Dear all (and i’m pointing at you, because you should know better),
BACKUP.
Get a drive, the same size/brand/type as the one you’re using on your computer. put it on an external casing. on a mac you’ll do something like sudo rsync -vaxE --delete --ignore-errors / /Volumes/backup/ (i’m assuming you named your drive backup instead of something silly like pluto or arathorn or something like that). I don’t have a clue about *nix, but i’m assuming it wouldn’t be *that* much different. On windows it’s the same, as long as you do the sane thing and get cygwin. If you’re on a desktop, cron tab the socks out of that. On a laptop, do it every chance you’ve got. Before you go to bed, while you shower, before any update, before you take your laptop off your table. Seriously. Do it. Right. Now.
wp, a modded depo skinny, ♥.