The Back-up Poll: What if your computer died RIGHT NOW!!!

I'd be utterly buggered.

*rushes to spare room to get flash drive*

I'd be screwed. Completely. I never back up my work, though I know I should...

My work is backed up on 7 thumb drives (every other day), 2 external hard drives (weekly), my husband's laptop (weekly), our desktop computer (weekly), and on scarletpeaches' hard drive (whenever I remember to send it).

I'd be pissed that my computer crapped out, but I'd still have my stuff.

I have one of them thar new fangled portable hard drive thingies and everything gets backed up weekly. I think it cost about $85.00 at Best Buy.

I back up working files almost continuously, out of habit developed from business applications. I essentially have two identical working computers at all times, one a notebook that I travel with, the other a desktop at my working area. When I'm away from there, I carry three separate flash drives for backup purposes.

There really is no excuse for not having work backed up all the time.

caw

blacbird said:

There really is no excuse for not having work backed up all the time.

Click to expand...

Particularly not with how cheap and readily available flash drives have gotten. I have picked up 2 GB thumb drives for less than $10, and my 8 GB was under $40.

I said in my earlier post I'd be completely screwed, but that was before you had the poll up with the "completely screwed" option I'm more in the Holy Crap Batman position, though that's still completely shameful...

Everything's saved to my flash. If something ever happened to that I'd lose a couple weeks worth of work, but I try to save it all to my desktop once in a while. I don't like to save anything on the laptop.

I'm with thinker... I've got it all backed up in several places. I wouldn't lose but what I'd done between the last time I sat down to work on it and the 'moment of truth'. A few hours at most.

I voted for minimally screwed and some work lost. I back up nearly every day, but not with an automatic system. I wouldn't lose no 2-4 weeks worth of work, though! Since it's so close to the start of the semester, I'd lose a few assignments that are not on the flash drive, but the updated form is not on the CD... but I have print outs so they're really not lost at all. As for stories, I have redundant storage, plus email back ups of current work.

My biggest issue is never with the computer dying (knock on wood-- the last time my non-OS hard drive failed, it gave me plenty of warning with it's flaky behiavor to do a full back up.). My issue is with flash drives dying. I had two die within three months-- one completely died during an attempt to transfer files (weep) and the other started getting extra flaky as it was dying, so I pulled everything off it and got a brand new one. (The new one has U3... I call him R2-D2.)

I would be screwed!

I e-mail (gmail) my WIP to myself periodically.

I manually back up to flash drives and CD every day or two, but I also always print out my day's work. I like seeing my stack of pages grow and hard copies rarely suffer from technical glitches.

And for future reference: My son's hard drive (on his desk top) just died. His computer science teacher recommended freezing the hard drive over night. Further research indicated that this works, but you only have until the hard drive warms up to get your stuff off of it. So, being the brilliant mom I am, I suggested that he take his computer outside. It's freezing here. We have outlets on our carport, so he was able to hook everything up out there and back up his hard drive.

He's getting a laptop for his high school graduation in a few months, but I'm trying to hold off until he decides where he's going to college. They all have different requirements. In the meantime, he keeps stealing my MacBook.

Automatic backups for me.

I chose the first one. I don't have my own computer so I either write w/pen or print out most of my stuff. That which I type on a computer with Internet access I email to myself since I can't save work on someone else's computer.

Yay for being poor!

If my email account somehow wiped out my archives though...I'd be pretty well F'd in the A.

Most of my fiction writing and idea lists are saved on an external drive and on another laptop. Especially since I recently got some Word files wiped out for some unknown reason.
I would have problems with some minor files that are not backed up and especially with pictures from holidays of the last two years. The older ones are out there on a CD.

So would it be a disaster if the computer crashed? Yes, but not one of stratospheric proportions.

I save Everything okay maybe not some things...to my many email servers...Just in case...I don't have any of those thumb-drive things...oh well.

Whoever picks 'completely screwed' please consider Mozy. Their Mozy-at-home feature free. It takes just a couple of minutes to set up and it'll back up your writing on a daily basis, or whatever schedule you select. I've needed them once and it saved my sanity.

I also back up to email and hardcopy, but not every day.

Do it. Do it now.

Do it for me.

No work lost. I save my work to the interwebs every time I finish a session.

Perks said:

Whoever picks 'completely screwed' please consider Mozy. Their Mozy-at-home feature free. It takes just a couple of minutes to set up and it'll back up your writing on a daily basis, or whatever schedule you select. I've needed them once and it saved my sanity.

I also back up to email and hardcopy, but not every day.

Do it. Do it now.

Do it for me.

Click to expand...

I use Mozy, too.

Funny you posted this, I got home from the store today and hadn't uploaded the newest versions of my two current novels in progress (editing stage) and when I went to boot up, total hard drive failure. It told me to backup my files and replace the drive and I was like "NO!!!! one week of work could be gone!" and then it wouldn't boot up for three tries. But on the fourth try it DID boot up and I immediately uploaded the files I needed to my gmail account and saved them. Had it not been possible to do that I would have been pissed but not overly pissed. I am lucky it worked long enough to get my files safely off the drive.

So happy ending, but I didn't vote since it would have been one week of work and it DID almost happen to me today, so I figured the glove didn't quite fit but it was worth posting about. LOL!!!!

I voted for 'some work lost', because my backups aren't automatic. But I wouldn't lose more than about a week.

I backup locally and offsite, so the chances of losing lots of stuff is slim (even if the house burnt down).

None of your poll options really apply to me, I don't think. I save my writing to my flash disk first, save a backup copy to my HD, and a third backup I email to myself both in the body of the email and as an attachment (maybe this computer died but at least I could get it on another computer). The email method has actually saved work I would have otherwise lost forever. I create these backups every few minutes usually. It's not uncommon for me to send myself 40+ emails of my own work a day.