Reminder to always backup your files

[Blackbird]

Unlike me. 


I just lost everything, and I hadn't done a backup since August.  30,000 words down the toilet, now needing to be rewritten. 


So yeah, if you haven't backed up your WIP in a while, this is a friendly reminder to do so today. 

[Jeff Tanyard]

Sorry that happened to you.   

[TimothyEllis]

 

No words. Sorry to hear about it.

I backup the day's writing every night before going to bed, onto a 2T external drive. Once a month, I copy the 2T to a 4T stored in a fireproof box.

You cannot backup too often.

It's like when writing, I hit the save button every single time I pause, for anything.

If you're really paranoid though, you save to a different date and time stamped folder name, so by the time the book is written, you have 30/60/90 copies of it at every daily state. And you back all of those up to an external drive and back that up to a drive in non-destructible storage.

[katc]

I'm so sorry. I have had that happen and can relate.

[Tom Wood]

Sorry to hear that happened to you.


This is a barndoor after the horses are out suggestion, but Dropbox is a fast easy way to get offsite storage for backups. They have a free plan that is more than adequate for text files. I have Scrivener set up to make a backup every time I do a manual save, and to backup when I exit the program. You can set it to keep up to 25 backups in history.

[VanessaC]

Really sorry that happened to you.  I had to take my work laptop in for repair a while back, thought I'd backed everything up but hadn't and lost a bunch of stuff that's going to be an absolute pest to restore. 

I have an automatic back up for writing, but it only works when internet connected, and I write without internet, so have to keep remembering to switch the internet on to allow the back ups to take place.  Of course, it gives me a great excuse to hang out here...

[PaulJWhite]

Sorry to hear that happened to you.


This is a barndoor after the horses are out suggestion, but Dropbox is a fast easy way to get offsite storage for backups. They have a free plan that is more than adequate for text files. I have Scrivener set up to make a backup every time I do a manual save, and to backup when I exit the program. You can set it to keep up to 25 backups in history.

Yep, I use dropbox too. Super simple to configure and great peace of mind.

[Robin]

Eeek, that's so frustrating. V. sorry for you, but thank you for the reminder. I'm notoriously bad at backing up my work.

[WasAnn]

I'm so very sorry! Big hug to you. I know there's lots of woulda-shoulda, but you have my sympathy.

Also, this sent me  for the computer to ensure I've backed up.

[Mark Gardner]

Another vote for dropbox.

I have an hourly backup, plus dropbox.

[Michelle Louring]

So sorry to hear that! 

I'll be right back. Just gonna make a backup of my backup, just to be safe...

[dgcasey]

Never a bad idea to backup files. I use a program call Synchredible to automatically back up my main hard drive every night. As a matter of fact, it's in the process of doing it right now. About once a week I'll take whatever files I worked on over the past few days and email them to my gmail account. So, if the house burned down, taking the computer, the hard drives and the laptop with it, I'd still have the files I've emailed to myself, sitting in the gmail directory. That reminds me, I need to go clean out the gmail directory. There's almost one gig of stuff sitting in my gmail directory, most of it well past its expiration date.

[Jake]

I use dropbox, google drive, and onedrive. The "main" version of my current work in progress is on dropbox. After a few hours of writing I save a copy on google drive. The next backup save goes on onedrive, and so on. I write from my laptop and my PC so dropbox allows me to always have access to the most current version of my work regardless of what machine I'm using, and every couple days I also save a backup copy on whichever machine I'm writing from too. So backups of my work are saved on at least five different places. This might seem like overkill but it literally takes a few seconds to copy a file.

[Post-Doctorate D]

Depending on how it was lost, there are data recovery options.

[Blackbird]

Depending on how it was lost, there are data recovery options.

This is good advice, but I already tried a few options before even starting this thread.  I managed to find the relevant files, but they were so corrupted, I'm better off just acting like they were 100% unsalvageable. 

[Tonyonline]

I back up onto an external drive, all work, and two flash drives, WIP, which I hide.

[munboy]

OUCH!
I put all my WIP files in Dropbox so it backs up automatically. Once I'm finished with the project and it's been published, I move them all to a Google drive (as well as keep a copy on my computer) so I don't have to pay extra for more space on Dropbox.

[Al Macy (aka TromboneAl)]

Unlike me. 

I just lost everything, and I hadn't done a backup since August.  30,000 words down the toilet, now needing to be rewritten. 

So yeah, if you haven't backed up your WIP in a while, this is a friendly reminder to do so today.

Losing creative stuff is the worst.

The good news: You may find that it's much easier to write it the second time, and you may find you think it's better. Note that some writers recommend writing something, throwing it away, and starting again.

[RappaDizzy]

I back up everything on a portable hard drive like others have said. But I go on step further. I have two backups that I rotate and one is always kept in the car. I once worked at a place that burned to the ground and we lost all backups - note that also included the passwords as well. These days b/u to the cloud does you no good if you can’t remember your passwords. It’s true you can get a password reset sent to an email address but do you remember all the hints some places ask you to set up? what was your first gerbil’s name

[Guerin]

I do all of my wriing, and backup my writing to the cloud. Most of the major cloud services out there, MS OneDrive, Apple iCloud Drive, and Google My Drive, offer free acounts with more than enough storage for your entire library of writing. Google My Drive is 15GB, Apple is 5GB as is MS OneDrive. If you subscribe to MS Office 365 Home, $99 a year, you get 5TB of storage. MS Office Personal, $69 a year, gives you 1TB.

Unless you're allergic to the internet, or live somewhere you have no access, the cloud is the simplest way to backup your work. Like I said, I even do all my writing with my WIP files stored on the cloud.

Besides the cloud, or in addition to that, thumbdrives would be the next best option for most people. You can get USB thumbdrives with the capacity of a small harddrive, 128GB or more, for under $30. You don't need the super-fast and expensive thumbdrives. You aren't moving that much data that the speed will be an issue. They are much smaller than external hard drives as well, making them ideal for the travelers.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/15/17691856/microsoft-onedrive-folder-protection-feature
https://www.cloudwards.net/how-to-use-google-drive-to-backup-your-data/

[Mercedes Vox]

I backup all my important stuff (book files, covers, notes, WIPs, etc) in various ways, including twice-daily backups to Google Drive. I recently purchased a 2T thumb drive to backup all the documents and files on my aging, increasingly persnickety laptop, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to get sub-folders and files within those sub-folders to copy without doing each sub- (and sometimes sub-sub-sub) folder and its contents individually.

Does anyone know a trick? Because my Google-fu is failing me on this one. 

[Jo]

I am so very sorry for you.

I always send myself the WiP files by email in the evening, and back up everything once per week to an external drive. I also sync the files automatically once a day to a second computer on my personal network.

And along those lines, I am just now rewriting a WiP I've lost a while ago (before saving to several locations) during a move, when the entire moving box filled with DVDs, CDs and tapes got lost between A and B. Several finished WiPs were lost, and it was like a millstone of regret around my neck for ages. Now I am slowly recreating them. It's not easier to write them for me. 

[Mark Gardner]

I back up everything on a portable hard drive like others have said. But I go on step further. I have two backups that I rotate and one is always kept in the car. I once worked at a place that burned to the ground and we lost all backups - note that also included the passwords as well. These days b/u to the cloud does you no good if you can’t remember your passwords. It’s true you can get a password reset sent to an email address but do you remember all the hints some places ask you to set up? what was your first gerbil’s name

My day job is in IT, and I have to constantly drill it into clients that if your backup solution is in the same room as the computer or system you're backing up, a fire or a flood will wipe you out. Even if it's just once a week, keep a backup off site.

[guest14]

There's also another issue people really want to consider.

Memory sticks are volatile. I've had 32Gb memory sticks get spiked going through an airport check. These things DO FAIL!

Don't just have one, and don't copy one to another. Always create backups from the original source.

When new media comes available - upgrade to it and run it alongside old media. You can never have too many backups of IRREPLACEABLE DATA. If you use the cloud BACK YOUR CLOUD UP!

Here's a product that can sync your clouds. USE IT - OR LOSE IT!   https://www.multcloud.com/

[Mark Gardner]

is multcloud like a cloud aggregator?

There's also another issue people really want to consider.

Memory sticks are volatile. I've had 32Gb memory sticks get spiked going through an airport check. These things DO FAIL!

Don't just have one, and don't copy one to another. Always create backups from the original source.

When new media comes available - upgrade to it and run it alongside old media. You can never have too many backups of IRREPLACEABLE DATA. If you use the cloud BACK YOUR CLOUD UP!

Here's a product that can sync your clouds. USE IT - OR LOSE IT!   https://www.multcloud.com/

[Rick Partlow]

I email my manuscript to myself at the end of every chapter.  Also back up to two different flash drives.

[guest14]

is multcloud like a cloud aggregator?

Not really, it allows you to sync your clouds from say, OneDrive to Dropbox, then from Dropbox to Amazon. It's a good wa of using your cloud storage accounts to ensure you're always up to date.

e.g.
I have a Onedrive account as well as Owncloud running off the back of my website.

Onedrive is easy to work with, but I no longer want to pay a premium so it parses the files to Owncloud and I end up with data in two places, but identical. Some folders I keep separate so they can't be overwritten by new files. I have people access files on my Owncloud to add to them usually (narration files particularly). These get synced with OneDrive in reverse and end up on the Onedrive directory on my computer. I don't do a thing, but the information is available at my fingertips.

[Mark Gardner]

is multcloud like a cloud aggregator?

Not really, it allows you to sync your clouds from say, OneDrive to Dropbox, then from Dropbox to Amazon. It's a good wa of using your cloud storage accounts to ensure you're always up to date.

e.g.
I have a Onedrive account as well as Owncloud running off the back of my website.

Onedrive is easy to work with, but I no longer want to pay a premium so it parses the files to Owncloud and I end up with data in two places, but identical. Some folders I keep separate so they can't be overwritten by new files. I have people access files on my Owncloud to add to them usually (narration files particularly). These get synced with OneDrive in reverse and end up on the Onedrive directory on my computer. I don't do a thing, but the information is available at my fingertips.

Interesting, so can it utilize multiple small-sized free cloud accounts, and do some voodoo so you can use the space from all the cloud services? Or does it just keep dropbox synced with onedrive or google drive or whatever?

[bardsandsages]

I have multiple backups. A flash drive and my cloud drive.

[VanessaC]

I backup all my important stuff (book files, covers, notes, WIPs, etc) in various ways, including twice-daily backups to Google Drive. I recently purchased a 2T thumb drive to backup all the documents and files on my aging, increasingly persnickety laptop, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to get sub-folders and files within those sub-folders to copy without doing each sub- (and sometimes sub-sub-sub) folder and its contents individually.

Does anyone know a trick? Because my Google-fu is failing me on this one. 

If you copy the parent folder, all the child folders and their contents should come across - always has when I've tried this. If that isn't working, perhaps let us know what your system is - Windows or mac - and hopefully one of the tech geniuses on here will have some ideas.

I have had issues getting a back up drive to "talk" to my laptop, but I was trying to make it work without reading the instructions.

[Tom Wood]

Just after posting to this thread I decided to look into cloning my C drive. It's 7 years old, so it's in the end-of-life possible range. It's a 750 GB Seagate that isn't even half full. I found it for $50 on Amazon, plus a $6 esata-p to HD cord connector. Using Macrium I now have a complete clone of my system drive. It took about an hour at the esata-p transfer speed, whatever that is. I found a YouTube video that shows exactly how to replace it. I still do data backups, but I like that I have my software programs (Adobe, LightWave 3D, Office, Scrivener, etc) readily accessible too without any re-installs. (ETA: It's a Dell laptop computer.)

[Mark Gardner]

Just after posting to this thread I decided to look into cloning my C drive. It's 7 years old, so it's in the end-of-life possible range. It's a 750 GB Seagate that isn't even half full. I found it for $50 on Amazon, plus a $6 esata-p to HD cord connector. Using Macrium I now have a complete clone of my system drive. It took about an hour at the esata-p transfer speed, whatever that is. I found a YouTube video that shows exactly how to replace it. I still do data backups, but I like that I have my software programs (Adobe, LightWave 3D, Office, Scrivener, etc) readily accessible too without any re-installs.

That's one of the things I really like about apple computers. The ability to clone any mac-formatted drive and implement the cloned drive in (almost) any other mac computer is a huge boon for portability and backups. I have three Mac Pros, and while I only use the newest, my other mac pros can accommodate the drive and I can continue to run my system on any of them. (I even use my mac pro drive on my iMac and my macbook.) In my day job, I have machines that are spares to mission critical machines. They're regularly cloned from the mission critical machines, and otherwise sit under my tech bench. The premise is that if a machine fails, I can replace it with these spares, and keep going. It took a while for me to get management to understand the necessity of a robust backup system, and they really didn't get it until I received a phone call that one of the stations was off the air. I drove in, grabbed the spare, moved the hard drives into the spare, and had the station back on the air in about 45 minutes. Got back in my car and went to the movies.

[Al Macy (aka TromboneAl)]

These threads, after some commiseration, turn to bragging about each person's great backup solution. That's okay, and I can't resist, so ...

I used Keyboard Maestro to create a hotkey which will back up my Scrivener project to both a thumbdrive and the cloud. I press Ctl-B and it happens. In addition, the Mac's Time Machine backs up without intervention, plus I occasionally do some backups to other drives.

[Jeff Tanyard]

These threads, after some commiseration, turn to bragging about each person's great backup solution. That's okay, and I can't resist, so ...

I used Keyboard Maestro to create a hotkey which will back up my Scrivener project to both a thumbdrive and the cloud. I press Ctl-B and it happens. In addition, the Mac's Time Machine backs up without intervention, plus I occasionally do some backups to other drives.

Somehow I just knew that Al would have this down to a science.   

[TinkSaid]

Ouch, that burns.
Most of us have been there, done that.

Virtual hugs, and a slap on the back for picking yourself up so matter of factly & a thank you, for posting a reminder to the rest of us.

[Rob Martin]

I use dropbox and have a personal cloud storage system set up for my house. Saved me from suicide when I got the "Blue Screen of Death" the night before I had to submit some documents for a client.

[dianapersaud]

Flash Drive. $5 - $10

I usually stock up during back to school sales. Another good time is black Friday.

I try to back up at least once a week to an external TB drive and daily on a flash drive. That way, I'm not losing a whole lot. I'm a very slow writer and it would take me forever to retype lost work.

[NA Punk]

And save often. I had the power go out yesterday in the middle of my writing. Luckily, thanks to autosave I lost less than a page, but it was still annoying to have to write what I had already written again.

[Mark Gardner]

And save often. I had the power go out yesterday in the middle of my writing. Luckily, thanks to autosave I lost less than a page, but it was still annoying to have to write what I had already written again.

No battery backup? If you're in the states, be sure to pick one up on black friday or cyber monday.

[Al Macy (aka TromboneAl)]

I bought this a month ago for my iMac, and it earned its stripes two days ago when the power went out for thirty seconds:



https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00429N18S/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[NCB]

These threads, after some commiseration, turn to bragging about each person's great backup solution. That's okay, and I can't resist, so ...

I used Keyboard Maestro to create a hotkey which will back up my Scrivener project to both a thumbdrive and the cloud. I press Ctl-B and it happens. In addition, the Mac's Time Machine backs up without intervention, plus I occasionally do some backups to other drives.

Indeed, sorry to hear of the loss of work, I'd be spitting feathers, must be awful.

I use carbon paper so always have a copy 

[lyndabelle]

I email my manuscript to myself at the end of every chapter.  Also back up to two different flash drives.

I was looking to see if others backed up this way and wanted to suggest it. At the end of all my writing, I always email it to myself. This helped me when I had my hard drive die on my several years ago. It's a fast and cheap way to do it, and I just got into the habit.

I'm so sorry you lost all of that writing though. That is really rough to lose. I have lost small sections before when just doing a blog post or message board post. It's hard to think about writing it all again, but like someone suggested, maybe it will be better the second time around.

[LilyBLily]

I'm still bitter about the last scene of a novel that somehow vanished. Sure, I rewrote the scene, but... OTOH, it's my fault for taking 20 years to finish the darned thing and managing not to save the latest version at some point.   

I usually have an overkill quantity of ms. backups. It's the email backing up that I need much more, because the emails often constitute legal agreements between me and others I hire or who hire me. With my previous host, I could always find all my email automatically online as webmail, but with my new host, I have to go through multiple passwords (which very much confound me) and I'm supposed to set up an email (backup) account separately through the c panel. I always get to the choices and end up freezing because I'm so ignorant. [Just checked and apparently I finally did set up Horde (???) but see no place to tell the webmail to keep everything, like, forever. Argh.] 

Anyway, I'm not bragging. I limp along with various backup methods and sometimes they fail me. I suspect each of us has some corner on bad luck or incompetence. They just happen to be different corners for different people.

[Jeff Tanyard]

I'm still bitter about the last scene of a novel that somehow vanished. Sure, I rewrote the scene, but... OTOH, it's my fault for taking 20 years to finish the darned thing and managing not to save the latest version at some point.   

Man, that's tough.  Sorry to hear that.   

[PaulineMRoss]

Dammit, that's hard. A lot of words to lose.

I once lost my entire wip when I was trying to do some icon-shuffling on the desktop. I dragged the icon, dropped it and... poof. Gone. Nowhere to be found. Entire wip. BUT I was using Scrivener with auto-backup on After 5 minutes of blind panic, five minutes of Googling, five minutes of searching the hard drive for the backup files, and five minutes to restore, I was back in business. Didn't lose so much as a full stop. But I never used that laptop again lol. Never trusted it.

What I do now is... use Scrivener with auto-save on. At the end of each day, I copy to Dropbox {*} and a thumb drive, which I keep on my keyring. I have two thumb drives, in case one fails, and alternate using them. When a wip is finished, it gets copied to the main computer, where it falls under the automated backup process to external hard drive and the cloud.

{*} It always makes me shiver when people say they keep their wip in Dropbox. Dropbox is a wonderful invention, but it's a synchronisation app, not a backup app. If you accidentally delete your wip on your computer, Dropbox will helpfully delete it everywhere, and then you just have to hope you've got the kind of Dropbox that keeps old versions. Use it for backup, or be rigorous about keeping multiple backups elsewhere, but never, ever trust it with your only copy of a work.

[scotcmorgan]

Sorry for your word loss. That's rough. Thanks for the reminder. I just backed up my writing, my website files, and my website database—using two external drives, and my laptop.