What is the best way to save your work?

I think the email idea is a good one. I've been using a memory stick but now I'm slightly worried in case it dies like yours. The only problem with saving it on emails is if it's a large file then it takes forever to send. I've looked at the hard drives as well but I'm in the same boat as you and can't afford one.

I back mine up to an external hard drive and a thumb drive, and I email my work to my self each time I do any changes. I think email is the best solution, because you can access it anywhere and since they (the Hotmail or Yahoo or similar people) have backups on their servers, you will never lose your work.

Multiple methods, in multiple places.

Priene said:

Multiple methods, in multiple places.

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This.

Priene said:

Multiple methods, in multiple places.

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Yes. This. Emphasis on multiple places. If your sole backup is an external drive that sits next to your computer and your house burns down, your work disappears with everything else. I know someone who felt that if her house caught fire, she would be sure to pick up the external drive on the way out. Not only can you not guarantee you'll think of that should such a disaster happen, but your house could burn down while you're away from home.

E-mail is a good offsite storage mechanism as long as you don't delete it off the server. If you delete it off the server when you download your messages, it's still saved only on your local machine.

I store my manuscripts on both my C and D internal drives, on an external drive, on my AlphaSmart, on the network at work (with permission) so it's backed up nightly and stored offsite weekly, printed out at the end of each chapter, and in an online e-mail account set up explicitly for backup. I'm getting ready to set up automatic backups with my internet provider.

I figure if all those copies are destroyed at the same time, it's because the planet exploded and, being dead, I won't care that my work is lost.

I'm using a cheap Walmart flashdrive, and then Drop Box, which is great for this. It automatically mirrors everything in a specified folder to an online server, so every time you change files on your computer, they get updated online too

proxy said:

I'm using a cheap Walmart flashdrive, and then Drop Box, which is great for this. It automatically mirrors everything in a specified folder to an online server, so every time you change files on your computer, they get updated online too

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You want to keep iterative backups, too. It's not as hard as it should be to bollocks up a file and then save it as backup in all your locations. In my scenario, it would be distinctly possible for all but two (well, three) of my backups to get damaged at once. For example, let's say I accidentally deleted half of my document without realising it, then backed up that version everywhere. All my stored files would be damaged.

BUT....I don't delete the e-mails I send to my backup account each night, so I could easily retrieve a previous, complete version of the file. I also have my printout. At a worst case scenario, I could ask my IT guys to get a backup out of our offsite storage, but I'd probably have to pay the company for it...worth it, if that was the only undamaged one left! In all of these cases, I'd lose a little work, but not more than a week's at most.

Google Docs!

Ok, this is what I do.

As I write I hit the save button every couple of pages. At the end of a session I will email to to myself.

If you have out look you can do this through word byt going file->send to ->mail recipient as attachement then an email box will pop up, enter your own email and send it yourself. You can also maually attach it to hotmail/yahoo etc.

I have a flash drive also, and I periodically save work on it.

But I recently got a digital pen because I like to write long hand, but hate having to type stuff up. It converts my handwriting to text and saves it in the pen's memory. I later upload that to teh computer.

The plus side of this is that my pen has ink in it (some models don't) and so I have a handwritten copy also, should anything happen to my computer.

Also, in light of recent discussion I would advise that id you are writing long hand that you use waterproof ink.

Terie said:

Yes. This. Emphasis on multiple places. If your sole backup is an external drive that sits next to your computer and your house burns down, your work disappears with everything else. I know someone who felt that if her house caught fire, she would be sure to pick up the external drive on the way out. Not only can you not guarantee you'll think of that should such a disaster happen, but your house could burn down while you're away from home.

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I know a guy who's house was hit by lightning and his computer literally exploded. He lost everything that was on it.

Also, what happens if your house gets broken into? Laptops are one of the easiest things in the world to steal

E-mail is a good offsite storage mechanism as long as you don't delete it off the server. If you delete it off the server when you download your messages, it's still saved only on your local machine.

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A record of the file will be kept in your 'sent' folder and even if you delte the incoming message, you will still have it in your sent items. The best thing to do is to create a separate folder just for this, and save the emails into that as you recieve them, that way you can't accidentally delete them.

Also, most providers dont' clear deleted emails each day. They will usually be in your 'deleted' folder for a month or more until you eithe rmanually delete them or they expire. So if you've just delted something you can still get it back,

shaldna said:

A record of the file will be kept in your 'sent' folder and even if you delte the incoming message, you will still have it in your sent items. The best thing to do is to create a separate folder just for this, and save the emails into that as you recieve them, that way you can't accidentally delete them.

Also, most providers dont' clear deleted emails each day. They will usually be in your 'deleted' folder for a month or more until you eithe rmanually delete them or they expire. So if you've just delted something you can still get it back,

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This TOTALLY depends on your service provider. I personally would NEVER trust my backups to an internet provider's automated mechanisms. I keep everything on the server and manually manage ALL of my e-mail.

I've had providers whose interfaces didn't save sent e-mail unless you specified each time (so easy to forget). I've had providers who automatically delete everything from the server on download and don't let the user choose. And so on.

My main point is to be sure to control EVERYTHING yourself. Don't just assume you'll be able to get something back. The time you lose something important is the time that everything else will have gone wrong. Murphy's Law and all that.

I keep my work in 4 places (and may now make it 5 - hadn't thought of the email route). I keep it on the computer hard drive, a memory stick, an external drive, and I use IDrive online backup service (it's free up to 2 GB, a paid service above that) and it will keep up to 30 versions of any file to restore from.

shaldna said:

But I recently got a digital pen because I like to write long hand, but hate having to type stuff up. It converts my handwriting to text and saves it in the pen's memory. I later upload that to teh computer.

The plus side of this is that my pen has ink in it (some models don't) and so I have a handwritten copy also, should anything happen to my computer.

Also, in light of recent discussion I would advise that id you are writing long hand that you use waterproof ink.

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Okay, I know I'm totally in the dark ages when it comes to technology. I don't even know what this is, but I plan to do a search and find out. I also prefer to write in longhand, and from your description this might just be a nice blend of old school with the new.

www.dropbox.com is handy as well.

I save it in one spot (an separate networked hard drive) that gets backed up daily to both an internal and external source. I'm a bit fanatical about it because I've had too many crashes where I've lost work. Being married to a professional geek helps to, since he knows how to set all this stuff up

Three SD cards, two thumb drives, a DVD, a laptop, a netbook and a tt42.

Also aadams73 has two of my books on her computer.

I'm also thinking of getting a safety deposit box. I don't feel so pretentious doing so now I'm contracted. It's legitimate; I have to protect my work.

Seven thumb drives, two externals, two laptops, SP's computer. Paranoid? You're damn right.

Priene said:

Multiple methods, in multiple places.

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Agreeing. And adding different locations. My mom had a friend who lost everything in a house fire. She'd had things backed up, but everything at the same house. My backup is a pen drive in my desk at work. In theory even if we got hit by the big one it would be okay in there. I also have printouts in case the digital copies ever go bye bye.

I have all my work mirrored on two hard-drives. I also regularly zip everything up and e-mail it to my Google mail account. I feel safe now. Google mail allows you 8 gigs of data. I can't see me ever using all that space for my stories.

Two hard drives on my laptop, one external drive that I keep in a fire-proof safe in the basement, a flash drive that I carry around, and now I'm saving files through FTP to the server that hosts my websites. I think I'll also get another thumb drive to give to my husband to keep at his office.

kposa said:

Two hard drives on my laptop, one external drive that I keep in a fire-proof safe in the basement, a flash drive that I carry around, and now I'm saving files through FTP to the server that hosts my websites. I think I'll also get another thumb drive to give to my husband to keep at his office.

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I've thought about backing up this way...but how do you keep spiders from accessing the content? I don't want people to do a google search for something and get my manuscripts in the search results. I'd love to know how to do this and have my documents be secure from anyone accessing them. Enquiring minds want to know!

1) external hard drive stored in a different part of the house. Regular complete backup every month. Keep several whole backups.

2) Thumb drive in purse. All new materieal at the end of each session when you close down the machine.

3) Gmail. When you've worked on a file for an hour, mail it to yourself.

4) Paper copy of the ms, printed out singlespace, about once a month. You can throw the older ones away.

Terie said:

I've thought about backing up this way...but how do you keep spiders from accessing the content? I don't want people to do a google search for something and get my manuscripts in the search results. I'd love to know how to do this and have my documents be secure from anyone accessing them. Enquiring minds want to know!

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Well, I'm not an expert on this, and I may be wrong. But my understanding was that only the public_ftp, public_html, and www folders are out on the web. I made a new folder just for my back-ups. I guess I just assumed that not everything on my server would be made available out there. I'll ask around, though.

Added: I changed the permissions on my back-up folder to allow only myself to read/write/execute everything on it. I hope that's enough, but again I'll ask my more knowledgeable friends.

On a related note, wouldn't Google docs be available to spiders in the same way?

I don't trust technology.

I've hired a monastery of Franciscan monks to copy all of my manuscripts by hand onto parchment scrolls, which they then translate into latin on new sets of parchment. All of the latin copies are then carried by blind albino mercenaries on private jets to Switzerland, and then locked in separate safe deposit boxes with combinations known only to myself and the blind albino mercenaries, who stand guard in the city there, making sure no one assaults the banks to get to my manuscripts until called again to transfer new back-ups. I receive a small stipend from the Swiss police because my mercenaries have prevented several attempted robberies. Finally, all the English copies that the monks have copied are carried to the ends of the Earth by the monk who copied it, where each monk then digs a maze-like catacomb, whose layout is known only to me and the individual monk. After leaving the English manuscript in a sealed-off, pressurized vault inside the chamber, the monk closes up the tunnels and lives in the wilderness close by until his death. Each vault is activated with a thermonuclear device rigged to go off should someone enter the incorrect key pass to enter. All the combined locations and keycodes to all the copies of my manuscript are known only to me. The keycodes are 10-digit random combinations of letters and numbers, including alphanumeric characters, as well as letters from the Hebrew, Arabic, and Cyrillic alphabets. I'm considering adding Sindarin and Klingon for my next novel.

Of course, these are all pretty hard to remember, so I have them written down on a post-it note attached to my fridge, along with a note reminding me where all the copies are.

Thank you, Kuwisdelu, for providing a fitting ending to this study in paranoia. I suggest the whole thread be moved to the humor section.