About 5 years ago the basement of our house flooded and my computer (which I still keep on the ground) was destroyed. The insurance company replaced the computer, but they can't do anything about the files on it. Luckily the only thing I lost was school work and not precious creative work. Since than, I keep my important files on a $10 thumb drive that I keep upstairs in a safe spot. I store some things online, but the entire process can be cumbersome. I was wondering what precautions you take?
I have a network-attached terabyte RAID-2 storage drive dedicated to weekly backups of my computers. I also periodically write my Documents folder of my daily-use laptop to DVDs.
Multiple copies, multiple locations. Several copies on flash drives, a couple on SaaS platforms (such as google docs) and the rest scattered on my PC and laptop HDD's. Unfortunatly I don't have the budget for Cogito's setup haha
I also have my work on a thumb drive, and I have my entire computer backed up onto an external hard drive. Additionally, I usually email myself my work (when it's small enough), so that I can access it as long as I have internet.
As you've said $ I'm gathering you're from America (unless it's used somewhere else ); I don't know much about America at all, as I'm English and live in England, but, unless you didn't need it anymore, I've have said that you school work should have been more important really. Anyways, if you can, I'd say move your computer to higher ground or maybe, if you have the money, invest in a laptop (as it sounds like you have a desktop computer) to save it from being damaged like that again. Either way, a pendrive and harddrive (what every you want to call them) would be the best ways to back up your work; online storage is good too I guess, though I've never used it, but I'd recommed also having that work saved on something else, incase you lose your internet connection and really need that work. I back up my UNI work on a pendrive, most I have a back up on two, but with my personal stuff, I seem to forget - need to work on that... I don't think that there are any other precautions that you can take to save your work, unless you want to print it out, though that wouldn't be a good idea - you'd have a lot of paper piles, documents to file and if they're in-progress then that would be a waste of paper!
I have several computers, and my stuff tends to get on all of them. Also, I have flash drives, and my work goes on them. My main computer (the one I'm writing this post on) also has an external hard drive connected to it, and my work winds up there, too. And of course, I print out paper copies of everything. It's hard for me to edit a story if I don't have a paper copy in my hands, allowing me to mark it all up in pen. So I generally wind up with three or four printed paper copies of everything in various stages of completion. And I don't throw these away.
I backup my work to an external hard drive and to a data storage website. Ideally I want a RAID setup and to buy a server somewhere in Europe where I can backup things over the Internet. The idea for having my backups so far away from where I live is that if a massive disaster occurs, the chances of that disaster destroying an entirely different continent is low.
That's smart thinking! If your not backing up your work you should start right now. You might learn the hard way...
I put all my stuff on a flash drive and keep it safe in my room. One time a couple years ago when I first got into writing, I almost completed a full novel on my computer and my mother got a new computer w/out me knowing. I was enraged.. ever since then I had a trusty little drive that holds all my work. Or sometimes I print out my work and bury it in my backyard next to all the dead snitches.
Flash drives are great, but I have lost them in the past. I still use one, and generally email myself completed chapters when I'm happy with them - just to be safe. With that said, though, when I have long, unproductive spells I might have a 3/4 completed chapter that won't be backed up for quite some time simply because I'm lazy and haven't completed the chapter. No one to blame but myself when I lose something, I guess.
I back up important stuff by putting them on Google docs and on a flash drive. The flash drives are then store in my gun safe to keep them safe, and in a fire proff container.
I, too, consider flash drives risky as backups drives. They are easy to lose, and also are prone to physical damage and prematuire failure. Most are fairly cheaply made, and are small enough to end up underfoot, unnoticed until you hear that disturbing "crunch."
Flash drive and back up software. For those of you that use google docs, how does it work and are you happy with it?
I back up on a thumb drive regularly, and I keep one outside the home (in case of fire or whatever). I also email updates to the current project I'm working on to an email account, thus, I have the most recent version backed up beyond thumb drives and hard drives--and in essence, I have everything backed up I worked on in the email archives. Just label the subject line appropriately.
I do it via email, thumbdrive, and storage in another computer. That way, if something happens to this computer (and knowing my luck, it WILL happen), it's not a complete loss.
Lost your computer to a flood? Ouch. A number of years ago we had a hot water tank with a bad valve that turned our living room into a swimming pool and fried my favorite computer. Miraculously, the computer sort of worked for a couple of days afterward. Thumbdrives? I loose them. Email? The cloud? We actually don't have the internet at home, so it wouldn't be of much use. We used to make backups on CD's before our dial-up service went out of business and the chances of our computer coming down with a virus were higher. I, ah, usually use an external hard drive. How ironic to find this thread today. This afternoon I went to back my laptop up onto my external hard drive and ... I think my external hard drive crashed. Bummer. I don't know why it went kaput. I can see that there are files stored on it, but that's it. It wasn't cheap, either. Before today I would have recommended one, but I am just not computer savvy enough to know if this was just a fluke or what. It worked quite well for over a year, and I need one since I live on my laptop, so I suppose it's time to rob the piggy bank and go get a new one. (I'll use the rationalization of the nontechnical: I think I'll get a different brand...) Good thing I saved that 10% off coupon from Best Buy. I can see I have come up with a good use for it.
