I don't trust myself to remember to do backups either. That's why I use a cron job for that purpose. I have cron driven backups going of databases on sql servers and of key directory trees, including the cvs repository I administer for a Coding Network I participate with.

Now that a friend has turned me on to the wonders of rsync, I'm consideraing adding an automated rsync (enabled by shared keys between the hosts) to handle the offsite part of the backup project.

It was that same friend who, a few years before when I was crying about lost data, mentioned to me, "That data must not have been very important if it wasn't important enough to backup". The truth of that statement certainly didn't make it any easier to hear at the time. But I was still rebuilding my system on a new drive, when I found mysql_backup.cgi in a google search. And as soon as the system was back up, I added that and some tar czf invocations to my crontab.

Now configuring such automated backups is an early priority for me whenever I put real work into a new server.

-- Hugh