View Full Version : Back up your work, now
veinglory
10-01-2005, 07:31 PM
My laptop just imploded and after a partial recovery of files I am frankly too scared to immediately look and see which f my files are corrupted (I know many are).
Those of you who haven't backed up in a while please do it now and tell us what backup methods you use!
Richard
10-01-2005, 07:34 PM
Double-whammy of http://www.backpackit.com (day to day access) and http://www.strongspace.com (general backups).
zarch
10-01-2005, 07:38 PM
I email my WIP to myself (as an attachment) after every writing session.
maestrowork
10-01-2005, 07:39 PM
I have a full system backup on DVDs (about 2 months old).
All my writing-related files are on CDs and SD cards and also online.
I don't bother backing up applications (except for the system backup) because I can always re-install them. I do back up my install files.
... which reminds me, I should do a system backup this weekend.
Sheryl Nantus
10-01-2005, 07:42 PM
ack!
sending fuzzy thoughts your way that most of your files are able to be saved...
me, I toss them on floppies and disks when I transfer from laptop to desktop and keep them around forever....
:(
Vanessa
10-01-2005, 07:42 PM
My laptop just imploded and after a partial recovery of files I am frankly too scared to immediately look and see which f my files are corrupted (I know many are).
Those of you who haven't backed up in a while please do it now and tell us what backup methods you use!
Sorry to hear about 'puter mishap. I hope that everything's ok once you're fully recovered.
My laptop blue-screened for the final time 3 weeks ago. We knew death was imminent (I'd gotten a couple of blue screens before that went away) so we went out and bought a hard drive to save my 30,000-word book, proposal, 85 poems, and several articles. We were so relieved to have saved it all to hard drive 2 weeks before it crashed for good. Then we discovered that the hard drive had a short in it (we think); when we tried to find the data, there was nothing there. So...I have spent the last 3 weeks laboriously re-entering the 85 poems and the articles which were lost (I had hard copies of everything); fortunately the book/proposal had been saved to disk last year, though I still need to go through it all over again to try to catch a year's worth of editing I'd done. Moral of the story: don't depend on ONE way of backing up. (And DO back up!)
Veinglory--hope you fare better! Good luck with getting everything resolved.
maestrowork
10-01-2005, 07:58 PM
Moral of the story: don't depend on ONE way of backing up. (And DO back up!)
See post #4.
(Sorry about all the problems you have. It's a good reminder to everyone that you should back up -- at least your important files like your mss. -- regularly.
paprikapink
10-01-2005, 08:24 PM
I keep being about to get a separate drive that I can use to back things up offa this dinky little laptop that a friend of mine cast off in my direction...just like I keep being about to fill out that procrastination survey....and in the meantime, I take the cheap and dirty way out. I used one of my gmail invites to invite myself to open another account, called it "myself-backup," and I send a copy of everything there. Gmail offers tunza storage. I think I got that idea from Mridu, whom I haven't seen around here for a while, but anyway, clearly she's brilliant.
I have more gmail invites -- anyone needs one, just pm me.
Veinglory, keeping my fingers crossed for you!
aruna
10-01-2005, 08:37 PM
I email tro myself and sometimes I save on Yahoo Briefcase. I also have a memory stick but haven't used it much.
stormie
10-01-2005, 08:39 PM
Once a week, or more often, I back-up my mss. onto a cd, and keep that in a separate part of the house (you know, fire, theft--am I paranoid??).
I like the idea of emailing to myself, my work as attachments. I'll be doing that today.
Has anyone tried backing up files on a detachable hard drive?
aruna
10-01-2005, 08:46 PM
Has anyone tried backing up files on a detachable hard drive?
Yahoo briefcase is really good. I used to upload every day after my writing session. That way it's in the ether even if the house burns down, in several versions so you can go back to old versions. And when I go to a different country all I have to do is download, I've become lazy, though, with emailing it to myself.
Yahoo Briefcase: http://uk.briefcase.yahoo.com/bc//home
(That is the UK version, I'm sure there'll be one in the US as well.
brinkett
10-01-2005, 08:52 PM
I backup to my laptop, a memory stick, and email copies of the ms to myself--they're stored on my ISP's servers.
pandora9
10-01-2005, 08:59 PM
Fingers crossed you get your precious work back intact, Veinglory.
For backup, my recommendation would be a memory stick slapped into your usb port (almost as fun as it sounds), and some simple backup software that can syncronise what's on the computer and the memory stick. I backup every day this way. Memory sticks seem super reliable - at least I trust them more than cds, floppies and external hard drives (I've had problems with all of these).
blacbird
10-01-2005, 09:36 PM
I use both an external USB hard drive and, for more immediate purposes, a flash memory stick (they're relatively cheap and extremely versatile, as well). Also burn CDs from time to time, owing to my paranoia.
I'd recommend against depending solely on any on-line storage source, like Yahoo. Servers go down more regularly than any other computer device, in my experience, and it's really out of your control.
bird
Irysangel
10-01-2005, 10:00 PM
Flash drives are the bomb.
I also email to betas, myself, and my parents. Because you can never be too careful. :)
Richard
10-01-2005, 10:07 PM
Watch out for things like Flash memory and floppy disks - they're not very reliable in the long-term.
kristie911
10-02-2005, 12:37 AM
I do not use my laptop on-line...ever! My virus software expired and I don't want to pay to renew it. My laptop is for writing only. So I back up to a CD every few days and have a hard copy but I would like to get a memory stick too.
Richard
10-02-2005, 12:55 AM
www.grisoft.com
Free antivirus software for personal use - good quality, they use it to try and upsell their commercial packages.
Has anyone tried backing up files on a detachable hard drive?
(I think it's usually a good option, but see post 7.)
maestrowork
10-02-2005, 01:20 AM
Has anyone tried backing up files on a detachable hard drive?
Yes. Removeable hard drives are great.
Jamesaritchie
10-02-2005, 04:01 AM
www.grisoft.com (http://www.grisoft.com/)
Free antivirus software for personal use - good quality, they use it to try and upsell their commercial packages.
I also use Grisoft's AVG. It works very well, and updates faster than my McAfee. Free is a very good price.
scarletpeaches
10-02-2005, 07:23 AM
I use grisoft but my laptop still crashed a few months back and it cost £35 to fix and I lost everything that was on it.
I may be like kristie and stick to my original vow of keeping it offline. I've had one or two blue screens - where windows is slow to boot up and it says it's running a check of system 32? That's what went wrong last time, but my A-V software is saying there is no virus on it. Still, to be on the safe side I s hould probably keep it offline from now on.
Anyway, on topic...back up. I burn everything onto CD once a week. I keep my WIP on the pen drive, too. I have two computers, and use the pen drive to copy files from one PC to the other. I also keep hard copies of most of my word processing files. Software, I can reinstall. Photos and such, they go on the weekly CD burn back up. I think I'm covered.
I learned my lesson after the last crash anyway, and God forbid if it happens again I won't lose anything important like I did before.
rbflynn
10-02-2005, 07:52 AM
Daily copy of WIP to my thumb drive.
Nightly backup of everything to an external HD.
Weekly upload to an off-site server/web-host (www.globat.com... $7.95us a month web hosting package, upgraded to a terabyte storage for a 1 time fee of $30.00. Highly recommend them.)
Monthly burn to CDs.
To reiterate what someone else has said... flash/thumb/pen drives do fail, and more often than you think, especially if you don't take the time to mount/unmount them properly (through the control panel, add/remove hardware). I would highly recommend not using this as primary storage between backups. I use mine to cart my WIP to and from "the office" so I have it with me on slow days.
(hi btw.. my first post since the old boards :P)
Jamesaritchie
10-02-2005, 08:15 AM
I use grisoft but my laptop still crashed a few months back and it cost £35 to fix and I lost everything that was on it.
I may be like kristie and stick to my original vow of keeping it offline. I've had one or two blue screens - where windows is slow to boot up and it says it's running a check of system 32? That's what went wrong last time, but my A-V software is saying there is no virus on it. Still, to be on the safe side I s hould probably keep it offline from now on.
Anyway, on topic...back up. I burn everything onto CD once a week. I keep my WIP on the pen drive, too. I have two computers, and use the pen drive to copy files from one PC to the other. I also keep hard copies of most of my word processing files. Software, I can reinstall. Photos and such, they go on the weekly CD burn back up. I think I'm covered.
I learned my lesson after the last crash anyway, and God forbid if it happens again I won't lose anything important like I did before.
I'd say you AVG software was either right, or the computer system itself is way, way out of date. I hqaven't seen a system 32 crash in at least four years.
But if you never go online, how are you updating AVG? AVG should be updated as often as new files are released, which is sometimes two or three times per week, and never less often than once per week. If any anti-virus program isn't updated regularly, once a week at the very least, it won't protecty you againt new viruses.
And how are you updating the computer itself? If you're running Windows, the first tuesday of every month is update day. Not even an anti-virus program is of much help unless you also keep Windows updated.
scarletpeaches
10-02-2005, 08:31 AM
I do go online, James - I'm just thinking of taking my laptop offline, to protect it.
My computer system is new - I only got the laptop about 10 months ago. It crashed about 5 months ago. I couldn't reinstall anything containing the words microsoft or windows.
Everything's updated, I guess I was just unlucky. The virus I picked up, God knows how, everything was updated then...it attacked system 32. I dunno. It's all sorted now, but I think I should keep the laptop offline, and use the desktop for emails and such. Just for my own protection and peace of mind!
Jamesaritchie
10-02-2005, 08:53 AM
I do go online, James - I'm just thinking of taking my laptop offline, to protect it.
My computer system is new - I only got the laptop about 10 months ago. It crashed about 5 months ago. I couldn't reinstall anything containing the words microsoft or windows.
Everything's updated, I guess I was just unlucky. The virus I picked up, God knows how, everything was updated then...it attacked system 32. I dunno. It's all sorted now, but I think I should keep the laptop offline, and use the desktop for emails and such. Just for my own protection and peace of mind!
If you like using the laptop online at home, get an old PC and use it as a firewall. Go online with the PC between your laptop and the internet. Softare firewalls generally aren't worth much, but hardware firewalls are excellent.
Richard
10-02-2005, 02:04 PM
I may be like kristie and stick to my original vow of keeping it offline. I've had one or two blue screens - where windows is slow to boot up and it says it's running a check of system 32? That's what went wrong last time, but my A-V software is saying there is no virus on it..
Viruses tend to be rather more destructive than making Windows slower and crashing a bit. This sounds more like a configuration problem.
Jamesaritchie
10-02-2005, 03:05 PM
Viruses tend to be rather more destructive than making Windows slower and crashing a bit. This sounds more like a configuration problem.
I agree. Such crashes are usually not virus related. All sorts of things go wrong with computers, many things cause crashes and installation errors. Most of them aren't virus related.
I've had system 32 errors that gave me fits, even on a computer that had never been online. IF AVG is up to date, and if says there's no virus, there's no virus.
astonwest
10-02-2005, 04:29 PM
Most blue screen problems are usually memory-allocation related, I believe...multiple programs trying to pull at the same areas of memory at the same time.
I use a flash drive, with occassional backups to floppy...
(now that I have a CD burner, I need to get in there and do one for the mss.)
And of course, the ever-important hard-copy backups...
Christine N.
10-02-2005, 04:32 PM
Oo, VG I feel your pain. A few months back, I lost a section of my hard drive. Ack. Had to take the thing to the geek store (All praise for the geeks! I give them the upmost respect) and get them to dig all the files out. Fortunately they were all safe and sound. And, incidentally, the man who owns the store is a friend I hadn't seen in about fifteen years!
I have CD's that I update with stuff. I should get another method too... maybe sending them to myself is a good idea, since I have the 'save on AOL option'.
aruna
10-02-2005, 04:34 PM
Attn techies: my virus protection has expired and I simply can't afford to renew it for the next two weeks. I use broadband. What precautions should I take, other than not going online at all?
brinkett
10-02-2005, 05:33 PM
There are free solutions out there like AVG AntiVirus, which has been mentioned in the thread.
www.grisoft.com (http://www.grisoft.com/)
You could use that to bridge the gap, though I wouldn't use it forever unless you register it. It lacks important features.
aruna
10-02-2005, 05:50 PM
There are free solutions out there like AVG AntiVirus, which has been mentioned in the thread.
www.grisoft.com (http://www.grisoft.com/)
You could use that to bridge the gap, though I wouldn't use it forever unless you register it. It lacks important features.
Done! Thanks!
MichaelSt
10-02-2005, 09:12 PM
We have seven networked computers in this home thus, my files are constantly in transet betweeen machines. While I seldom burn CD's, I do often use secure USB jump drives, (which rock!)
Therefore, the problem I most often encounter is in the nature of having multiple copies of my WIP scattered around the system. These often represent differing stages of this one MSS's progress. So, recently I've thought of adding a seperate system-central hard drive. Or I could investigate some manor of software solution. This problem in itself, has created an ugly and recurrent issue of work duplication which has caused me more manic moments than I'd care to mention.
Michael, mainly mystified, in Seattle.
inanna
10-02-2005, 09:29 PM
Veinglory, thanks for the reminder. I'd been neglecting this. I email my files (and use a zip drive) and last night after I wrapped up, I sent off 17 chapters. (yikes! I was more behind than I'd realized) If something had happened to those chapters, I honestly think I might have had a stroke.
As I mentioned in another thread, I am neurotically and compulsively BACKED UP. <<<That just sounds wrong, doesn't it. But you know what I mean. I lost all my stuff a few years ago and now take extra precautions. Because you never know when something can happen. Have your stuff saved on the web somewhere...your email box...and in hard copy somewhere. I didn't even have a printed copy of my stuff when I lost my system. I'm sorry to hear about your comp probs Vein! I'm really sorry! Another great time to tell others to be careful...
Jamesaritchie
10-03-2005, 04:55 PM
There are free solutions out there like AVG AntiVirus, which has been mentioned in the thread.
www.grisoft.com (http://www.grisoft.com/)
You could use that to bridge the gap, though I wouldn't use it forever unless you register it. It lacks important features.
I don't think it lacks any features the average user will ever need.
Richard
10-03-2005, 05:16 PM
It doesn't. AVG personal is fine.
brinkett
10-03-2005, 05:47 PM
I guess it's a matter of opinion. With the free edition, I didn't like that you can't change what time scans are scheduled, and that files aren't virus checked as they're downloaded. Then again, I download a lot of files. For someone who doesn't do that very often, it doesn't matter. The other thing that bothered me was the dialogs it would throw up every time it updated definitions--perhaps there was a way to turn this off--I didn't check.
Also, my ISP does virus screening of emails and labels those that contain viruses. AVG Free Edition missed about 30% of them.
So it didn't meet my needs. Each user will have to decide for themselves if it meets theirs.
Jamesaritchie
10-03-2005, 06:23 PM
I guess it's a matter of opinion. With the free edition, I didn't like that you can't change what time scans are scheduled, and that files aren't virus checked as they're downloaded. Then again, I download a lot of files. For someone who doesn't do that very often, it doesn't matter. The other thing that bothered me was the dialogs it would throw up every time it updated definitions--perhaps there was a way to turn this off--I didn't check.
Also, my ISP does virus screening of emails and labels those that contain viruses. AVG Free Edition missed about 30% of them.
So it didn't meet my needs. Each user will have to decide for themselves if it meets theirs.
I've never had AVG miss an e-mail virus, but I have had a lot of false positives from ISP screeners. I trust ISP screening not at all. Give me McAfee, Norton, or AVG, but not an ISP screener. As for that dialogue when updating, I wouldn't have that taken away for anything. I also want it with McAffe and Norton.
I seldom do scheduled time scans. AVG runs in the background, and this is usually enough.
Another worry is spyware and malware, and I see more people have problems with these than with viruses. In truth, viruses are pretty easy to avoid with minimal care and common sense. Spyware and malware infest a great many computers without the user being aware, even after bad things start to happen.
brinkett
10-03-2005, 06:30 PM
I've never had AVG miss an e-mail virus, but I have had a lot of false positives from ISP screeners. I trust ISP screening not at all. Give me McAfee, Norton, or AVG, but not an ISP screener.
I now use another virus checker that I'm a lot happier with (in addition to the screening my ISP does--I've never just relied on that).
Another worry is spyware and malware, and I see more people have problems with these than with viruses. In truth, viruses are pretty easy to avoid with minimal care and common sense. Spyware and malware infest a great many computers without the user being aware, even after bad things start to happen.
I agree. If I had to give up one tool out of my security suite, it would be the virus checker. Viruses are easily avoided with a bit of common sense.
veinglory
10-05-2005, 12:59 AM
Glad to hear you are all backing up! I saved most of my fiction except, it appears, about 50,000 word of an old novel that I probably wouldn't ever have gone back to (an early work). A lot of my work stuff and photogrpahs are toast. It could have been worse--although now I need a new computer as the hard drive is corrupted, and I only bought this one in May!!
scarletpeaches
10-05-2005, 02:58 AM
I've been lucky, then. My laptop is ten months old and got a virus five months or so ago. The desktop is two and a half years old and touch wood, no problems with it at all.
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