One of my computers has recently escalated its ongoing insinuation that its hard drive is about to fail catastrophically (the noises are getting weirder, and the crashes more frequent). The last time this sort of thing happened, it was a terrifying, miserable ordeal, culminating in a (successful) data rescue using a bootable Knoppix CD, and my copy of Knoppix Hacks.

This time, I'm merely resigned to the machine's fate, and am happy to merely wait out the final days.

What changed? Online backup. About a year ago, I installed Carbonite (see also Mozy Backup, or for the more adventurous, JungleDisk). Since then, my entire hard drive is automatically, incrementally, backed up over the Web (the data is also encrypted). Ah, Serenity Now.

(BTW, I have no affiliation or connection to Carbonite; just a satisfied customer.)

¶ 11:46 PM