Have You Backed Up Your Files Lately?

Last week, Renee blogged about losing her thumb drive (some call it "thumb drive," but I've always called it a jump drive). It can also be called a flash drive, to further complicate and confuse everyone!

Anyway, as I told her in comments, I've never lost a jump drive (yet), but I did break one once. It shattered into three or four pieces. I managed to get it into my computer and back up the data on it, but it was a close enough call to remind me that I hadn't been backing up that drive as often as I should.

We're all busy. We speed through our days without taking a breath. When we finally do get time to sit down and create, we're usually so glad to get a second at the keyboard, the last thing we think about is file maintenance. But anyone who has ever lost precious hours, days...even MONTHS of work will tell you that a few seconds of backup can save you countless hours of work down the line if you have to recreate your manuscript. And what if you SELL that book and a publisher wants it now? You had it two weeks ago but your computer crashed or your jump drive failed...and now it's gone.

Having worked in information systems for a full decade now, I can tell you with full confidence, hard drives fail. Jump drives fail, too. And we won't even talk about how unreliable floppy drives and CD-Rs are. If you don't have every single word you've ever written backed up in at least two places, you can rest assured you'll probably lose it. I'd recommend more than two places, just to be safe.

Microsoft's Office Live will hold all your files and make them accessible from any computer. I stopped using it once they went to Skydrive, though, because it seemed to only work with Office 2010 at that point? Hopefully they've fixed that problem by now. Google Documents makes a handy little file-holder as well, although I've not yet tried it. Then there's the old-fashioned solution of e-mailing your manuscript to yourself...

If you have wireless and more than one computer in your life, copy your files to your "Public" folder in Windows 7. Microsoft explains how to do this here. (Click on "Sharing Files.")

If you have an iPhone, Dropbox is a great app. You can set your PC to sync with your phone and grab any new automatically. It turns your cell phone into a Bluetooth version of a jump drive. Best of all, it's FREE!

CDs and jump drives are still great ways to back things up, as long as you have a backup in case something fails. Just be aware that it IS possible for two things to fail at once. But you'll probably find that you're more likely to forget to back up every now and then...and THAT is when your primary save source fails. That's when it helps to have a backup system that works. Every Friday evening, say, as you finish up your work week. Or every Monday morning, before beginning a new week. Make it a routine and you're less likely to lose something.