Tuesday, November 6, 2007

How Do You Back Up?

Backups are absolutely essential, as we all know (some more to our dismay than others.)

I have multiple backups: I write (and save -- frequently!) on the hard drive of my machines at work and home, with the addition of a thumb drive that I use to take it back and forth. (I do "save as" onto the thumb drive when I'm done with a session.) Then I also print it out on paper (switching it all to single space, to save paper; with my other WIP I also convert it to a font size of 10; it's just backup; I never really have to read it; besides, I'm still pretty ok with tiny print.)

I've also thought about uploading it to the web somewhere. I do have a couple of websites I could "park" it on, but so far that seems like a little too much trouble. Perhaps I could also copy it into a blogger post that I never publish (just "save as draft") and then delete afterwards, but I'm not sure a post can hold that many words. Besides, even though I've had relatively little trouble with it, I've read that Blogger can be unreliable.

What other backup methods do you use?

4 comments:

Nurse K said...

https://www.keepyousafe.com/

You can upload up to 10 files to this password-protected website for free. It only takes a few seconds to upload the word docs and you can just delete old copies as you go so you have 10 copies or fewer. I just keep the website open on one of my Firefox tabs at all times so I'm reminded to do it every once in awhile.

For some reason, my computer threw a hyper spazz when I tried to save to a CD-Rom and I have no floppy disk drive nor stick drive.

Amy said...

you could also email a copy to yourself, or upload to Google documents. Google docs has the added benefit of being a word processor so you can add a few lines on the free computer at the library or coffee shop or a friend's house when you're there.

Emily said...

I back-up my novel on my flash drive and also on Google documents. That way I'm covered in two places if my computer decides to fry itself, or I manage to somehow fry it myself.

Dreaming again said...

Thankfully, I emailed myself a copy on a whim.
Don't know why, just did.

10 minutes later, I accidently deleted 650 words!!!

*whew!*