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!