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.

Mike Essl, recording Adobe CS crashes: Unexpectedly Quit
wp, a modded depo skinny, ♥.