Best practice for backing up Visual Studio solutions on Dev Machine

Question

I'm currently in the process of backing up my Dev machine so that I can upgrade to Windows 7. I'm super stressed about the possibility of losing something in the process.

How do you developers create appropriate backups of all your Visual Studio solutions, controls/components, and other development materials to make sure that everything is accessable after a crash or upgrade?

I realize this isn't directly programming related, but it severely affects my programming. I don't care about losing "my documents" or other "crap" that gets installed, I'm just concerned about my programming related content.

Example:
do you put all of your solutions in an SVN?
do you use the built in windows backup? (I personally don't like this because I prefer flat files.)

I did at one point in time try running all of my solutions remotely (IE: on a UNC share), but hell if it totally sucked... ZERO performance from Visual Studio over the network.

Answer 1

Use Revision control. If at all possible, have the central repository on a separate workstation. Set up regular backups for the repository (and verify the backups).

Answer 2

I keep everything in source control in such a way that I can download the entire source fresh from any machine and be able to run it (assuming I have requisite Visual Studio, SQL Server, etc already installed)

Answer 3

Hi, I'd recommend heavily to push all your source-files, project-files and all other files, you create during working on your projects (e.g. images, ..) to any kind of version control tool. If you don't work in a team and you have all your files local, you could use a distributed version control tool (like git, mercurial or bazaar). I don't know, which language or IDE you are using (VS.NET, Delphi, ..), so I can not tell you, which version control system is fitting well into your IDE. But most of the common systems have a nice windows explorer integration.

The main reason, why I use a version control system is not because of performing backups. E.g. if you implement something and it turns out that it was totally wrong, you can go back to the last checked-in version of the file. If you delete a file per mistake (or only single functions), no problem -> you have the last checked-in version. Furthermore, version control is an absolute must have, when working in a team.

kind regards, daniel

Answer 4

Partition your drive have the C:\ for programs and D:\ for everything you would want to keep. I have this set up for a while now and it works a treat.

I also have a Virtual Private Server that I use to backup my source code to using SVN server and Visual SVN. This guarantees that even if there was a disaster (think fire) I would still have my source even if my machine was destroyed.