A few weeks back, I couldn't find the stickdisk with my WIP on it. I had taken it with me so I could download it to a friend who agreed to beta what I had so far. (Part of the reason I wanted him to read it was because he knows a lot about one of the subjects my story revolves around.) Then I ended up putting it in my purse. I couldn't find it. Fortunately, I had recently printed it out (it was 80+ pages and 20k+ words) so I ended up getting another stickdisk and began transcribing it back onto my computer.
You mean a single solitary "stickdisk" (obviously a USB Flash Drive, though I don't recall seeing that word for it before) was/is the ONLY place you have your WIP, other than the printout? The only way I could halfway imagine this being justified is if you're using someone else's computer and you don't want a copy of your work left on their machine. You should still make a second copy of the file, on another stickdisk or on CD-R or something.
ALWAYS edit/add to the file on the computer's hard disk (almost always C: but if it's set up for D: to be used as a data drive, either virtual or an actual second hard drive, you can/should use that). When you've saved and closed the file, then COPY the file to your stickdisk. If you're online, ALSO email it to yourself through Gmail. If you don't have Gmail, get it.
This way if the stickdisk gets dropped in a fire, you still have at least one copy, on the computer's hard drive. If the computer gets struck by lightning, you still have at least the copy on the stickdrive. You also have the Gmail copy if something happens to both.
(I usually have a copy printed out as back up and to use in my writing group.)
And you know what? I just found my original disk. Now I just have to decide whether or not I should continue retyping it since that allows me to get back into the swing of writing again. I've been lazy recently because I got stuck on a scene. That and I was able to tighten up a couple of scenes that were bothering me.
If retyping and editing-while-you-go works for you, sure. Just remember you will have two copies, and you want to save them both. Add the date you started retyping to the filename of the newer one so you can easily distinguish it from the original.
Don't worry about how much space having several copies of files take. This isn't a copy of a DVD or movie file. Your full formatted manuscript file probably takes up 0.01 percent of the space available on the disk drive and stickdisk.
I've never heard of this "word recognition program" you speak of. Do tell? Where might one find one of those?
It's actually a CHARCTER (as in a graphic representation of a character) recognition program, usually called "OCR" for optical character recognition. It looks at the graphic image of each letter on a page and makes a text file with the letters. Google OCR. Some scanners come with OCR software, or at least time-limited OCR software that they want you to use, rely on, then buy when the time limit runs out...
Also, these OCR programs may still not be 100 percent accurate, so you need to proofread the file it gives you.
