Source Control and Backups

I've experienced multiple disk failures in the last several months. I suppose it's about time to start cycling through hardware that's been serving me well for quite some time.

The thought of losing my work, though, really got me motivated to start ensuring that I have procedures in place for full recovery in the event of a disaster.

I tend to make simple things into complex projects, so I'm going to forgo the whole multiple off-site locations thing and just concentrate on what I know I can do within a short period of time.

For backups of linux environments, Mike Rubel has a great rsync backup script and links to alternatives from others. Mike Horowitz has one for windows - though I'm tempted to just install windows based rsync software for my local network.

One thing I'm not good at is directory structures. I've been maintaining the same basic system in some way or another since long before "My Documents" was a term that people had become aware of, and if you remember back then - program's default file storage locations were anybody's guess. I use Copernic Desktop Search to help maintain my own sanity and I highly recommend it.

As far as source control, I've been using WinCVS server and client for quite some time now, but the problem is that I tend to edit files from different machines and I don't check in files nearly as frequently as I should. I also don't have much in the way of a sound directory structure, and I don't maintain installation / configuration scripts like I should. This boils down frankly to a lack of understanding and familiarity with open source projects from a CVS maintainer perspective.

I know a lot of people are driving towards SVN, but there are drawbacks and I'm already familiar with CVS. I've decided to start migrating my repositories to my linux file server and while I do so start thinking about ways to structure things so that they make the most sense to other people.