My mother-in-law just had a big computer meltdown this past week. Dell Support couldn't help her breathe life back into the old PC, the family computer expert couldn't jerry-rig it to work.
So she bought a new PC, and external hard drive. Then, with those new boxes tucked in the office, the old PC felt threatened enough to raise itself from the dead.
The whole thing got me worried about my WIP. I'm good about saving while I write, but I mostly save it on my PC. When I remember, I'll bust out the flash drive and pop a copy on there. But I don't save in both places every day. I emailed a version to myself a couple months ago - but that is hours and hours of writing ago. I can't quite find a method that works perfectly for me.
I'd love some tips.
How do you save your novel?
Posts
13 comments:
My husband uses Mozy to back up all our stuff. You get 2G for free. It is awesome. (www.mozy.com)
Oops, that should have said "2 GB"
I'm like you, I save my WIP onto the hard drive, and a flash drive, but I've gotten into the habit of saving to flashdrive after each writing session. I have a 1GB flash, and an 8GB. With computers, you never know when you're going to need room to load stuff up.
I've heard of sending yourself emails, but that just seems pointless to me.
This mozy thing sounds interesting, and while we're talking about 'saving' check out this link:
http://delicious.com/
It's for your bookmarks. When a computer goes, so goes bookmarks. Learned that the hard way. :)
I am terrible and only save to my hard drive. I have sent a copy of my first draft to my dad. :)
SAVESAVESAVE!
My laptop died recently with NO WARNING. NONE. There was no sign AT ALL that the hard drive was failing--it made no strange noises, it didn't freeze up--NOTHING.
Fortunately, I'm obsessed about backing up my writing. The bare minimum I do is send it to myself on email--you can access it anywhere online, after all. But I also have various flash drives for my writing.
Everything other than writing on my laptop? Gone. GONE. Go back up your work now!
I save on my PC and my flash drive after every writing session. Even during the writing session sometimes. I carry my little black flash drive around with me everywhere--paranoid, I guess. But I recently had a virus and it deleted EVERYTHING on my computer. Fortunately I'd saved my manuscript but nothing else. It's definitely worth it to save it in two places.
Mozy is the way to go. It's easy, free and they do multi times a day back ups for you. It's offsite and super secure.
I'm almost at my 2GB so I may have to upgrade to the paid version soon. It's worth it for the peace of mind.
Cool, I'll have to check out Mozy. Thanks for sharing that suggestion Corey.
Right now, I have copies of everything on my home and work computer, and an external harddrive. I also email a copy every day of my progress to my gmail account, and save the emails in the archive.
I do a flashdrive back-up everytime I write.
It's quick and easy. :)
I save to my computer (my docs), then I save to some weird little card thingy my netbook came with. Then, I save to my flash drive. After that, I email myself a copy. And I date save. Every time I open my doc, I go in and hit 'save as' and change the number so everything that autosaves that day is attributed to that exact day. I didn't do that in the beginning, and now I don't have all the versions of my chapters and stories and such.
I'll admit, some days I don't do all of these things, but at the least, I save to my computer and the weird little thingy, since they're actually inside my computer and not something I have to go out of my way to get. I also had a memory card spot that I might start using...
I'm kinda anal haha!
I'm not the best backer-upper. I e-mail all of my completed works to myself, password protected of course. I'm fortunate to have a laptop and a few memory sticks, so I try to transfer everything a few times a month.
Good luck! You're not alone!
I use Mac's Time Capsule to back everything up. It backs things up automatically. I also send an email at the end of nearly every day. I used to use thumb drives/ flash drives(?) but usually don't bother with them anymore.
I hadn't heard of Mozy. I'm going to check it out. I've tried 4 Shared before, I wonder if it is similar.
I had to remind myself to save it on the floppy after Beth's comment. It makes me shiver with fear just thinking about losing it all. Or at least all that wasn't on the laptop.
Post a Comment