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Backups?

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OliviaM

Really Really Experienced
Joined
Jun 3, 2016
Posts
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What do you use to backup your work? Google docs? Dropbox? A usb drive?
 
I use google docs, so i dont have to worry about losing anything since each word automatically saves.
 
OliviaM said:
What do you use to backup your work? Google docs? Dropbox? A usb drive?
Click to expand...

I have a wireless external drive set to auto-backup (Time Capsule) every couple of hours, and I also have another drive I plug in once a week or so for a secondary backup. What I don't have & probably ought to is an off-site backup.
 
A USB drive, an external HDD and Gmail.

I send my editor/beta-readers my original drafts through Gmail. The sent copy (the original one) is automatically saved on the Sent folder. Yeah, I have to search a lot if all of my things get destroyed, but I'll live with that eventuality for a while until I can invest more time on Dropbox functionality and privacy. I switched to Google docs for a while but I kinda like MS Word more.
 
I submit my stories from my iPhone. I guess I'm putting w lot of faith in iCloud, huh? Then, as can additional measure, I email a copy to myself ( like I would ever read it again after editing it hundreds of this) before submitting it to the site.

đź‘ đź‘ đź‘ Kant
 
USB's and every time I complete a story I e-mail it to myself and put it in story folder. That way everything I have written could be retrieved through my personal e-mail.

A publisher I work with has a storage server through 'cuteftp' I think its called. Each of her authors have their own space and password so I upload things there too.

Also lit itself is a good storage device for people who put all or most of their work up here. You can always copy paste your story from here into a word doc is you lost the original.
 
Two USB drives and on two different hard drives.

My system has three, working on getting two more, hard drives.
 
I back up with a usb drive. I just realized a finished story will have 6 copies floating around my stuff. I write on my lap top transfer it to my desk top to email it to my editor and to upload to lit, it gets backed up to an external drive. Then there is lit itself.
 
OliviaM said:
What do you use to backup your work? Google docs? Dropbox? A usb drive?
Click to expand...

Backups! We don' need no stinking backups!

Actually I back up to a rotation of three external hard drives every night as I sleep. Once a week I backup to another set of two external hard drives that I rotate keeping one in a Safe Deposit Box. I don't use googledocs because I'm a suspicious SOB and I don't want the Russians getting all these stories ... I'm posting ... for free ... on the internet :confused:

Well, there are other things on my computer besides just my stories. :rolleyes:
 
Two USB drives. If I update a story, I can update the USB drives, not so with a DVD.
 
Having lost one complete book and a few short stories to either a stolen laptop or a lost USB drive, I can say backups are very important. I have everything in one folder on a USB drive that backs up daily to the computer and to a backup drive. All of my published works are backed up here at Lit or on my publishers computers.

I also use Everyday Auto Backup to do backups as i write. It is a free program and is very versatile. It will backup your whole file or just what is changed. It does it all in the background. It can also handle multi backups.
 
I back up my entire "My Documents" folder once a month or so to an external drive and a USB drive. Plus my Lit stories are all stored in Google Docs so I can access them from anywhere.
 
I'll admit that I back up all of my work in progress on floppy disks. It just the way I always did it when working in publishing and I see no reason to change as it's just the work in progress in case the computer dies. Once I've sent it to and gotten it back from editor, I have access to it in e-mail attachments in more than one mail system.
 
sr71plt said:
I'll admit that I back up all of my work in progress on floppy disks. It just the way I always did it when working in publishing and I see no reason to change as it's just the work in progress in case the computer dies. Once I've sent it to and gotten it back from editor, I have access to it in e-mail attachments in more than one mail system.
Click to expand...

When you run out, isn't it expensive to fire up the Wayback Machine to go buy more?

rj
 
rjordan said:
When you run out, isn't it expensive to fire up the Wayback Machine to go buy more?

rj
Click to expand...

Nope. I have a lifetime supply of disks from those switching away from floppies--and I have external floppy drives on all of my computers. It's only one of multiple redundant backups I have going.

This developed because for the longest time CDs weren't rewrite (so you couldn't constantly save over as you can with floppies) and the publishing houses stuck to floppies (and had machines without CD capability) for long after CD capability came in--indeed, for as long as I worked with mainstream publishing houses.

Now, it's sort of "why bother?" when I have this system and I'm using various Internet (like Lit.) as my backup for erotica and I have copies in e-mail archives anyway?

There's less of a need for my own backup when the stuff is published.
 
For everything - including work, 30 years of photographs, 25 years of emails, work that was published 22 years ago, 15 years of family tree research, and everything else that matters:

Three external hard disk drives (one is kept off-site)

Carbonite - auto-backup. Yes, it's in the "cloud", but it's effort-free and has been reliable for 6 years.

CAVEAT:

Do not rely on thumb drives / memory sticks / USB drives / whatever you want to call them. They DO go bad after several years.
 
There is the question of under what conditions do you even need backup? Once published, I don't see a need for backup. It's already out there and I've moved on. I need backup while I'm writing it and before it's sent off somewhere, but, in my case, that's a limited amount of time. I finish what I start quite quickly--and send it off for editing, at which time it's retrievable from the e-mail systems. I send through more than one e-mail system, which makes the danger of everything going down at once minimal.

But how long do you need backup--and why? I don't really want the stuff in my personal systems any longer than it needs to be.
 
I backup on USB drives, two, one updated as I work, the other every month or so. Plus, for the last few stories, I print out a final draft, and keep it. It isn't exactly perfect since I generally have corrections and revisions hand written on it by the time I finish proofreading.

And, as someone already mentioned, there's Lit.
 
The master hard disk with all our digital music, photos, and library gets cloned to another; one stays home, one goes on the road in our housecar. My writing is in the cloud (Dropbox) when I'm online and echoes to a USB drive.
 
haulover said:
...

CAVEAT:

Do not rely on thumb drives / memory sticks / USB drives / whatever you want to call them. They DO go bad after several years.
Click to expand...

Actually, they only go bad after the maximum delete/write cycles have been exceed for all bits.

The original (first gen) flash drives only had a cycle of about 10,000 write/delete operations. Newer flash drives are in the millions of write/delete cycles. Reads cycles are free and cost nothing.

So todays flash drives would last about 50 years. I actually have a 32k bytes first gen flash drive that still works today. I may not use it often, but it will hold a story or two for transfer to other computers.
 
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