Mark Geller

A few days ago, while I was writing some simple Python scripts, my computer crashed and my (Win Vista) OS became corrupted to the point where my machine would no longer boot. Not knowing the best way to restore my system–and wanting to avoid reinstalling the OS from scratch, if possible–I took my machine to a few repair shops in town to get estimates.

When I got to Best Buy, the friendly Geek Squad representative said, “I hope you are one of the rare and lucky users who regularly backs up your data?” To which I replied, “Nah, actually I am one of the maybe not-so-rare users who does not store any data on my machine in the first place.”

I am not exactly sure when it happened, but somewhere in the past few years I got to the point where I essentially store no data or media files of any kind on my machine. There are a few small exceptions, such as keeping files from previous projects and a few photos friends have emailed me. However, for the most part, all my files and data are in the cloud.

• For documents and spreadsheets, I use Google Docs
• Any MS Word or Excel docs I receive are accessible in Gmail
• Photos I upload to Facebook or sometimes Picasa Web Albums… or leave on my iPhone
• I have never been an MP3 or iTunes guy–I mainly listen to the radio or free online music (playlist.com)
• Code for KlickFu and other projects is stored in online repositories and sync’d accordingly
• Any miscellaneous files I will now store on DropBox, which provides up to 2 GB of free storage, more than I would ever need, with slick auto-updating and sharing features

Aside from being simpler and easier to manage, storing my data in the cloud had two main benefits this week during the computer crash. First, it made the entire experience a lot less stressful, since I knew the worst case scenario was I would install a new hard drive (under warranty) and then reinstall Vista and my other applications, with no data loss. Second, it enabled me to get up and running on an old spare machine in only a few minutes without missing a beat.

Based on this I suppose I now officially live in the cloud, which is fine with me. I enjoy the sense of freedom and flexibility this brings and, right or wrong, I believe my content is safe (within reason) being stored remotely with these third parties. As for my computer, it turns out the ThinkPad comes pre-installed with Rescue & Recovery software, which had made an earlier backup of my OS and applications on a separate partition on my hard drive (fantastic!). Since restoring my hard drive and updating the apps, I have updated the disk image and now I should be good to go.