Okay, early last year, I posted on ways to protect your privacy. This year, I’ll let you in on my resolution from last year: Regular backups!

My resolution last year was to back up all of my important data (photos/video, email, documents, etc.) from my main machine, two laptops and one server to a dedicated external hard drive on every date ending in “0″ (i.e.: 10th, 20th, and 30th).  I’m proud to say that I have, mostly, kept to my resolution. This year, I’m hoping to improve the method I use to do my backups.

I currently use a very nice open source program named “Abakt“. The developer has, unfortunately, discontinued development. Tha last version is still available if you want to try it.

My goal is to have a network-based, automatic back up system using my server (more on the server in a later post). I plan to use Bacula, another fine open source project. It’s a bit complicated; not for the faint of heart, but I hope to learn it and back up all the computers in the house (11 at last count) with this system.

The server needs a rebuild first. I want to upgrade it to Ubuntu 8.04 before I start on Bacula. There will surely be a server build post at some point in the near future. Until then…

Back up your data!