Comments on: Back It Up!

By: Shannon

Shannon — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:07:37 +0000

Joel – Thanks. I checked properties, but I am finding nothing. Couldn't even find something that says "previous version." This #*%^$*# computer is 3 months old – I on Vista which I hate more than a trip to the OB (sorry, a little freaking irritated right now). Superhusband is going to come home and save the day – I hope, I hope, I hope…. Thanks for suggestions.YDM!

By: Joel

Joel — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:09:45 +0000

@Shannon, depending on what your computer is running, you may have a more recent copy than you think. If your computer is running Vista or Windows 7, by default it will make shadow copies of your file. Just right click on the file and click properties. If you have a tab that says "Previous Version" you may be in luck. It will let you revert back to a previous version of the file.

Shadow copies do no good against hardware failure, but they do wonders for corrupt files or user errors.

By: Shannon

Shannon — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:13:28 +0000

Funny (not laughing). The evil back up gods struck today. Someone please tell me how you can loose almost 300 pages of written work but still have the file. Yep! (need to really pop the "p") When I click on the file a single empty page apprears. One screaming phone call to my hubby and what does he say???? Hm? HM? "That's why you should back up on a flash drive everyday, Honey." [Insert long string of superlatives] My last flash drive backup was 5 days ago – so I lost a few things. Ugh. Could have been worse.

By: Kate

Kate — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:02:56 +0000

You'll all be pleased to know, I hope, that my re-installation of Win 7 went well. IN the course of things, I reinstalled DropBox, installed SyncBack for automatically scheduled backups of certain files to my external hard drive, and am working on reinstalling BackBlaze (as soon as I can figure out what password I set for it). Yes, I've got a lot of redundancies, but I've got a LOT of stuff!

By: Johnnie

Johnnie — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 11:46:40 +0000

I email my manuscript chapters to another email account.

By: Abby Stevens

Abby Stevens — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:56:21 +0000

After nearly having a heart attack when I thought I lost a jump drive with three chapters of my book on it, a friend convinced me to use Dropbox – I LOVE it. So convenient, makes it easy to access my work from other computers, and secure.

By: Kathleen

Kathleen — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 07:03:09 +0000

I use a little free program called SyncBack for backing my stuff up to a second hard drive. It is SO easy, for you set up which folders you want it to backup, and it automatically runs through them and makes sure that you got EVERYTHING. No more worries!

I highly recommend it.

By: B.E. Sanderson

B.E. Sanderson — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 06:50:38 +0000

I'm still in the stoneage. I back each book up to its own floppy as I make changes. When I finish a draft, I email it to my gmail account. About once a month, I burn everything to a CD – including my pictures. During 'The Great Computer Crash of 2006', my harddrive fried and I lost a ton of pictures that I hadn't bothered to transfer to CD. Some of those I recovered because I'd sent them to friends and family, but most are on a defunct piece of equipment in hopes technology will someday save them.

By: Tiffany Schmidt

Tiffany Schmidt — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 04:31:58 +0000

I don't even want to think about this — again. I DID have a computer die overnight. I went to bed and it was fine and woke up to a box of chips and wires that wouldn't turn on. And all the king's horses and all the king's men and all the tech guys at four different companies couldn't fix it.

I now have a Mac and MobileMe syncs my files and backs them up automatically. I also burn my documents folder onto a CD once a month and do weekly e-mail backups.

I'm so glad to see I'm not the only paranoid one!

By: Gill Avila

Gill Avila — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 04:18:36 +0000

I'm old-fashioned; I print out a triple-spaced (for editing) hard copy. I'm very tactile–I love whiteout and pencils, not to mention that an original manuscript with the author's own corrections might someday be a collectible (dream!)