In an ideal world I would not have to spend any time thinking about backing up my data. Everything would be stored online ‘in the cloud’ and accesible for me from anywhere on any device that supported the data format. I would trust the companies storing the data not to lose it. I believe it will not be many years until this ideal scenario is reality, but in the meantime I need an easy and automated backup strategy. Easy in terms of time and complexity to set up and automated in terms of low to zero maintenance.

Scenario

I have a MacBook Pro (MBP) which I use as my only machine for work and play. I carry it to and from my office every day. I have wifi at home with a Drobo disk array attached to my router. At work I have an external harddrive which is always plugged in when I’m at my desk. The external harddrive is formatted in two partitions. One at the size of my MBP harddrive and one that takes up the remaining space.

Solution

My solution is a three-fold backup strategy

• Incremental back-ups

  When my MBP is connected to my external harddrive at work Apple Time Machine automatically makes incremental backups every hour to one of the partitions. When the partition is full Time Machine will overwrite the oldest content first. If I ever delete a file by accident I can quickly go into Time Machine and restore the latest version. Any content I might create at home will automatically be updated in Time Machine the next time I’m at work.

• Full system recovery back-up

  SuperDuper! is set to make a bootable backup of my system every day at 3pm (or when I’m next connected) to the other partition on my external harddrive at work. Since it is possible to do a full system restore from TimeMachine this step is to some degree redundant and actually only serves to have a bootable backup (which TimeMachine is not). If my MBP crashed I could grab another one, plug in the external hard drive and boot.

• Archived data back-up

  All my archived data (photos, music, documents from previous jobs etc) are stored on my Drobo at home. The Drobo is a disk array that protects against disk failure. The data on the Drobo is backed up to CrashPlan Central which is an online backup solution. If the Drobo is stolen or my house burns down I’ll be able to download all my archived data from CrashPlan Central. There are many alternatives to CrashPlan Central, such as Mozy and Carbonite, but at the time of writing CrashPlan Central was the only one accepting backups from a network attached drive (NAS) at an affordable price.

All this is automated and runs in the background without me having to initiate anything. No DVDs to burn and store and no wasted time copying data to an external harddrive to store at a friends house. When bandwidth become faster (my capped upload speed means the initial upload to CrashPlan Central is going to take weeks) I can see a situation where I get rid of the external harddrive and the Drobo and solely use an online service that runs in the background and backs up everything in real time.

My friend and former eBay colleague Azita Qadri is working with start-ups to find them high calibre part-time candidates. In 2007 she set up the company Eat Your Cake to help professional mothers balance their career and family by job-sharing. She has later specialised in part-time roles in start-ups. I did the logo development and branding for Eat Your Cake and designed and built the website. It is still one of the projects I’m most proud of.

Learn more about Eat Your Cake and how they can help you find a part-time role or job-share.

Download The Guardian “Flexible Working” supplement [pdf] from 20 January 2010