Amazon for Quick Backup

These days I’m working exclusively from a laptop computer – an Apple MacBook – which I transport daily between my home and my office. Each night, my MacBook mounts and backs up my home directory to a 500GB drive served from my home server, a Mac mini. The mini later mirrors this 500GB drive to another 500GB drive, and archives any changed or deleted files to a third (120 GB drive). This mirroring/archiving type backup system has served me well for years. (Knock on virtual wood here…)

But what happens if my MacBook gets damaged in the trip from work to home? (I do ride a scooter.) To address this, I’m experimenting with a new workflow:

1. I have a Finder Smart Folder, “Current Backups”, configured to include all files located in both my Documents folder, and my Desktop folder, and which have been modified “Today”.

2. Interarchy 8.1 now supports access to Amazon’s incredible new S3 online storage service. So I used Interarchy to create an upload “dropplet” which automatically sends dropped files to a “Current Backups” area I created on Amazon.

3. At the end of the day, I look at the file list in the “Current Backups” Smart Folder, choose the files I want to backup, drag them to the Interarchy “dropplet” and wait for them to get uploaded. Once done, I close the MacBook and head home.

So far, this seems to work fairly well.

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