I’m paranoid about losing anything I’ve written. I would rather step on a rusty nail than rewrite a scene I’ve already slogged through.
Now that I have OS X Mountain Lion on my Mac I’ve switched to the Pages app, which saves documents to the cloud (bonus: I can work across my devices without e-mailing them around).
I also have a Time Machine to back up all my files, and when I make significant progress I’ll e-mail the document to myself so it’s in Gmail’s cloud too (just in case something happens with Apple’s cloud and my apartment is struck by a meteor).
Paranoid? I say careful!
What about you? What’s your method for making sure you don’t lose anything?
Art: Woken-Studie by John Constable
Chudney Thomas says
Dropbox, gmail, USB, external hard drive. Guess I'm paranoid too. π
Barbara S. Andrews says
Drop box is free for up to 2 gigs.
Emily says
Google Drive + Dropbox.
Jeff Seymour says
Dropbox, which puts my writing in the cloud and syncs it across three computers, leading me to believe that it would require a significant catastrophe indeed in order for it to all be lost at once.
And just in case of that, I periodically back it up on a removable hard drive, too. π
M.R. Merrick says
I'm extremely paranoid about losing my work. Especially after I've made major progress.
I keep it on my computer, occasionally a back up on my external hard drive, and often times I save it to multiple e-mail accounts, just in case.
Richard Gibson says
Physical CD-ROM, gmail to self, dropbox, flash drive, and (near final) paper printout. Yes, paranoid, at least at some point in the process when I feel that it's really "something".
Daniel Zazitski says
I use an external USB drive to sync any changes made to my writing files, plus my books are stored on my Skydrive account.
eldonhughes says
The 3-2-1 rule.
Have THREE copies of important stuff, like works in progress/on submission. Have them in TWO different formats, like on the computer and on a jump drive, burned to a disc, or cloud storage. Have at least ONE copy geographically separate from where the others are. So, copy one is on the laptop. Copy two is on a jump drive. Copy three is in Dropbox, or some other cloud-synced location.
D.G. Hudson says
I do save my work, but prefer methods I control rather than the e-clouds. (I'm similar to Richard and Daniel.)
Paranoia perhaps, but realistic as well. It's good to be prepared.
Elise Logan says
Techie husband warns the following re: Mountain Lion/Time Machine (he ran into this problem at work): "If the user's Mac was running Snow Leopard originally, and was upgraded to Lion, Filevault won't upgrade to version 2 by itself./ It'll be stuck on 1./If the user allows the Mac to go to sleep while still logged on, and then a different user signs in, any backups taken using Time Machine will fail to capture anything from that user's folder. Silently."
So… if you upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mount Lion, you need to be aware of this major gotcha.
Coryl says
Physical copies that are dated, external hard drive, and… Well, that's pretty much it.
Should I be more paranoid than that? Everyone else's paranoia makes me feel like I'm not being careful enough! D:
Rick Pieters says
Ha, what a bunch of paranoid writers. I save everything in Dropbox, then locally on the laptop, which is backed up on an external HD and by Mozy, for cloud backup. Not paranoid here.
Leah Petersen says
I use Dropbox. I love it because I use so many different computers in a given day, but my stuff's always there, and no one computer meltdown can ever take my stuff with it. π
David Brown says
I'm paranoid in a different way: I don't trust any WIP that hasn't been registered with the Copyright Office to any cloud-based storage solution. You must assume that anything sent out to the 'net will be viewed by someone else. I keep regular Time Machine backups, and keep copies on multiple device, though.
Also, iCloud is a syncing/convenience service, not a backup solution. It really shouldn't be used as such. Dropbox is better for that sort of thing.
Mirka Breen says
Aside from hourly back-ups, I still retain the habit of printing a hard copy of my work, because cloud, ether, or what have you, I don't believe it's *there*
Paraphrasing Churchill, we are 'paranoid' with much to be paranoid about…
collectonian says
I use both DropBox (which syncs to both my computers + the iPad), and on-demand live back ups with BackBlaze on my home computer. I also regularly do a hard back up to an external drive kept in my first-proof safe.
Jaimie says
I use Dropbox. I also backup my computer to a hard-drive occasionally. Sometimes I'll print something or email it to myself.
Steph Sessa says
I use a flash drive, which is on my keys, so that I can also use it on any computer. Periodically, I'll send myself copies through gmail just in case something happens to my flash drive.
Adelle Yeung says
Two Hotmail accounts, two Gmail accounts, Box, a flash drive, an external hard drive, and a netbook π
Bryan Russell says
Two computers, email, thumb drives, and external hard drive. I'm thinking about a miniature bomb shelter in case of nuclear armageddon or zombie apocalypse.
attackfish says
Flash drives stashed like a squirrel stashes nuts. It's a pain in the rear to back them all up, but I don't want to set them loose on the internet anywhere, even if password protecting them. If my house catches fire, I'm screwed though.
Pandora Swift says
Don't put your faith in the cloud, Nathan. I've worked in software and the computer indistry for decades, and the cloud isn't the answer. Every Monday I copy my work files to a USB hard drive (I keep all my work in 3 folders, so it's easy peasy to copy them ). On Fruday,s I do a system backup to a Seagate drive. Again, easy peasy. Hope this helps!
Nanette J. Purcigliotti says
Good question. I'm in final edits of my novel. I've got Mountain Lion. The Cloud. So backed up to the cloud. I saved one version. Didn't date version. When I opened the cloud I did find my file but got scared.
Now I save to the cloud, to Dropbox. Got new cable to hook Lacie to MacBook Pro. And save there. On top of that I mail my ms to myself. It goes into my iPad and my iPhone.
What did Jack Kerouac do? Didn't he travel with that black and white notebook. Wonder what he'd do now in this tech age.
Richard Mabry says
An external hard drive connected to Time Machine, a DropBox account which I use at least once a chapter, and a USB drive to which I download my manuscript at least once a day.
Paranoid? Naah. Just experienced.
BTW, I looked at the reviews on Apple about Pages, and they didn't make it very tempting for use in writing.
Rachael says
Dropbox. It's brought me through a motherboard crash and a laptop transfer. The ability to access my documents from any computer without having to deal with the unreliability of a flash drive is great.
Every time I finish a draft, I email it to myself for extra protection.
Nickie says
I'm sure someone at Google is crying hot, salty tears, but I do use my gmail account to back up my work. I figure that if Google suffers a catastrophic failure, there's probably not a human population left to read my work anyway.
Anonymous says
Want to really scare yourself? A Wired magazine writer got hacked this month and lost almost everything.
https://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/
Nathan Bransford says
anon-
Yep. My post about two-step e-mail verification is coming soon.
Will Overby says
Backed up to a second internal hard-drive, then to Carbonite. I'm a belt and suspenders kind of guy.
Kristin Laughtin says
I'm pretty paranoid after once losing a long document for grad school.
Copy on desktop, copy on external hard drive, copy on flash drive that is always in my purse. Copy of latest completed draft in Gmail. I used to save a copy on my netbook as well, but I don't use it as much anymore, so this is more sporadic. Sometimes I print out a physical copy for my first pass at revisions, which could help in a worst-case scenario, but I'm less consistent on this one.
Bethany Helwig says
You have every right to be paranoid. I wasn't paying attention when I started my sequel as to backing up my project. I kept all of my stuff on a flashdrive. BIG MISTAKE. It died and so went 85 pages–the entire beginning of my new book. I still haven't been able to recover (mentally and page wise) after that. Now I backup like a maniac.
Matthew MacNish says
Two computers, dropbox, gmail, thumb drive, network drive at work.
Do be careful about relying on the cloud too much, NB.
Read this: https://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/all/
Actually, you probably already saw it, just be careful (sorry, in too much of a hurry to hyperlink for you).
Matthew MacNish says
Oh lord. I should just read the other comments first. :facepalm:
gesher says
The cloud is unreliable for backing up. It's fine as one layer among several, but I prefer to depend on external hard drives that I own and control:
1. Time Machine constantly to a partition on an external hard drive in my apartment (all files).
2. Super Duper nightly to a different partition on the same external hard drive in my apartment (clean bootable copy of my hard drive as it appears at that moment).
3. Carbon Copy Cloner ~weekly to a separate external hard drive that I store off-site (clean bootable copy of my hard drive as it appears at that moment).
Wub2Write says
Dropbox, USB, and physical copies are kept in our nuclear bomb shelter in our backyard. Paranoid. Just a little.
Yolanda Renee says
We should all be paranoid!
Email, USB, external hard drive.
What else is there?
If the grid goes down, then what? π
abc says
Every once in awhile I email my WIP to myself (on gmail) and to my husband. Gmail is my backup! I realize this is so so very sad.
just joanne says
Looks like quite a few folks use Dropbox. I have my own but I also a shared Dropbox with my husband so that we both have access to it just to play it safe. I had my email hacked once (gmail) so I try to be cautious. I also use a thumbdrive and external drive back-up.
just joanne says
Looks like a lot of us are using Dropbox. I have my own but I also have a shared Dropbox with my husband so that we both have access. Also use a thumb drive and external drive back up.
Anonymous says
Microsoft allow you to sync work across machines and with their cloud-based skydrive. I encrypt word docs, so even if someone gets access to the files in the cloud, they can't read them (Office 2007 onwards has strong encryption).
My work is sync'ed across 3 machines at home and backed up to the cloud.
Works wonderfully, is free, and I simply open the files and instantly see changes I've made on another machine.
Voss Foster says
Flash drive, external hard drive, three separate eMail accounts, and the gracious inboxes of my beta-readers, one of which will inevitably have a recent copy of the file.
Sommer Leigh says
As far as I'm concerned, you can never be too paranoid when it comes to backups.
I save to a USB, my computer, Dropbox, and every new chapter gets emailed to my husband's gmail account from my yahoo account. You know, just in case Yahoo gets nuked from orbit, one of us has a copy.
That being said, the big losses are never the ones that actually happen to me. It's always – I'm writing a scene and my computer does something funky, freezes and either Word or the whole computer needs to be rebooted, losing everything since the last save.
These little losses make me homicidal.
Donna Hosie says
I don't understand what half of you are talking about!!
Thumb drive, gmail…that's it. But thanks to this post, now I am paranoid.
London Crockett says
iCloud (with Pages), DropBox that syncs with another computer, TimeMachine, CreativeCloud and BackBurner.
Karleene Morrow, Author says
Thumb drive. Back up frequently, even daily. It's no big effort you know. :~)
Nick Lewandowski says
Dropbox + occasional dumps to an external drive. Works well enough I've never lost a file… or even a wink of sleep for that matter.
Ingrid King says
Thumb drive, Carbonite remote back up, e-mail to Juno and Hotmail accounts. I prefer to think of it as being careful rather than paranoid.
Jake Richert says
I feel like my work is stashed everywhere. Dropbox, email, drafts on blog and Tumblr, labeled USBs. All popular. All easy to confuse. But I am paranoid as well.
'ΓΆ-Dzin Tridral says
Paranoia;s not altogether a bad thing. If you spilt coffee on a manuscript you could dab it off and still have something useful. If the electronic coffee gets spilt you can be left with nothing at all.
Different approaches cover you for different types of disaster. I use Spideroak. It's like Dropbox, but encrypted. I synchronise from the laptop to Spideroak, back down to the desktop and thence to the desktop's external drive. Everything should be in four places – three local, one in the cloud.
Spideroak also keeps changed and deleted copies so it's possible to recover old versions.
I've needed it a few times and it hasn't let me down.
Lani Longshore says
Wow, do I feel like a piker. I send a pdf to a trusted friend and let my husband deal with the rest of the back-up plans. He has the external hard-drive and CDs in the safe deposit box and heaven only knows what else. Of course, if the universe is against you there really is no escaping your fate. A few years back we had a cascading crash of our home network that was supposedly impossible. After offering the geek equivalent of "Bummer, dude," all his techie friends agreed he had done everything possible to prevent the disaster, so he must have offended a new computer god.