Last November, after around 25 years of computing, finally, I setup a reliable, automatic backup system for all of my important files, documents, photos, and music.

And today I needed it (timing, eh?). A bunch of important files took collateral damage from a program I was writing. And I almost panicked. But then the backup system worked beautifully. And I did a happy dance. And, no, there is no video of that.

If I’d been manually backing up weekly I’d be able to salvage some and rebuild the rest and be very annoyed. If I’d been manually backing up my files every month or so I’d be screwed.

The backup system I use (rdiff-backup) takes a system snapshot once every 24 hours and keeps a rolling 30 day history (sort of like a less anxious version of Time Machine). So I’m able to restore my system to its state at any day within the last 30 days.

Anyway, it works. In five minutes it was like it never happened. Yay, technology!