I've gone back and forth on whether or not to backup applications. Backing up user preferences for applications is a must, but the value of backing up the actual application files is more up in air.

One of the things that makes this hard to mandate a backup rule about applications is the fact that applications act differently on each platform.

Mac

The Mac might be the one platform where I could see backing up the applications. Most Mac applications are self contained and can be recovered by simply dragging and dropping them back into the Applications directory. The only issue to watch for is an application's size, which could get pricey for remote backups. If that's not a concern I would say, for the Mac, backup your applications.

Windows

Windows applications are different since they install, not just the applications, but a lot of other auxiliary files and registry entries. Running applications without all these other files can have unexpected results. It makes more sense to backup the installer programs and not the installed application.

Remember to also backup the Application Data folder in your user directory. That's where all your preferences are stored for most of your applications.

Linux

Although Linux doesn't have a registry, applications do install a lot of data into various directories in the system. There's /usr, /usr/local, /var and so many others that it's hard to tell if you've gotten everything or if the permissions are right once you've recovered your data.

Luckily with most Linux distributions, all the applications you have installed are in the central repositories and can just be reinstalled with a simple command line call. There's no need to backup most of them when they can all be gotten from a central online location.

I will backup things that I've installed myself, usually under my home directory or in /opt. It's also important to backup application preferences in your home folder. But, you don't need to backup your applications under Linux.

Conclusion

In general, for Mac, go ahead and back them up. For Windows, don't bother, but backup the application installers if you can. For Linux, backup a list of the applications you have installed, then just run your package manager to get them all back out again.

Have any other ideas on how to backup installed applications?

Backup is a little like Taekwondo; it's hard to know whether you're really good at [it] until you're in the midst of getting your ass kicked.

-- Twitter Post by Merlin Mann

I realized today that, although I have a solid backup plan, I don't really have a solid recovery plan. I have all my files in a remote and local backup, but how do I get back at them with my computer hosed?

I'm trying to get everything in order with a solid recovery plan. That means:

1. I have to have a copy of my operating system ready to go. I use Ubuntu Desktop LTS, so I'm burning the disk for that now to have it available.
2. I'll need access to the applications I have installed. I don't backup my applications, just my preferences for them. I'll need to have a list of all the applications I currently have installed to install them again once the OS is in.
3. I need my decryption keys for JungleDisk easily available. I think I have them in my lockbox, but I'm scared enough about it that I'll need to check that.
4. I need to prove to myself that I'm really ready.

Getting My Ass Kicked

To cover the last point, I will be putting myself to the test and "losing all my data". I have a spare laptop hard drive sitting around and some day soon, I'm going to swap the hard drives in my laptop. This spare hard drive is empty. I'll be starting from scratch and my goal will be to get back up and running in as little time as possible with no data loss.

This is quite scary to me, but if I'm going to do this blog, I better be able to deliver solutions that actually work. I hope to live blog the experience in some way and perhaps twitter it all as well. Details on that will be coming soon. My plan is to do this on December 13th beginning at 9:00 AM EST. Afterwards, I'll have a postmortem entry with any lessons I learned in the process. I'll also have a post on what my set up is and my plan for recovery.

Wish me luck!

Everyone needs a plan. A backup plan, that is. Everyone's backup strategy will be different and personalized to their circumstances and abilities, but all backup plans should have certain things in common. Using these guidelines, you should be able to tailor a plan to fit your needs.