Stolen Laptop Contains Man's Dreams | Hacker News Reader

Stolen Laptop Contains Man's Dreams

calgary.ctv.ca

17 pointsRBerenguel34 comments

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?

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.

I always knew that I should keep backup(s), but I didn't get backup religion either until the first time I had a hard disk crash on me and lose everything. Unfortunately, that may be what it takes to get most folks into the habit.

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.

It sounds like you have it covered, but why not use a service like Dropbox or Tarsnap that backs out to Amazon S3 where they have like nine 9's of redundancy?

Backing up to the cloud is the next big step in backup.

I checked the Dropbox, but I don't see why a service of "storing something on some servers" has to be bound to "you must install this app which you have no control of to use the service."

The only answer I see is "they want to do something nefarious." Otherwise there would be a simple web interface for people for which that is enough. Or even a simple html based API.

Is Tarsnap better?

(1) Dropbox has a web interface where you can upload and download files. It's pretty easy to use.

(2) Their app adds a huge value, in that it automatically uploads any changes to files in your local Dropbox folder. It is convenience, and hardly nefarious. Everything that can be done to make backups easier and more automatic is a good thing, IMHO.

If you don't want the automation, then yes, another solution is probably better.

Indeed. I have started using Dropbox very recently, I am still not used to it. When I'm back home I'll just copy all there, it is just a simple drag and drop! Thanks for reminding me!

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

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. :)

It might suffice to only have one page with the big word 'BACKUP!' on it.

Later editions might expand to 'BACKUPS!'.

I'm in ;-)

I really wonder how often Students loose their work. Hence nowdays it's so easy to have a good backup running...

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.

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.

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

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

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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

Being in the cloud is orthogonal to that issue, isn't it? After all, you could use a DVCS in the cloud. Or a cloud service could offer this:

https://www.dropbox.com/help/11

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.

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.

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.

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

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).

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?

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

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

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

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.

dropbox anyone?

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

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