Monday, February 17, 2014

Backup Plans

Earlier today I finished my twelfth draft (103,718 words) of TBW.

And I would just like to remind you to make sure you have some kind of plan in place to retrieve backup files on your computer. The Mac I'm working from is less than a year old, and I didn't realize that I needed to activate Time Machine if I wanted to be able to access older files. Lesson learned. But I lost my eleventh draft.

There are worse horror stories out there. I still had the tenth draft to work from, and my youngest arranged her Totoro figurines on my desk to cheer me up.



But make sure you have a safety net in place. If you don't mind sharing, I'd love to hear what you use. 

19 comments:

  1. I use Dropbox if I'm writing on my computer--so I stick all my writing in my Dropbox folder and it backs it up automatically. I also write on Google drive a lot, which tracks revisions and such.

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    1. See, I've never heard of Dropbox. Thanks! I'll have to check it out.

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  2. I use Time Machine primarily. Every time I hear of someone losing work, though, I copy and paste the entire text into an email to myself. If I had to retrieve it from there, it would be messy, but at least I wouldn't lose it entirely.

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    1. I did that three or four times with this last draft.

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  3. So sorry, Myrna. I need to start using dropbox too.

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    1. Yeah, it'd been over ten years since I'd lost something, so complacency set in.

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  4. Oh...that's hard. I use Google drive. It backs up every change you make, automatically. And is accessible from any computer or mobile device.

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    1. I think that's what Time Machine does, but maybe I should check it out to make sure. Thanks, Barbara!

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    2. Time Machine backs up every hour. It keeps each hourly backup for 24 hours—meaning it saves not only the most recent version, but a snapshot of its state each hour. For older backups, it saves one per day for the last month, and then one per week until your hard drive it full. Basically, it keeps not only the most recent state of your documents, but snapshots in time going back as far as you have external disk space to hold—including documents you've since deleted. It's saved me quite a few times.

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  5. Oo, it's hard to lose anything. We lost an entire year's worth of pictures, which sadly included our last trip to Hawaii before Nate's parents moved back to the mainland and concert pictures where I got to meet some of the band afterward. :(
    As for what we use, we have two hard drives in the computer, one external hard drive and we also use an online backup system.

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    1. Oh, that's terrible! Sean M. came over to see if he could find an earlier version of the draft for me, and one of the things he suggested was using an external hard drive

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  6. I'm sorry about this. I backup my files once a week on a flash drive.

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    1. I used to do that, but then my kids would misplace my hard drive. They're older now, though.

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  7. Twelfth draft! That's impressive! It must be close to ready, now.

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  8. Oh, gosh, that's so awful. I use more than one flash drive and save every day. I was told, and don't know how true it is, that flash drives have a limited number of "saves" and "opens" when they suddenly die, that's why more than one. However, I do have one flash drive I have used for the last five years and it seems to be doing fine. We'll see.

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  9. It disappointing that you lost your 11th draft. Now I realize that there are really some lessons in our life that we have to experience firsthand before learning it. And regarding to your question, there are a lot of back-up systems in the market. But I prefer using an online back-up system. It’s much easier to access, and has a high security as well. Though it would be best to employ both a physical and a digital storage for your most important files, so you have redundant copies in case one of them fails. How about you, what do you use?

    Ruby Badcoe @ Williams Data Management

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  10. I'll be looking forward to the final version of what you are writing. Don't fret. At least you've nailed enough of the stuff to push yourself towards a twelfth draft. Besides, you're bound to pick up what you've 'lost' in due time, as you go run the whole thing in your head again, whether in writing or in thought. But yeah, you should always take all the steps and set up all the means, in which you'll be able to secure all the data as well as retrieve them, if you must.

    Lillian Walker @ TaylorWorks

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