Disaster Recovery

The topic today is kind of personally motivated for me, since my desktop PC just had a catastrophic hardware failure on Monday of project week... In all the free time I have with no computer to occupy myself, I've been giving the topic some serious thought.

I'll start out by saying the hardware failure happened when I was trying to install a new component, and I was very lucky that I took the time to back up my class files and personal documents before I cracked open my case. I'm finishing my projects downtown at the CTI labs, but if I hadn't backed up, I'd be up the creek something fierce, with only a few days to recreate what was essentially a quarter's worth of work.

I think this ties into HCI because we as designers are supposed to provide a safe environment where the user feels free to experiment, and can easily diagnose and recover from errors. Now although a hardware failure can be difficult/impossible for software to predict or deal with, I think there are still steps the system can take to assist in recovery from these types of errors. One thing might be some sort of timed, automated backup to external media. I know this capability exists now, but as far as I know it's something mostly employed by users that have a high awareness of data safety issues. Shouldn't we work to make this type of recovery ubiquitous?

Maybe computers could have some sort of built-in removable memory that could act like the extra house key you hide under a plant (try to work with me on that analogy, heh). Specify which files are important, and the system backs them up every night for you. Then when your motherboard melts, all you need to do is open the small panel inside your case and pop out the emergency memory (see, like grabbing the key from under the plant! I knew that analogy would come together...). Then you could go easily finish your class projects at another machine instead of committing seppuku over the shattered corpse of your computer.

TL/DR summary: Disaster recovery is this is a topic I didn't think about much until I had to deal with it myself. And as a user-centered designer, I'd like to help other people not to have to think about it either. What about you all? Has anyone seen a cool technology or method for helping people get back on their feet after a computerboom?