What's your backup strategy?

[sianablackwood]

I've seen some really sad stories lately about people losing their writing, so I thought I might ask everyone here how you back up your work.

I'd also like to say, if you're reading this thread, back up your work now!

For my backups, I have a flash drive I sync when I first start up my computer and then again before shutting down (and other times if I'm feeling nervous about losing something or if I want to undo a file system change). I also have a portable hard drive, but that only works in one of the three computers I regularly use, so it's not updated as frequently as I'd like - an example of a backup system not really working as it should, I guess. Two of the computers also sync to Dropbox (again, not ideal - I only have free Dropbox, which limits me to 3 synced devices and my third slot is taken by a computer I don't write on, but do work on files I need to share with the writing computers). Finally, I (nowhere near frequently enough) save zipped archives of everything to Google Drive.

I have some tidying up to do, but so far my system has been good enough to get me out of trouble when something goes wrong.

So, what's your backup strategy?

 

[Hammer]

It's a good and valid question! Having discovered how to lose a whole folder completely and irreversibly whilst working as an IT "professional" I should probably be more careful; I tend to rely on Dropbox being properly maintained, but as I access it from two computers, there will also be local copies on both of those machines, and I periodically back my whole laptop up to a portable drive.

 

[tde44]

After handwriting everything, at the end of each day I enter the info into the computer - Word for writing & OneNote for research/notes. The handwritten copy stays around until at least the first draft is printed out.

The docs are stored on a local drive which is automatically backed up using OneDrive. In addition, I have FileHistory turned on which keeps copies (each time I hit save or when Word does an auto save) onto an external USB flash drive. The history is kept for 3 months.

In addition, every month I backup everything on my computers (as well as the file histories) onto a different removable flash drive. Each flash drive can hold about 6+ months of my backups and I have 6 of these flash drives, rotating which one is used every month. Also, once a flash drive is filled, I always make sure to keep at least the last backup for any given year around, so have backups going back effectively 8 years at this point.

Finally, the backup flash drives are kept in an off-site fireproof safe.

While I have not had to go back so far to recover anything I wrote, I have had occasions over the years to find a file either myself or my significant other accidently deleted or can't locate on our computers, usually following an upgrade/replacement of the computers or their internal drives.

And yes, in a prior lifetime I worked in IT .

 

[Montecarlo]

I keep everything synced to OneDrive

 

[Mr Mononoke]

I have just backed up all my stories onto USB and besides my stories being in folders and word docs all over my homepage, that's all I do.

I might save them onto another USB at some point but never on Google or sync anywhere else.

 

[Dogberry's Watch]

Handwrite, type up, print immediately, repeat. Sometimes I'll upload to Google drive, but mostly it's just hard copies always.