I am working on the road for the next few months. That means laptop performance, USB dongles and slow/metered internet. I hear that some laptops can rival desktop performance, but I’m using a dual-core laptop from 2012. I think there are some smart phones that have higher CPU performance than it now. Joking aside, I am thankful that it has 8GB RAM, SSD and most importantly USB3. You might be able to get away with just the first two and USB2 on a desktop, but sooner or later, a laptop will need access to an external hard-drive or other high speed device, and when that happens, you will not be happy if you don’t have USB3.
When I’m on the road, there are a number of things that I do to limit my risk of disasters:
- Never apply System Updates
- Make Daily Backups
- Publish source code changes to cloud server as soon as possible
- Use a surge protector
- Maintain an Emergency Boot / Recovery Kit
Actually, I do apply some Security Updates, but only if my risk exposure is greater than zero, I have a recent backup and I have the time to roll-back the update if needed. I’ll cover my Emergency Boot / Recovery Kit later. I think the other points are self-explanatory.
Since I will be away from my main work/development machine for more than a few days/week, I decided to use migration tools to transfer my work and documents from my desktop machine to my laptop. On macOS, this involved doing a final time machine backup of my desktop. Then I used the Migration Assistant on my laptop to import all applications, documents, user accounts and system settings from the Time Machine backup. I had to sign back into Apple ID / iCloud, and re-activate the license on applications that have DRM/activation. I was relieved to find out that Apple Developer ID code-signing operations worked perfectly after signing back into my Apple Developer Account in Xcode. Please note that I used Xcode-managed signing certificates. If you use manual signing certificates, you’ll probably have to export and re-import your certificates for things to work.
Unfortunately, Windows 10 is a comparative wasteland when it comes to migration options. I really miss Windows 7’s Migration Tools and Disk Imaging, Backup and Restoration options. I really don’t know what the Microsoft team was thinking when they developed FileHistory. Maybe it’s supposed to be more user-friendly than Windows 7’s Disk Imaging system, but in practice, it causes extremely high amounts of frustration and lost data. The most critical of its failures is that there is no clear feedback to the user that a FileHistory backup operation is 100% complete. After learning this lesson the hard way, I now meticulously check the FileHistory backup folder and verify that all of my important files exist there. So after doing that, I manually transferred my documents and application settings from my desktop to my laptop’s Bootcamp partition.
Of course, if I had just paid my monthly “protection fee” to Apple and Microsoft to use their cloud services, working from the road would almost be a non-issue.
Of course, if I had just paid my monthly “protection fee” to Apple and Microsoft to use their cloud services, working from the road would almost be a non-issue. Outside of digital security certificates and very large data files, most commercial business, programming and even art/design software have cloud features to allow you to login and continue working from anywhere. This is fine for situations where you have access to reliable broadband internet, can afford all the monthly fees, and can assume everyone in their work circles can also afford these services. However, it makes less sense in cases where internet connectivity is bad, or income streams are unpredictable.
If you do use a cloud storage “backup” of your documents, I strongly recommend that you also make local backups on an external USB drive. Most of the cloud storage services that advertise “backup” just keep a mirrored copy of your documents folder. More than once, I’ve experienced some sort of hiccup in the synchronization where a new document is erased from my documents folder rather than being copied to cloud storage. Also more than once, a local document is accidentally deleted and the cloud storage copy also gets deleted and the deletion gets propagated to all my other devices. I’ve been using cloud storage services for over 10 years, so maybe these were growing pains during the early stages of the technology. However, I still have great suspicion of any cloud storage service that does not advertise proper versioned filed backups.
If disaster does happen to you on the road, or even at home, here are some links to backup, recovery and partition software which I’ve used and trust. These are not affiliate links or advertisements. I’m just sharing what’s worked for me in the past when disaster struck. PS – always make backups.
- Time Machine
- Windows 7 Backup and Restore (on Windows 10)
- Easeus Partition Master Free Edition
- iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery
If you lose all of your files from an accidental disk format / re-partition, then iBoysoft can try to scan the deleted partition area and recreate files and sometimes even partitions and filesystems. It is probably the most expensive option for software-based recovery. The site has some English translation errors that made me worry that it was a scam, however, my purchase went through without issue, was issued an activation key and I was lucky enough to recover a full APFS filesystem tree.
Addendum: Here is the list of my must-have and emergency tools when working on the road:
- Surge Protector
- External USB 3 Hard drive with:
- Most recent full backup of desktop computer
- Daily backups of laptop
- Multiple USB 3 Flash drives containing:
- OS Recovery Disks for Windows and Mac
- Partition Manager Boot Disk
- Multiple Mac OS versions
- Powered USB Hub
- USB extension cable
- USB 3 Ethernet dongle
- MicroSD to SD card adapter
I used to include a USB 3 DVDRW drive on that list, but I have not needed it more than 2-3 times in the last 10 years.