It's No Use Going Back to Yesterday

Hello again.

This is a followup to my previous blogpost where I detailed my immediate reäction to a sudden and (yet somehow not) total loss of my data to a hard drive crash.

I'm not going to rehash everything I've said; instead, you can read that for yourself right here (assuming you haven't already). But I wanted to discuss something I've wanted to get off my chest---and what better time than World Backup Day?

So far, I've settled nicely into my quote-unquote "new" computer. I've spent months redownloading or remaking everything I've lost, and apart from one fanfiction draft now lost for good (probably for the best; it wasn't my finest work), I think I've succeeded.

Though, as per the title, it's no use going back to yesterday.

As for actually backing up my new data hoard: you might've seen from the comments section in the previous blogpost that my colleague Archive Anon offered me advice for backing up my data, but what you haven't seen is the PM offering me a free month of cloud backup using Backblaze.

I've heard good things about Backblaze. My editor and Destiny fireteam comrade Shinzakura mentioned he uses it for his rig, backing up the files related to his artistic pursuits: writing, drawing, music mixing, and even fontmaking. He knew more about this sort of thing than I did back in the day, so if it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me.

Seriously, $7 per computer per month with no data caps is nothing to scoff at.

Except I did run into a problem. See, that deal is designed for the typical home user---the ordinary Joe Smith who just wants to sit down at his computer with his mug of coffee, switch on the computer, and have everything work just as God intended. He doesn't know what a terabyte is, he doesn't know how much bandwidth he has---hell, he probably takes his computer into the shop periodically because of all the "gigarams in the atmosphere" getting in and giving him a virus.

I am not, however, the typical home user. I know how to upgrade each component, one by one, à la the Ship of Theseus. The memory? Doubled to 16 GB in 2017. The GPU? Went from a 635 to a 1050 Ti in 2020 (yes, at the height of the cryptomining craze---I was that desperate). The boot drive? Went from 1 TB to 4 TB in 2018. (Ironically, due to BIOS limitations, I could only use half of it, not to mention it was from Seagate. Guess I'll never shop with them again.) Recently I replaced its power supply (the old one was making some funny noises with its fan, so in went a Seasonic Prime TX-600) and chassis. (The XPS 8700's was a pain to work in, but it wasn't much easier to find a new chassis that didn't use tempered glass or acrylic. I hate that stuff.)

But I digress. Point is, I know my computer inside and out. And I know how much storage space my computer has: 15 TB, 13 of which is external. I am not the user they want on their per-computer plan, even though it's cheaper. And even though I took Archive Anon up on his offer (which I'm still grateful for, don't get me wrong), I quickly ran into another problem.

All that data takes time and bandwidth to go from my house to their datacenter. If you have less than 2 TB, you don't have much to worry about. If you have over 10 TB like me, you'd get a nastygram from your ISP asking why you're using up so much damn data.

In summary: I've lost some data, got most of that back, but I can't back it up because Backblaze also wants to back up everything else attached to this rig. Sorry, Anon!

The Solution?

Local backups! Plop down a drive big enough to accommodate everything, point some backup software to it, and let 'er rip. This is an expensive solution, but that's only for the initial investment. You're also giving up the ideal 3-2-1 backup plan, so if your house burns down, good luck.

In my case, I got a WD My Book Duo---the 36 TB version, which I then configured to use RAID 1; half the capacity, but when one drive dies (and note that I said "when" and not "if"), I can swap it out and resilver the array. People will tell you that "RAID is not a backup," and while that's true, more specifically it means RAID itself isn't a backup; if you back up to a RAID, you're golden.

The hardware was expensive, but the software was actually harder to get ahold of. Even if I resorted to piracy (which I wasn't about to with something as important as this), the trouble was figuring out which piece of software to use. Sure, there are plenty of free, open-source options, but most of those are geared toward free, open-source operating systems like all the flavor-of-the-day Linuces---which Windows is not.

Most commercial backup software you can find is geared toward Windows, which offer features one can plot on a sliding scale of ease-of-use versus flexibility. A lot of them integrate convenient cloud storage, again for a monthly or annual fee. No thank you.

Many who know me know I'm not fond of Apple, especially when it comes to hardware, but in recent years I've made a few concessions to their software. In particular is macOS's integrated backup solution, Time Machine. Connect a drive and it'll do the rest; if you edit a file, it'll back up the newly-modified version; and it'll keep copies of varying granularity until you run out of disk space. It's practically idiotproof.

Although it's designed to give you day-by-day snapshots of your Mac, it's no use going back to yesterday.

After several days of constantly searching to the tune of "Time Machine but for Windows," eventually I stopped and thought more about how it should work. How does Time Machine work? It backs up individual files, repeating if there are any changes. I don't need system imaging---just reïnstall the OS and pull the program files from backup. I should also necessarily be able to read the backup without any specialized software beyond the operating system. And finally, it should be at least free, if not open-source.

Once I broke it down, I then realized, ironically, the very thing I was looking for was literally the first thing I rejected: Windows File History. It's not configured to work precisely like Time Machine, but with some tinkering in Windows's settings, you can get pretty close. The only real limitation is that it can't do hard links like Time Machine can, but at that point you're just comparing file systems (NTFS vs. HFS+/APFS).

So after configuring it to work as best as I can manage (delete files as storage is needed, scan for changes every hour, add a shitload of user-created directories), I was ready to go. But as I was browsing each of my directories, both new and restored, I started to realize something. This was just a quick fix. It only solved the problem of backing up my stuff, locally if not in the cloud, but my main problem was I had so much of it to begin with.

The Real Solution?

I wasn't constantly searching for my backup software. I was also keeping up with my college classes and my Fimfiction backlog. I make a point of making sure I have no unread chapters, plus I'm tackling my Read It Later list. Am I crazy? Perhaps. But it does let me stay on top of constantly-updating stories---I'm not going to name any names here---and I finally get to read The Classics™ (if you flip through my previous blogpost, you might catch a reference to one such novel).

One such story I read, on the (indirect) recommendation of my Dutch consultant Exodust, was Silver Scrolls' short story "The Garden and Her Gardener."

It's a simple story, mostly a conversation between Twilight and Princess Celestia, but the metaphor they discuss becomes more intimate between themselves. As I read it on 2 January of this year (which so far I can say is going somewhat more smoothly than my annuis horribilis that was 2022), I found myself resonating with the metaphor myself as well, especially in light of the drive crash. And then I read this paragraph:

Celestia poked her head around the corner and looked up at the birds. She saw the mother holding the chick tightly and remembered how she had held Twilight when she had first come to live and study in the castle. A sense of sad nostalgia for things lost filled her. "Change is inevitable, it can't be avoided. It's not something to be feared, though. It might hurt, but in the end, it helps everything grow."

While the whole story beautifully renders loss and renewal in plain language, that particular bit I've quoted was done exceedingly well. I may sound understated, but me talking about the story like this is very high praise. I haven't been this pleased with reading fanfiction since JawJoe's "Queen of Queens"---it's that good. So please, take this recommendation from me, who in turn took it from Exodust, who read this story years ago and fell in love with it, just as I have now.

But just as much, that excerpt got me thinking about its themes of loss and renewal: change is inevitable. And people change quite dramatically over the course of their lives.

Myself included.

Once I realized this, I felt compelled to take a closer look at my files. That's when I realized just how much of them was absolute junk. Here I was, soon to graduate from college, and I had assignments here from high school. I've already left that place (though I do miss it at times); why the hell am I still holding onto this cruft? Not to mention all these college assignments---hey, remember when I changed my major? Look at this trash. Into the trash it goes!

So now you're thinking that I've finally lost my damn mind, working so hard to get all my stuff back, only to deliberately delete everything once again. But there's a method to the madness. Think about it: do I really need to hold on to these things? I've changed---a lot. There's no reason why my files need to continue reflecting the me I once was but no longer am.

I haven't cleared out everything I want cleared out, but it's one step in the right direction---question is, how much of my data is junk, and which do I really want to hold onto in the future? Before anyone offers me to host that data for me---I know at least a few of you reading this are fandom archivists---thank you, but I'd rather not clutter up your space with my cruft. This is something I need to take care of myself. Just adding more storage, especially offsite, will only make the problem worse.

If you're looking for a message to take away from this blogpost, it's this: be more mindful of the things you save and download. Yes, it's cheaper in the short term to have it stored per month/year in the cloud, but remember: your hardware, your rules. Your money too, but you don't have to be paying constantly. Ideally, your computer should change with you---few files should be static; you should be cleaning out your drive, on a regular basis (perhaps once annually).

You might've noticed that I keep rehashing that quotation from Alice in Wonderland: "It's no use going back to yesterday." And there's a point to it. Time marches on; nothing lasts forever, certainly not us. I'm not asking you to consider what data you'll leave behind when you die, but I am telling you to consider not holding on to the things you've made but no longer need. Like a shopping list---you've done your shopping, you have your groceries put away; why hold onto the list? All things are temporary---you, me, and our memories. At the end of our lives, both our greatest triumphs and our worst detriments, our most cherished memories and our darkest sins, and everything else in between, are firmly behind us. In summary, it's no use going back to yesterday.

Because I was a different person then.

Good night, and good luck.