Free Sites backups
 

As of now, I have been saving a copy of all my free sites on my file server but wondering if its really necessary.

I suppose there is always the risk of my host going down or loosing my stuff so thats why I've been keeping a backup.

Does anyone else do this?

User created data is the only valuable thing on any computer. Other software and hardware you can always replace or reinstall, but user created data you can't.

That's why I keep backups of everything I make, and don't keep backups of anything else.

Same here. If my hard disk space is too low to keep my backups, I just delete all the porn movies I have :D

I keep a local mirror of everything that is updated nightly using rsync to a case sensitive volume that is rotated monthly.

I also backup all my MySQL databases nightly. With my databases I keep 7 different versions of backups in case one of them gets corrupt.

Also my host does backups but due to my own backups I've never had to ask them to restore anything.

yes yes yes. Highly recommend that you back things up.

Definitely keep at least a local backup on your hard drive at all times. In about eight years of being a webmaster, I have had to use these backups about 10 times. Without them everything would have been lost. (thousands and thousands of pages) You never know when someone might hack your server or your host will go tits up, etc.

Even better is to keep another backup by CD that you make, say at least once a month. I admit I do not do this, but it would be a very smart idea.

Always backup.. or you'll be kicking yourself when your server HD dies and you loose the traffic you've been building up for the last couple years.