K in bogus taxes from me that I was able to fend off with a copy of my 2004 tax return). My music is synced with SugarSnyc (irritating but not critical to replace since I only buy physical media).

I honestly don't get why everyone doesn't do something similar. And if you're truly paranoid, there's Tarsnap.

[aufreak3]

Backup, backup, backup. I keep critical stuff on 3 different physical media and in different locations. Hard disk + DVDs + online. I feel so sorry for this guy but would never put myself in that position.

Now I need to plan for the foretold solar maximum disruption as well! ... whether its true or not isn't the point.

[dannoffs]

Mail the document your own email... Don't need a techie friend or some whacky sync service.

[dagw]

Best low-tech solution I've found. No hand-holding and scary software needed. Send an email once or twice a day and you have instant offsite versioned backup. For added security CC it to a couple of different accounts (for example both gmail and university account).

[Ben65]

Run add for Carbonite, Time Machine, any backup service here. Something that's that important, you don't take a backup of some kind every now and then?

[picouli]

http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm

[cmars232]

The sad thing is, it probably would have fit nicely in a free DropBox account, or up on Google Docs.

[grigy]

In my thesis writing days I used to copy each revised version on a CD.

[c4urself]

this kind of story is always a wake up call to hurry up and save/backup your data... the least you can do is send yourself a copy of the *.docx at for example gmail.

[koevet]

dropbox anyone?

[arethuza]

My wife just finished a thesis - that was in Carbonite, a hosted SVN repo and dropbox.