Back up your work, now

veinglory · Oct 1, 2005

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 · Oct 1, 2005

Double-whammy of http://www.backpackit.com (day to day access) and http://www.strongspace.com (general backups).

zarch · Oct 1, 2005

I email my WIP to myself (as an attachment) after every writing session.

maestrowork · Oct 1, 2005

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 · Oct 1, 2005

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 · Oct 1, 2005

veinglory said:
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.

Pat~ · Oct 1, 2005

use multiple methods

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 · Oct 1, 2005

pb10220 said:
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 · Oct 1, 2005

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 · Oct 1, 2005

I email tro myself and sometimes I save on Yahoo Briefcase. I also have a memory stick but haven't used it much.

stormie · Oct 1, 2005

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.

rach · Oct 1, 2005

Has anyone tried backing up files on a detachable hard drive?

aruna · Oct 1, 2005

rach said:
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 · Oct 1, 2005

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 · Oct 1, 2005

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 · Oct 1, 2005

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 · Oct 1, 2005

Flash drives are the bomb.

I also email to betas, myself, and my parents. Because you can never be too careful.

Richard · Oct 1, 2005

Watch out for things like Flash memory and floppy disks - they're not very reliable in the long-term.

kristie911 · Oct 1, 2005

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 · Oct 1, 2005

www.grisoft.com

Free antivirus software for personal use - good quality, they use it to try and upsell their commercial packages.

Pat~ · Oct 1, 2005

rach said:
Has anyone tried backing up files on a detachable hard drive?

(I think it's usually a good option, but see post 7.)

maestrowork · Oct 1, 2005

rach said:
Has anyone tried backing up files on a detachable hard drive?

Yes. Removeable hard drives are great.

Jamesaritchie · Oct 1, 2005

software

Richard said:
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 · Oct 1, 2005

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 · Oct 1, 2005

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

)

Back up your work, now

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