Foolproof method to back-up your writing?

[freshpencils]

I lost quite a bit of my writing when my computer died a few months ago. Some was backed up, but the larger part was saved only on my hard drive and it could not be retrieved. Of course, it was my own fault and I absolutely should have had a better back-up system in place. But I didn't and it has literally stopped me from writing because I'm scared to death I'll lose another huge chunk of writing.

The priority right now is for me to come up with a "foolproof" method of backing up my work. My computer doesn't have a CD burner. The back-up method I was using is 3.5" disks - dinosaurs. They get corrupted pretty easily and hold a very small amount of pages. Also, if/when my current computer dies, I don't know if disk drives will even be available any more. So I'd rather not rely on 3.5" disks as a back-up method.

In another AW thread, there is a discussion about flash drives. I had never heard of these. I called Dell to ask about them and the sales rep tried to sell me an external hard drive! He didn't feel a 4 gig flash drive has enough memory for a writer. I never intended to buy a flash drive from Dell - I just needed information about the product.

First of all, isn't 4 gigs enough to save one novel - say a 100,000 word novel?

Is it not cost efficient to save one novel per flash drive? In other words, when you want to work on your WIP, plug in one flash drive. If you want to edit your existing novel, plug in a different flash drive. And so on.

I'm not in a position to buy an external hard drive, or a CD burner, right now. It's my understanding that flash drives are found pretty inexpensively on ebay.

Any advice?

[WildScribe]

I have over 900 articles PLUS the first 60k of my WIP on my 512 flash drive, and it shows no signs of filling up.

For foolproof, though, I also zip the entire drive every so often and email it to myself. Gmail is great for this. They even encourage it. Good luck, and sorry about the crash.

ETA: Go to newegg.com or something for your flash drive... ebay + technology kinda scares me.

ETA2: I think that 3.5 drives will be available for a good long time, at least externally. External drives plug into the USB port, and are rather cheap. :D

[Devil Ledbetter]

I have over 900 articles PLUS the first 60k of my WIP on my 512 flash drive, and it shows no signs of filling up.

For foolproof, though, I also zip the entire drive every so often and email it to myself. Gmail is great for this. They even encourage it. Good luck, and sorry about the crash.

ETA: Go to newegg.com or something for your flash drive... ebay + technology kinda scares me.I second the Newegg recommendation.

I save my novel on a separate harddrive, and occassionally burn it to a CD.

[Mud Dauber]

Thumb (flash) drives and email, all the way!

[freshpencils]

What is a 512 flash drive? 512MB?

[freshpencils]

I would really like to start using flash drives - "thumbs."

Thanks for the vote of confidence for these little gizmos. (They're so cute!)

[freshpencils]

I'm going to check out Newegg right now. Thanks!

[stormie]

What is a 512 flash drive? 512MB?
Yup.

And I third or fourth what others said. Thumb drive (you don't need more than 1 GB, email to yourself (I email it to three accounts), save it to cd, save it on hard drive.

[Codger]

your friendly, neighborhood Wal-Mart. (2GB MicroFlash $33.88)

[aadams73]

You might also try emailing it to yourself at a gmail account.

[Chumplet]

Or if you're part of a webmail account and email it to yourself, the file will sit on their server.

Personally, I email my latest version to myself at work. Different server. I should get a flash drive, but I haven't got around to it. I think my husband has a couple, but they're his, not mine.

[scarletpeaches]

I have two computers. :D

I use the 128 pen drive to transfer stuff from the laptop onto the desktop and burn everything onto CD every week or so, keeping the 'reserve' copies on my pen drive and both computers. And sometimes I have hard copies too.

[AnnieColleen]

http://docs.google.com

Upload your file & save it there. (You can also work in the file on the site directly, but I prefer to upload.) It does have a size limit, so a 100,000-word novel might need to be split into two or three files, but there's no limit on how many files you can have.

The other nice thing about it is that you automatically have version control if you want to go back and look at something you changed.

[Just Me]

I have a flash drive for my writing and I make monthly backups of my entire PC using an external hard drive. Let's just say I like to err on the side of caution. :tongue

~JM.

[stormie]

I have a flash drive for my writing and I make monthly backups of my entire PC using an external hard drive. Let's just say I like to err on the side of caution.
Let's just say we writers are a paranoid bunch. :D Only kidding. Maybe. I don't know. Oh. Someone is looking over my shoulder. I think. Or maybe....

[Jamesaritchie]

I back my files to an external hard drive, to CD, though I'm switching to DVD, and to an online storage site. If this isn't enough, to heck with it.

[brokenfingers]

Use GSpace (http://www.getgspace.com), it's great. It treats your gmail account like another drive (3 gigs too!) allowing you to click and drag whole folders onto your "g-drive"

You just need a gmail account. I don't know if you still need an invite to get one but if anybody does, just pm me for one.

[Azure Skye]

I save all my stuff on CD and usually make a hard copy.

[scribbler1382]

I backup to second computer on my home network, USB drive, and I'm regularly pinged by my Yahoo schedule to backup to DVD (but mostly I just dismiss the notice and keep doing what I was doing). Beyond this, I'm usually only a day behind what I've written with a hardcopy printout and I have a scanner should things go really bad.

I've messed around with Google Docs and emailing stuff here, there and everywhere and even turning my Gmail account into a file server, but they seem to all just be extra layers of disorganization for me to abuse. :)

[herdon]

You can get a flash drive for pretty cheap. Personally, I'd say if you really want to be cautious then go ahead and buy a cd-burner then keep your backups off-site. After all, it ain't going to do you any good if your house burns down and takes your backups along with your computer.

If you aren't paranoid the cheapest way would be to get a free mail account like a yahoo.com account and email your manuscripts to this account and then move them to a backup folder.

[Kristin Landon]

Havlen's got a point. It's a really good idea to have a regular backup that you can retrieve from the Web, such as the Gmail idea. If you lose everything else, you've still got your work, as soon as you can get online.

I'd also suggest finding some kind of software that does automatic backups, to destinations you set at times you set (such as the middle of the night). That way you know it gets done.

[Tallymark]

Flash drives are excellent. You can get them pretty much anywhere (walmart, best buy, any store with some computer stuff), and all your computer needs is a USB port. A nice big flash drive (like 512 megs, or 1 gig) is a one-time buy, and it'll last you years and years. If all you're putting on it is writing files, it won't fill up for a long time (unless you're incredibly incredibly prolific ;) ).

They're instantaneous; just plug it in at the end of the day, save, and eject. They also mean you can work on your stories if you're at someone elses computer. Seriously, just go to wal mart and ask someone there--they'll be happy to show you a decent selection (without trying to foist a whole hard drive on you!).

[stormie]

Seriously, just go to wal mart and ask someone there--they'll be happy to show you a decent selection (without trying to foist a whole hard drive on you!).
Yeah, I made the mistake of asking a sales associate at Staples for a simple USB line. Mind you, I like Staples. I could spend hours there going up and down the aisles just looking. But this certain person had the greatest sales pitch--very quick talker--and I fell for buying over $100 worth of stuff. Returned it two days later and just grabbed what I needed and bought that for about $15.

[infinitus_kaze]

I don't think there is a foolproof way to save a manuscript. Portable devices can break if dropped, become corrupted if exposed to static electricity, or just be defective in the first place and eat your data instead of saving it. I think the only thing that comes close to a foolproof plan is to save your manuscript in multiple places. I have two hard-drives on my computer (one for storage and one for programs) and I save my manuscripts on both. I also save it to floppy disk and cd. The more places you have a manuscript saved, the less likely you are to lose it. It takes a really unlucky person to back-up a manuscript in 4-6 places and have all of them fail at once.

[Dave.C.Robinson]

There is no perfect backup strategy. However there are good ones. The real minimum is one onsite and one offsite backup. I have an additional GMail account just for offsite backup.

A good plan would be to use a flash drive daily and offsite email daily. CD/DVD weekly.

[maestrowork]

There's no single foolproof method, but if you combine several methods, you'd have a pretty solid strategy. My strategy includes backing up to at least four different devices and version them: thumb drive, online storage/Gmail, CD-ROM, and removable hard drive. It would probably take a nuclear holocaust for all four or five devices to fail at the same time.

[expatbrat]

I double what the Naked Man and others have said... various methods.

I had my last laptop stolen last year and lost about 3 weeks worth of work. Also stolen was the flash card as it was still attached to the laptop.

Now I:

• Email my self a back-up
• Save a backup on an unplugged external hard drive (these are cheap in Thailand)
• Save a backup on my flash card
• Back-up on the computer
• And I have a printed hard copy of my book (which does get rather behind, and if this was all I was left with going back and typing the thing out again would be a real hassle).

[Tachyon]

Basically I'm just echoing what's been said before: back up, back up, back up. Just when you think you've backed it up enough, back it up again. My master copy is on my computer, with a backup on the flash drive, emailed to myself, and another copy uploaded to my website's server.

My novel is 102,000 words and it's 249 KB in OpenDocument format (far superior to Word documents, where it is over a megabyte). I don't think I'll run out of room on my 512 MB flash drive anytime soon. :D

[freshpencils]

Scarlet Peaches -

That sounds like a plan! I'm into non-technical stuff, like paper and pencil. Printing hard copies is my preference - but I don't have a working printer right now. (I'm a mess, aren't I?!)

Not sure what a pen drive is. I'll have to check that out, too. (Unless a pen drive is the same thing as a flash drive.)

[freshpencils]

I just opened a file a gmail today based on everyone's suggestion. Your point about saving versions is excellent; that's definitely something I like to do. I never even thought of that in connection with gmail.

[freshpencils]

Yep. The Dell sales guy recommended an external hard drive.

[freshpencils]

Well, heck, what do I need with flash drives? (But they're so cute!!)

Gspace, huh? (I'm going there now...)

[freshpencils]

Marty -

Wow! I'd say you're backed up to the Nth degree. Yours sounds like the ideal set-up.

(I don't know who Gay Perry is, but he's funny as hell.)

[freshpencils]

Yeah, this Gmail thing really does sound like the simplest way to go for now. I really need to pay attention to technology more.

[freshpencils]

I do appreciate everyone's comments. This turned out to be a good thread and v. educational for me. I guess all I need is Gmail, maybe Gspace and a 512 flash thumb thingy.

Yeah!

[Anthony Ravenscroft]

The Dell guy is an utter moron, & you can tell him I said so. I've written three books on a Mac that has less RAM than my cat but obviously an order of magnitude ahead of the salesguy.

There's no "perfect" backup method. I've used everything from carbon copies to FTP fetch on hidden website pages. All you can really do is hedge your bets & buy insurance, as it were.

Still, I recommend running off a good clean copy, sealing it in a manila envelope, & filing this in your cabinet. I've got a two-drawer just for that, & it's packed with mss going back to 1986, most of which could be readily scanned to Word files in a few minutes -- no problem with file format.

[blacbird]

There is exactly one foolproof method to back up your work:

Don't be a fool.

caw

[Raphee]

I do appreciate everyone's comments. This turned out to be a good thread and v. educational for me. I guess all I need is Gmail, maybe Gspace and a 512 flash thumb thingy.

Yeah!
You can use Gmail, hot mail, yahoo or any other account. I save mine on both my yahoo and gmail account.

However that 512 falsh thumb is really a must. You can save upto dozens of your novels on that as long as they are word or simple text documents. BUY IT.

[ccarver30]

I have it on my laptop, on my memory stick and I email it to myself from time to time.

[Jamesaritchie]

The Dell guy is an utter moron, & you can tell him I said so. I've written three books on a Mac that has less RAM than my cat but obviously an order of magnitude ahead of the salesguy.

There's no "perfect" backup method. I've used everything from carbon copies to FTP fetch on hidden website pages. All you can really do is hedge your bets & buy insurance, as it were.

Still, I recommend running off a good clean copy, sealing it in a manila envelope, & filing this in your cabinet. I've got a two-drawer just for that, & it's packed with mss going back to 1986, most of which could be readily scanned to Word files in a few minutes -- no problem with file format.

Not sure what you mean by the Dell guy. RAM and an external hard drive have nothing in common. An external hard drive doesn't increase RAM one bit. He sure isn't a moron for suggesting an external hard drive. An external hard drive not only gives you a grab and run with it back up system, you can also back up the OS itself to the external hard drive, which means you can keep using the computer, even if your main hard drive dies. Having an external hard drive is one of the smartest things you can do.

I know some people back up with a printed off copy, but, seriously, anyone who can scan a complete novel into a computer in a few minutes could beat the Flash in a foot race. It takes me an hour to scan in a short story, and even then the file is likely going to need a lot of work to straighten out.

[wordmonkey]

Seems to me like 100 bucks would have been a good chunk of the way towards a flash drive (awesome and you can keep one on a keychain, so, as long as you know where your keys are, you know where your work is!) and a printer.

I print everything as I go. Various digital versions are saved, but after every work session I print what I did. I'm gonna go through and edit anyway, and the printout and red pen is by far the most efficient for me, so it's not like I'm doing anything extra. In a disaster, I can grab that bundle of paper and get out. Sure, it'll mean retyping my mss, but when you've finished the various edits, you probably have written that many words again anyways.

You could also buy a mac. Much more stable. (Bwah ha ha ha ha har! Sorry, I had to!)

[Azure Skye]

Flash drives are excellent. You can get them pretty much anywhere (walmart, best buy, any store with some computer stuff), and all your computer needs is a USB port. A nice big flash drive (like 512 megs, or 1 gig) is a one-time buy, and it'll last you years and years. If all you're putting on it is writing files, it won't fill up for a long time (unless you're incredibly incredibly prolific ;) ).

They're instantaneous; just plug it in at the end of the day, save, and eject. They also mean you can work on your stories if you're at someone elses computer. Seriously, just go to wal mart and ask someone there--they'll be happy to show you a decent selection (without trying to foist a whole hard drive on you!).

I should know this, but how easy is it for them to pick up viruses and other nasties?

[Raphee]

You could also buy a mac. Much more stable. (Bwah ha ha ha ha har! Sorry, I had to!)

Oh you are right. But thats because I got my new Dell 3 days ago and it crashed on day 1. Still havent been able to get it working properly.

Should have bought the macbook, which i was an inch away from buying.:cry:

[Raphee]

I should know this, but how easy is it for them to pick up viruses and other nasties?

I run a scan everytime I put mine into the PC.

[wordmonkey]

I should know this, but how easy is it for them to pick up viruses and other nasties?

Depends where you put it.

If you stick into dirty, infected USB ports that hook up to infected hard drives...

But if you are the only one using it, your computer is clean, so is your flash device.

[Lyra Jean]

I make hard copies of pretty much everything I want to keep. I'm working on getting a fireproof safe or something like that. I have a flash drive and I put my work on that too. It's also saved to my hard drive and to disk.


Flash drives are great. I have no printer on my PC but my dad does so it helps with printing work out.

[Jamesaritchie]

Seems to me like 100 bucks would have been a good chunk of the way towards a flash drive (awesome and you can keep one on a keychain, so, as long as you know where your keys are, you know where your work is!) and a printer.

I print everything as I go. Various digital versions are saved, but after every work session I print what I did. I'm gonna go through and edit anyway, and the printout and red pen is by far the most efficient for me, so it's not like I'm doing anything extra. In a disaster, I can grab that bundle of paper and get out. Sure, it'll mean retyping my mss, but when you've finished the various edits, you probably have written that many words again anyways.

You could also buy a mac. Much more stable. (Bwah ha ha ha ha har! Sorry, I had to!)

Isn't it much easier to simply grab a hard drive and get out? Just the thought of retyping one complete manuscript, let alone several, gives me flashbacks of typewriter days. I love typewriters, but damned if I ever again want to retype a complete manuscript.

[maestrowork]

Should have bought the macbook, which i was an inch away from buying.:cry:

Send the Dell back and get the MacBook! I love mine, and I can run Windows on it so I don't lose all my Windows applications. I love, love, love it.

[Prawn]

E-mail it to myself daily. I back up to a flash drive (1 gig was 6 bucks on e-bay) about once a week, and then put it on my work computer.

As to flash drives, my 93K and 95K novels are 1.2 megabytes, which means that I could put 800-900 books this size on a 1 gig flash drive.

P

P.S. Flash drive = thumb drive

[JimmyB27]

I have two computers. :D

I use the 128 pen drive to transfer stuff from the laptop onto the desktop and burn everything onto CD every week or so, keeping the 'reserve' copies on my pen drive and both computers. And sometimes I have hard copies too.

I have 3 :tongue

Also have a flash drive on steroids - one of these babies:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/80GB-Passport-External-USB2-0-Drive/dp/B0007NLGF8/ref=sr_1_10/026-7727841-9814868?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1177080134&sr=1-10

I wanted a bigger one to back up my photos too. I'm about to set out on the road again, and wanted a portable solution - it's awesome.

[NeuroFizz]

All of this is for my fiction stuff.

Daily back-up - flash drives
Nearly daily back-up - work and home computers
About every two weeks - back up on a 160GB external hard drive (portable, USB-connecting, about the size of a hardback book, and cost a little over $100.)

Once a manuscript has been accepted for publication, I archive on CD. Same when page proofs come in, and when ARCs are available.

[wordmonkey]

Isn't it much easier to simply grab a hard drive and get out? Just the thought of retyping one complete manuscript, let alone several, gives me flashbacks of typewriter days. I love typewriters, but damned if I ever again want to retype a complete manuscript.

Well I wouldn't WANT to do that. But I'd rather do that than start from scratch.

[stormie]

Yep. The Dell sales guy recommended an external hard drive.
The sales people at Dell, Staples, or wherever, will try to sell you the moon. Don't fall for it.

As for Dell, we have two desktops and one laptop. Have had two of them for three years now, and no problems. I think whoever on this thread bought one a few days ago and it crashed, return it. You got a lemon.

As for thumb drives (or flash drives or whatever you want to call them) always do a virus scan on them. As someone else said, you can be infecting another computer if the thumb drive has a virus from the old or other computer.

[Flapdoodle]

I lost quite a bit of my writing when my computer died a few months ago. Some was backed up, but the larger part was saved only on my hard drive and it could not be retrieved. Of course, it was my own fault and I absolutely should have had a better back-up system in place. But I didn't and it has literally stopped me from writing because I'm scared to death I'll lose another huge chunk of writing.

The priority right now is for me to come up with a "foolproof" method of backing up my work. My computer doesn't have a CD burner. The back-up method I was using is 3.5" disks - dinosaurs. They get corrupted pretty easily and hold a very small amount of pages. Also, if/when my current computer dies, I don't know if disk drives will even be available any more. So I'd rather not rely on 3.5" disks as a back-up method.

In another AW thread, there is a discussion about flash drives. I had never heard of these. I called Dell to ask about them and the sales rep tried to sell me an external hard drive! He didn't feel a 4 gig flash drive has enough memory for a writer. I never intended to buy a flash drive from Dell - I just needed information about the product.

First of all, isn't 4 gigs enough to save one novel - say a 100,000 word novel?

Is it not cost efficient to save one novel per flash drive? In other words, when you want to work on your WIP, plug in one flash drive. If you want to edit your existing novel, plug in a different flash drive. And so on.

I'm not in a position to buy an external hard drive, or a CD burner, right now. It's my understanding that flash drives are found pretty inexpensively on ebay.

Any advice?

Flash drives are enough for documents - just be warned that they can get corrupted and fail. Ultimately, your best bet is to get a DVD burner and backup to that regularly. Or even an external hard drive. They're not that expensive these days.

I've never had a hard drive fail - my current PC has 6 in it, and two of those are mirror RAIDed. I also have my documents in a versioning system (Sort of tools software engineers use to keep versions of source code) which is backed up automatically daily.

My current "documents" directory is almost 20 years old; it's the directory I had on an old Commodore Amiga (Still got some Amiga files on it!) and then has been through various versions of windows. It's got huge amounts of rubbish in it. I must sort it out one day.

[freshpencils]

I almost questioned his recommendtion - I knew 2gigs was certainly enough memory for my purposes. I told him how much I'd be saving on one flash drive: one doc. of about 100,000. But he sounded like such a goofball, surfer dude type, I didn't have the heart!

[freshpencils]

He's referring to the recommendation I got from a Dell sales guy. He told me a 2gig flash drive didn't have enough memory to hold a 100,000 word doc.

[wordmonkey]

2Gb Flash Drive. Best Buy. 30 bucks.

Bought two today.

[scribbler1382]

I've never had a hard drive fail - my current PC has 6 in it, and two of those are mirror RAIDed.

In the words of Samuel L. Jackson in Diehard 3:

"Trust me guys. Duck."

[bunnygirl]

I email my docs to myself. It has the secondary advantage of making them available to me wherever I can log in and retrieve them.

[Anthony Ravenscroft]

Not sure what you mean by the Dell guy.
Maybe it was the
I called Dell ... and the sales rep ... didn't feel a 4 gig flash drive has enough memory for a writer.
part in the root post...? Dunno; I guess that's just my own weird interpretation of written English or something.
Having an external hard drive is one of the smartest things you can do.
Would have agreed... until my partner managed to misplace both of her carry-around externals & spent almost two weeks unable to do any work on paying projects. Kewl tech-toys will never be superior to well-thought precautions.
anyone who can scan a complete novel into a computer in a few minutes ... It takes me an hour to scan in a short story, and even then the file is likely going to need a lot of work to straighten out.
What dark hole are you pulling those qualifiers out of? Heavens!! Only an utter moron would sit there feeding page after freakin' page through a flatbed scanner -- I've got an all-in-one Brother with a fantastic autofeed hopper; if I needed, I could set the computer in scan-to-file, load the hopper, & it'd be done long before I got home from work. Plus, my backup copies are set in small crisp print, single-line spacing. I also wouldn't use cheap-ass software; the package on the G4 is like 99%+ accurate with clean text, & the remaining errors are almost always fixable on a simple spell-check pass.