i got another external hard drive today. the main reason is that i want to encrypt my (current) backup harddisk, which requires reformatting the disk. but if i do so, i’m left with nothing but the original data on the laptop, and no backup. in case something goes terribly wrong, i’m screwed. i just created an encrypted partition on the disk; this is really pretty easy and not much command line typing is required, in particular if everything is set up: then linux will ask me for the password as soon as i plug the usb cable in, and automatically mount it using that password. that’s how it should be. and so far, it works perfect.
currently, rsync is mirroring my home directory onto the disk. as soon as it is done, i will copy some stuff from the other backup disk over (like my server’s backups) which i don’t have on the laptop’s harddisk (which is 180 gb smaller than each of the backup disks), and after that, my old backup disk will be reformatted as well and also filled.
after that, i will deposit one of the backup drives somewhere outside my appartment: in case something goes wrong (like house burns down, someone decides to break in, …), i still have a backup somewhere. and, as it is encrypted, nobody but me can read it. (even if someone breaks in here, and steals both laptop and backup, they can’t access the data without my password. and yes, i am aware of xkcd.)

today i was again thinking on backup solutions. my current backup harddisks use ext2 resp. ext3, a linux file system. but now i’m forced to use osx, as my linux machine completely died. it turns out that osx can read ext2/ext3 using ext2fsx, but that one is pretty instable and already killed one ext2 partition of mine (note: don’t mount anything as writeable!). i began looking for a file system which both osx and linux can write and read (and which is known to be stable). but… so far, i found: nothing. well, except fat32. i mean, hey, what the heck?! it can’t be that fat32 is the only one supported by both of them; fat32 is a relict from the stone age of computing, nothing which you want to use on a modern computer. well, maybe, but only if you store your stuff in tar files, another pretty antique, but at least somehow useful thing. this makes it pretty much impossible to browse the backup data, to see what’s in it, to easily extract certain files, but at least provides a working alternative. but, well, is this really the only one?!
another reason why we’re still in the stone age of computing…