The Hard Way

Today I learned the hard way about backing up.
I've used several backup systems over the years: mirrored RAID, Drobo units etc, all with varying rates of success. I currently use two separate 2TB hard-drives, which are then duplicated on removable HDD's so I can keep back-ups of the back-ups and off-site copies.
So far, so good - conventional wisdom says you should have three copies of your data to be safe.
I generally copy image files to these drives once I've finished processing them, and try to run regular back-ups of the home folder on my laptop.
The major flaw here is that I have to remember to run the back-up.
This morning, just as I was preparing to leave to catch a flight, I accidentally trashed a folder containing four days worth of images from London Fashion Week. They'd been kept on my laptop for me to complete editing and processing later. No backup of the laptop. Camera cards all re-formatted ready for the next job. Client waiting for pictures that have disappeared.
Fuck.
Fast forward to this evening, and I'm sitting here in a hotel room in Paris, while everyone else is out enjoying themselves, running data recovery software to find the deleted files, crossing my fingers and sweating nervously. It's not a nice experience.
I always say that making mistakes is the quickest way to learn what not to do. But usually I'm referring to mistakes that can be put right. This is potentially a disastrous and costly mistake. And it's certainly taught me a lesson - I just wasn't prepared enough.
As a result I've already bought a shiny new 1TB portable drive, and have resolved to simultaneously download all images from the camera to both my laptop and the drive from now on when working on location.
I've also vowed to install a network attached hard-drive as soon as I get home and use Apple's TimeMachine (or something similar) to make automated back-ground copies of my laptop via wi-fi whenever I'm home, so I can never again forget to.
And that's probably still not enough, but I'm on the case.
When I first started riding a motor-bike I was warned 'It's not IF you have an accident, it's WHEN' and the same applies to losing data. It will happen at some point, usually when you need your data most. So please learn from my mistake. Be prepared for the worst. Check your back-up system. Have you got copies of everything? Have you got copies of the copies? Ask yourself how much important data, family photos etc you would lose forever if your laptop died or was stolen, right now, this minute?
And do something about it, before you too learn the hard way.