I’m currently bugged by unpleasant events in which my laptop locks up and crashes and restarts. Thanks to the wonders of document recovery and my mania for saving and backing up, this is annoying and inconvenient but hasn’t been fatal.
Computer failure for writers is kind of like motorcycle accidents for regular riders. Sooner or later you’re going down, so the better prepared you are, the better your chances of minimal damage.
The first line of defense is to save often. If you can’t remember to hit “save” on a regular basis while you’re in the heat of a scene, Word will automatically save for you. To check your settings or change the frequency, go to Tools/Options/Save and under Save Auto Recover info, select the minutes you want as your interval between saves. If it’s saving every 5-15 minutes, that limits how much work you stand to lose.
An external backup drive gives you another layer of protection against data loss or the sudden death of your writing machine. You can back up your files to the external drive daily, weekly, or after each writing session depending on your level of productivity and paranoia.
If you have a Mac, you have a built-in tool called Time Machine that’s made to work with an external hard drive. For Windows users, this is less automated but still pretty easy to set up. Hard drives are cheap insurance, especially when you consider how much days or weeks of lost work can cost.
Offsite storage is a good idea even if you already keep a backup file on another drive. In the event of catastrophe (fire, flood, home robbery, small children or pets) your data is secure in another location. Dropbox is free and a lot easier to keep up to date than manually driving a backup CD to another offsite storage location, and you don’t have to remember to keep doing it once it’s set up. It’s automatic.
Dropbox is a boon for writers. Any file you keep in your Dropbox folder automatically synchronizes with the version on the server, so that in case of sudden hard drive death, your file is saved in a separate location and accessible from another machine. You can get an account that takes minutes to set up, and gives you a lot of peace of mind.
Save, back up data, keep files offsite, and automate all of it so you don’t have to ask yourself if you remembered to do it or not. Then when your computer dies at the worst possible time, it won’t take your book or your sanity with it.
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My husband talked me into using Dropbox for my writing and I do love it. I use multiple laptops (at work, at work, while traveling) and having the ability to access dropbox is sweet. Plus I can even have it on my Ipod Touch and Ipad as there are apps available. He is a firm believer in save and multiple backups so I follow his lead. Thanks for reminding me though! I loved the headline you used.
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I initially started using dropbox because I had trouble synching files between different operating systems, but for ease of use and peace of mind I’ve never seen anything better.
Nice to know it works in the iPod and iPad, too!