Fire-safe Manuscript Protection
A writer at TheNextBigWriter.com lost his most recent chapters due to a power surge. The CD it was stored on was in the drive and got zapped as well, so he lost his backup too. He’s in no mood to rewrite all that.
I generally store my work on several photo cards, but you never know what can happen. But in all honesty, because I had my work uploaded to TheNextBigWriter, I haven’t been so diligent in backing up my most recent works. I considered that my backup. Bad, bad me. Someone mentioned emailing your work to yourself. Brilliant! I thought that was a fabulous idea and promptly did it. It took me five to ten minutes and didn’t cost a dime. I sent myself my three novels. I still have to organize my sequel (I have some separated). Then, I’ll email myself that as well.
~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.
~ by Courtney Vail on June 23, 2009.
Posted in Advice
Tags: backing up work, CD, email, novel, power surge, the next big writer, TheNextBigWriter, w riter, WIP, work, writing
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Now that is fascinating. Personally, I burn my work onto a cd, a flash drive, and a nifty little contraption called my passport. All of these things cost a considerable amount of money, and yet you have discovered a rather simple solution. I never once considered emailing my novels to myself. That’s amusing!
Thanks for reading and commenting. I never considered it either, but I thought it was a good method.
It’s devastating to lose data because of a power surge. It happened to me once during a storm. Now I have a separate drive for writing, plus a portable hard drive to back everything up. I usually make hard copies of my work too, but these are even more vulnerable to destruction than hard drives. My hubby and I also have a fireproof safe to keep our most valuable documents in. Overkill? Maybe, but I know how heartbreaking it is to lose work.
I know. I felt weak for the guy. I did Nano last year, and they want you to upload your work so they can tally it. Most people, like myself, jumble it beforehand. Well, I forgot to save the last three chapters I wrote before a jumble. Last week I went back in to see if I could crack the gibberish, and it wasn’t as bad as I thought. But at the time, I had no desire to rewrite it.
I’ve lost a lot of work which I kept on a USB flash drive. It was heartbreaking, demoralizing and very hard to overcome. (I still haven’t.) This is a good, viable, cost-efficient solution if your email provider allows the space and doesn’t auto-delete old messages after a certain amount of time.
Thanks, Courtney! Another great tip!
I have Yahoo, so I have to delete mail to get it to disappear, even if it’s marked as read.
Wait. I’m not following the logic and technology here. Once you download your e-mailed novels, etc., aren’t they vulnerable to computer barbecues again?
For permanent storage, there’s always online storage recommended by Kim Komando. Costs like $50 a year. I guess you could always set up a blog or site with closed access and store everything there, couldn’t you?
I wouldn’t download it. I’d keep it in my mail box. With Yahoo, I can do that. And I have several email addresses so I can double or triple up, in case one of my accounts somehow malfunctions. Can’t beat free online storage.
I email it to myself (although I haven’t done that in awhile…eep) as well as backing it up on a flash drive and saving it on my personal computer. I sure hope that’s good!
Sounds good to me. I do that as well. I used to use a flash drive, now I use a few photocards. It’s backed up storage either way.
I back my files up daily (or pretty close) on an external hard drive – which I keep unplugged except with copying files, to avoid any chance of viral infection. And I also email myself all my work. The latter is handy not just for backing up, but also because it makes your work so portable. All you have to do is log into your email account, and there are all your manuscripts!
Those are great habits. I need to be more diligent.
Ugh! I remember back in the floppy disk days… I lost so many articles! Those things weren’t exactly built to last! LoL
I know. They had those cardboard and film floppies first. Then the A-drive floppies with that metal guard that always snagged and bent up. Crap. I love technological advancements. Mostly.
I know right! I remember the dark ages of the typewriter. Granted, I’m only 29, BUT at the time it was all I could afford. It was garbage, so I went to journals. From there, the laptop. The only trouble is transferring the years of material onto the word processor!
Sorry, I tend to ramble at times.
The trouble with getting data from tnbw is trawling through chapter by chapter and saving the stuff down. I know all about this having lost stuff several times. I’m losing faith in thumb drives, I’ve had several of them go bad on me. Email does work or one of those free online servers.
I know. I have done that though. I should make changes in a master, but I usually make them on site and then add them to my master later. Backwards. But when I receive a correction up there, I like to fix it right away. I don’t always have time to paste chunks of type or whatever in two places.