Once upon a time, there were three little computers. The three of them lived together in their happy little server farm, and they thought the world was just dandy.

The first little computer loved that he was so quick, and had so much memory, that he just ran processes all day long. He never wanted to stop and backup his system because he was simply too excited, and didn't want to waste his time.

The second little computer too loved thinking quickly, but he understood that if something happened, all of his memories of his happy little life would disappear. This little computer made incremental backups once an hour, which he kept, taking up precious space, for 24 hours, and one per day for a week, and once a week until his memory couldn't take it any longer.

The third little computer had slightly different values. His mommy computer told him that without his memories, he may even forget how to think. This wise little computer take incremental backups, just like his friend, but he also kept fully bootable backups, which he made twice a week, and stored them on a different drive.

One day, the three little computers were going about their normal routine, when a scary — fill in the blank here with virus, power surge, mistaken setting change, failed drive, OS upgrade, or thief, and let's just call him a wolf — came along and thought those computers looked mighty delicious.

He walked up to the first little computer and took one huff, and a puff, and he wiped that little bastard's drive without even trying.

That poor little guy had no place to go but to his friend's. But this wolf watched him run over there. The second computer was confident that the wolf would be no match for his time capsule, but alas, the wolf took a huff, and a puff, and when the second computer tried to restore his system, he got some strange looking error for any restore point he tried.

The two computers ran to their wise buddy. The wolf, at this point confident that no one has any solid backup system, took a huff, and a puff, and the time capsule backup failed. But then the smart computer used his off site fully bootable backup made by SuperDuper! and the system was bullet proof!

And so, my friends, may I remind you. Having a single backup does not always work. You may even go through the effort of making the backup, but if you don't test it, you have no idea.

I was like the third computer. I have incremental backups made via Time Machine, and I make twice weekly backups using SuperDuper!.

I recently installed OS X Lion on my Mac Mini server, and nearly every setting I tried was broken. I spent about a week trying to repair everything, but it seemed every problem I investigated exposed even more problems. Reluctantly, I decided to restore from a bootable backup I had made an hour before the upgrade. But when I attempted this restore, the OS said it couldn't mount the volume. So then I tried to restore from Time Capsule. And, well, at about 15% complete, the display lost signal. The drives are spinning, and the computer is certainly powered on, but I have no I/O. I'm very scared. We'll see how it goes.