November is coming.
Hard drives will get eaten.
Flash drives will fail or go through the wash.
Operating Systems will turn into mush.
You'll hit ctrl-a, a random letter, and then ctrl-s.
You'll wish you had made a backup.
Email stuff to yourself. Save it on a flash drive, external hard drive, your mom/dad/sister/brother/roommate/random stranger's computer. Use Dropbox or Mozy. Make redundant copies. Never let the copy on your computer be the only one.
You'll thank yourself later.
----------
9,324 / 50,000
Okt 1, 2009 - 22 48
And do SEVERAL of these. Remember Murphy's law: Everything that can go wrong, will. Nothing spells a bad day like your external hard drive failing and Windows continually crashing. This can happen and unfortunately this did happen to me once. Luckily I was able to get my data from my external hard drive, it just needed a new case (the USB socket was broken). But my OS had to be reinstalled.
40,148 / 50,000
Okt 2, 2009 - 01 27
I always do a backup onto a USB drive and send one to my gmail. Takes seconds and could save heartache later.
And an extra tip - as well as saving your document in whatever fancy format with lovely formatting etc, take a moment at the end of your writing session to do a Save As and save a copy as plain text. Fancy word processing files can become corrupted and impossible to recover. A text file is less likely to corrupt and easier to recover. You'd have no formatting, but you'd have your words if the worst comes to the worst.
91,589 / 50,000
Okt 2, 2009 - 01 37
In addition to the suggestions above, I will be printing out each day. It's good to have a hard copy and see the pile of pages growing fatter as the month goes on too :)
----------I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Banish the Guilt Monkeys
3,370 / 50,000
Okt 2, 2009 - 05 47
+1 to all of this. Daily backups are a MUST! Gmail, Skydrive, DropBox, whatever you use, use it each and every day. Zip up everything and stick it online somewhere. You never know when your motherboard will die or your cat will kick over your diet coke.
17,032 / 50,000
Okt 2, 2009 - 05 52
PC Hard disk, external hard disk, and just to be safe, toss a copy towards a laptop if you have one. Last year, I had three copies of the novel in progress at any time - PC, flashdrive, and laptop... just remember to keep them all current. This was a lifesaver when the flashdrive decided to die right after I'd transferred the current copy over to my PC from the laptop.
----------~ Mish
"I don't merely write a story. I slit the wrists of my soul, bleeding it out in a readable form and hope that someone else can make sense of it."
~2008 - Dragonrise 50,562
~2009 - Witchery
621 / 50,000
Okt 2, 2009 - 10 11
I'd add to this list of potential backups to be googledocs. It has the added advantage of being accessible from my any computer and you can work on your novel from it as well.
43,535 / 50,000
Okt 2, 2009 - 10 31
Adobe Buzzword is good for this! And sneak-NaNoing also.
Make sure you do something in the backup department. You can print your business out if you have to, but whatever you do DO NO TRUST YOUR COMPUTER. They are devilish creatures.
I remember a somewhat recent entry at fmylife.com too: My brother deleted the novel I've been working on for two years. His reason? He still thinks Mom likes me best. FML. (Or, something fairly close to that.)
-----------K.
62,052 / 50,000
Okt 2, 2009 - 13 33
Listen! My computer died on me in February last year and if I had not of saved my novel to my flash, it would have been completely lost. ALWAYS SAVE! I guarentee you will regret not saving it in many different places one day. If you have multiple flashdrives, save on them all. Email it to yourself. You will thank yourself one day.
----------37,021 / 50,000
Okt 3, 2009 - 10 13
Google Documents is not only an excellent way to backup, it's also a great way to write away from your computer, especially if you own a desktop.
On the note of technofail horrorstories: in 2007, my laptop died on October 31. It was horrible. Good thing I was able to get a new one relatively quickly :D
----------2009: The Circumstances of Kenneth Valerie
2008: The Rabbit Effect
2007: Megrez
2006: The Indecent Career of Anchises Tanille
2005: Tomato Soup
111,698 / 50,000
Okt 4, 2009 - 18 15
I've heard far too many stories of lost novels (including one from a close friend), so please, please take this advice.
(I do like this idea of printing it out as you go, though. That might motivate me to edit it when November's over.)
-------------
Witty signature feature broken. Please try again later.
http://www.sushimustwrite.com
50,086 / 50,000
Okt 7, 2009 - 11 17
If you have an external hard drive or flash drive, but get sick of constantly re-transferring all your old files to back them up, I recommend SyncToy, which you can set so that it only transfers new and modified files. I've just started using it, and it's a godsend.
Also, if you're a college student like me, your college or university may offer free online storage space for students. Worth looking into, especially if you write in many different locations/on different computers.
----------See Girl Write: the life of a college writer, trying not to flunk out.
Sponsor me!
33,016 / 50,000
Okt 9, 2009 - 12 32
You'll hit ctrl-a, a random letter, and then ctrl-s.
Both of those have happened to me, and the second one pretty much destroyed a novel that I had been working on for about eight months at the time. Oh! I also used to not save until I'd finished my writing for the day. When I got my first laptop, which liked to freeze and die at random times, I learned REAL fast that the save button was my best friend. (Unfortunately, it took a couple of lost papers for that to happen...)
Save often and save in several places.
----------NaNo 2006 - The Sorcerer's Blade (win)
NaNo 2008 - Sorceress Knight (win)
NaNo 2009 - Secrets of the Black Moon (working title)
49,487 / 50,000
Okt 9, 2009 - 18 07
Don't just email to one account, email to SEVERAL. You never know if one of their servers could go down, preventing you from getting to your email (or you accidentally delete it, or you forget a password, or any number of random things!).
And Google Docs is another good place to save!
----------03: Lost / 04: Won / 05: Won / 06: Lost / 07: Lost / 08: Lost / 09: Here's to breaking a losing streak!
50,314 / 50,000
Okt 12, 2009 - 21 46
I'd add Zoho Writer (http://writer.zoho.com) to it as well! They can handle files bigger than 512KB, which is about 51k words with minimal formatting (I'm talking about some italics, bolding and underlining). GDocs can't handle that much. I wrote about 54k words (added 2k) to my novel after I emailed it to myself. XD
And yes, backup backup backup!
4,497 / 50,000
Okt 13, 2009 - 17 46
Last year, my laptop, which had been running faithfully for two and a half years, died with no prompting.
Luckily, I had a current copy of my novel on Google Docs, in my Gmail, and on a flashdrive. This year, I'll email a copy of my novel daily to my Gmail AND my school email, have a copy on Google Docs, a copy on my school harddrive, and a copy on my phone. I'm actually considering buying a cheap USB drive to add on to these.
I had to finish my novel on OpenOffice *pukes*, but at least I didn't have to re-write it.
1,299 / 50,000
Okt 15, 2009 - 00 41
Yesterday, I dropped my laptop whilst creating a front cover for this NaNo. It still ran so I thought nothing of it. Selected a new brush. It crashed.
Won't turn on. The plot, the wallpaper, the cover - all lost. My English coursework - gone. My Geography coursework - lost. BTEC ICT work - all gone. Pictures from my niece's 3rd birthday - disappeared. HMS Bristol pictures - wiped. Unless my friend can salvage my hard drive, I'm screwed.
So guys, as I post this from my sister's old slow, MS Word-less, GIMP/PS-free laptop, I beg of you: please back up your files!
----------Revelations (2009) - 0 / 50000
32,422 / 50,000
Okt 15, 2009 - 21 28
So guys, as I post this from my sister's old slow, MS Word-less, GIMP/PS-free laptop, I beg of you: please back up your files!
Should you need to recover files from a crashed, failing, noisy, virus-trashed, wiped, or otherwise bad hard drive, consider using Spinrite. It may save your sanity, as many tech people will attest, although it does cost $90. And a big thumbs up for backing up, I'm using Mozy right now, and I expect to get all redundant come Nov 1st (or sooner).
----------The Steampunk FAQ and Resources thread.
26,520 / 50,000
Okt 15, 2009 - 22 04
Google docs has already been mentioned. Another thing which people may want to look at is a subversion server, like
http://www.beanstalkapp.com
There's a few companies offering free subversion hosting, and if you're on a mac, Versions.app makes it so easy to sync up with source control servers like beanstalk.
What's source control? It's like an online backup server that tracks the changes you make to your documents. At any time you can go back to a prior version. You can even branch your files and try a couple different plot lines :)
----------Writing on a 1946 Royal Quiet Deluxe
41,017 / 50,000
Okt 16, 2009 - 05 42
I'm another vote for google docs. Not only do you get a backup, but you get version control as well! I don't write in google docs, but before I leave my computer I copy, paste, and save in google docs so at worst I'd lose a few hours of work. Plus google docs is handy if you're out somewhere and need to print/edit your work.
----------11,730 / 50,000
Okt 17, 2009 - 16 46
However you do it, do it often and as my ways as you can. Remember the sidekick debacle T-Mobile just had and don't let someone else's Oops! be your epitaph!
----------Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed. - G.K. Chesterton
5,769 / 50,000
Okt 17, 2009 - 18 27
I vote for hard copies. Backups are great (do them too), but hard copies don't generally get corrupted for no reason at all. For best security, print a copy out every week (or day if your paranoid) and writing a letter to the tune of "Don't open this if I don't call you about it, and mail it back to me if I ask." to your families members and best friends, send 5 of them a copy each of the whole thing. I know it's a waste of paper, but that's as pretty secure.
29,224 / 50,000
Okt 18, 2009 - 06 38
Haha! My laptop just died on Wednesday. It's in for repair now. And I am praising my External Hard Drive to the world now because (once I get my computer back) it will save my life. It kept updates until the night my lappy died, so I can get everything right back. I'm so much less stressed out knowing that all my files are still there, even though I can't access them. I just really hope I get my laptop back before November! O.o
----------41,423 / 50,000
Okt 19, 2009 - 18 13
Remember one thing about backing up your stuff: If you think what you're doing is overkill, it likely is NOT. Just do it, you'll thank yourself in the future if you take the effort to treat your writing with the respect it deserves and make sure it is backed up soundly.
Here's my extremely nerdy strategy (which employs a LOT of the suggestions above):
I write, hitting Command-S quite often. When I'm done for the day, I check my changes into a git repository and use "git push" to push it to both my Dropbox folder and out to a private Github repository. Then I go over to my other computer and pull down my latest changes to an external hard drive. This way I have the benefit of having all versions of my documents on two local computers, and two "off site" locations. If I lose one I'm crippled in no way at all.
Yes, I do work in IT. How'd you guess? ;)
http://www.getdropbox.com - Dropbox
----------http://git-scm.com - The git revision control system
http://www.github.com - Remote social git hosting (private repos are not free, sorry)
http://gitready.com - Git tutorials
Tim Gourley - http://www.geekwriters.net
"Where there's a will, there's a beneficiary."
- The Seventh Doctor (Doctor Who: Time and the Rani)
92,350 / 50,000
Okt 21, 2009 - 10 17
I'll be emailing it to multiple email accounts, saving a backup copy on Google docs, and saving it to my iDisk on me.com I've had entirely too many lost documents to take any chances.
----------NaNo 2009 - Simple Human - You are but a simple human whose mind cannot fathom the greatness that is The Collective.
1,953 / 50,000
Okt 21, 2009 - 11 57
Wow thanks for this thread because I didn't think of all this! I'll be saving onto my laptop, external hd, flash drive and email address.
50,540 / 50,000
Okt 21, 2009 - 23 49
If you're writing on paper, you should scan and make copies =3=
----------I'm missing like a page and a half of my novel from '07.
~::||Overconfidence||::~
Before you attempt to beat the odds, be sure you could survive the odds beating you.
Yuu_tan.InsaneJournal.com
7,561 / 50,000
Okt 24, 2009 - 16 39
Do it, people. Please.
I lost 2,000 photos one night due to a wrong click of the mouse.
Now I have two LaCie external hard drives, and a 500gb travel hard drive. One's plugged into my computer right now.
You do not ever want to deal with such agonizing horror! :P
----------20,333 / 50,000
Okt 24, 2009 - 18 22
Is it storming outside. Backup your documents.
----------Is it clear outside,backup your documents.
Is the power company having a bad day, please say you've backed up your documents.
GaelicQueen
40,241 / 50,000
Okt 28, 2009 - 20 18
It was a good thing I saved my novel every day last year on GoogleDocs because right when I reached 50k words, I selected the whole thing to put it into the word count verifier and accidentally pressed a random key and saved. I lost the last 1600 words but that was better than losing the whole thing. :)
52,226 / 50,000
Nov 3, 2009 - 20 44
Dropbox is your friend. An automated file synchronization service to the web and any other computers you may have. I'll post this in the tech forum, too. Here's an invite. https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTI2NjY4MDU5 I live by this thing having my files synchronized effortlessly across my laptop, netbook, the web, and even my usb drive (a different, portable version, but you'll have to download it separately). Please, check it out. You'll be glad you did.
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