Writer's Nightmare: Not backing up

[ratsy]

So I poured my coffee and grabbed the laptop, thinking this was a wonderful morning to work on Sleepy Grove. The sunlight was pouring in my front windows, the birds were chirping, and my wife and puppy were still snuggled up in bed. Ahhhh, the perfect scenario. I opened my latest file and....error, file corrupt. I scoured the internet, trying everything but I could not recover it. I don't think it's too bad, but I know I lost at least the last chapter or so, and some edits I had done based on a couple critiques from here. It is so frustrating. I have been meaning to finally pay for Office, since I've been using Open for free, and the bomb dropped. I don't seem to be the only person this has happened to. Not only that, but you have to go deep into the options to have it save backups and I never did that.

So lesson learned. I need to back my stuff up better, and use a better program.

What do you all do for backing up? What programs are you writing with? And does anyone know how to recover files that are corrupt. In this case my ODT file is all #################

I know in some alien language that actually may be a best seller. Or on twitter, but not for my book.

Help me!

 

[alchemist]

Can't help you with the corruption, but don't delete it; there may well be a programme to help.

I use dropbox, my phone, and occasionally email myself. I have a couple of memory sticks as well but don't do any of this in an organised fashion.

 

[Wanderlog]

I opened my latest file and....error, file corrupt.

And no backups... A story well-known to me. You may find some comfort in that you're a typical creator who didn't care to make backup copies of their work. A corrupted fiction story is nothing, shed a tear and forget about it. Imagine how could it be if it happens two or three days before you're supposed to defend your thesis. I met such people, mostly in the epoch of floppy drives, but not only then. This is a hard lesson to learn, so never forget it.

What do you all do for backing up?

A single work folder for storing all your changing data. Two hard drives in your computer. A piece of free software that automatically makes copies of that folder on schedule between the HDDs. Those measures will protect you from an HDD failure but not from a virus or a logical corruption of any kind. To protect yourself from those threats, you should (a) manually make copies to a removable data carrier like a flash drive and (b) keep at least two latest versions (or more). To speed up the process of copying multiple files to an external flash drive, you can archive them without compressing (for example, 7-zip can do it). To prevent your data on a removable device from leaking to other people, always encrypt the archive (7-zip can do it too). In addition, the last copy of the encrypted archive can be put to a cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, MS OneDrive, and so on).

 

[HareBrain]

I switch between my PC and my old netbook (for writing in coffee shops), so, with the memory stick I use to transfer the files, that creates two backups every day I write. Plus I back up to another external hard drive once a week, and then there's betas I've emailed files to.

My ultimate backup plan is to have thousands of copies residing in different locations all around the world.

 

[Brian G Turner]

What do you all do for backing up?

All my writing exists on Google Drive. Dropbox has been hacked before, so I don't really trust it. And although I fundamentally disagree with Google's obsession with data collection, that actually makes them one of the safest companies to save with - Microsoft used to delete inactive email accounts, so I wouldn't dare trust them with my writing back-ups.

The added benefit with any cloud drive is that they are not tied to a specific device, only whatever you're logging in with. So on a night, if I'm inspired by anything I'm reading, I can use my Kindle Fire to call up my notes and add to them.

 

[Denise Tanaka]

OMG, OMG, OMG. First, don't write or save anything new... if it's not too late. You might be able to take the hard drive to a tech person to do some excavation.

I have an external drive. I put things on Google docs. I shamelessly use my computer at work. Whenever I make revisions, I copy to a new document file and label the filename with the date. When a draft is in reasonably solid shape, I print it out on paper.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Whenever I make revisions, I copy to a new document file and label the filename with the date.

This as well!

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I have copies of all the final versions on my pc and ipad. I'm pretty good at emailing myself whatever
I've worked on that day, i also have a file labelled writing back up that I stick on a memory stick every couple of months. Plus, the files have usually been shared with someone, somewhere, reasonably recently.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Google Drive and Google Docs are sharing and collaborative tools. Not suitable as sole back up solutions. Have a local copy (by any means) and a copy offsite. In addition to Google-Anything.

Note in long term an unused HDD doesn't usually deteriorate but a SD card or USB stick fades with time.

Because I used to give computer training and used do programming, I have many PCs and laptops, two or three external drives, USB sticks and SD cards, a 24x7 server in attic, a backup server and unlimited hosting. A folder on Hosting accessible only via SFTP is far better than Google or Dropbox and even unlimited hosting (handy for private Wiki, public wiki and public Blog too) is quite unexpensive now. I use 1and1.

Minimum is an external HDD and basic hosting with a folder/directory not part of you web site (use SFTP).

I read a story about an Author who was celebrating with a drink, on completing his book, meanwhile his laptop was stolen. Fortunately he'd just emailed it to the Publisher. Still, he lost all the related material.

I don't like proprietary backup software or devices as there is no assurance the next OS / laptop etc supports it. So I stopped using such things long ago.
I use order by last modified and display creation & modification dates.
If copying a lot, then I use command line copy tools that won't overwrite later versions etc.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Have a local copy (by any means) and a copy offsite

When you set up Google Drive on your PC, you do have a local copy. This is the master that is uploaded to the Google Drive account, and can then be accessed from other devices. Same with Microsoft's OneDrive.

 

[C. J. Watterson]

My ultimate backup plan is to have thousands of copies residing in different locations all around the world.

As in - get published?

 

[J Riff]

USB schticks are so cheap now that I have a dozen laying about. Just put everything on a couple or three of 'em. Then put the stick in when ya starts scribbling. Hide the usb somewhere handy and close, so's it doesn't varnish as well when a cat burglar does visit.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Google Drive on your PC, you do have a local copy

That's only a local backup if a DIFFERENT computer to the one you writing on.
Google, Amazon and Microsoft are NOT backup solutions, no sane IT dept would use them as that. They are insecure collaboration and sharing tools. They will not even tell you the truth as to their procedures. It's "Cloud" Marketing.

 

[Nick B]

Currently using dropbox, however, as brian said, they have been hacked before. So we plan to move to SpiderOak, same setup as dropbox except everything is encrypted at source, so even the company cant readxhat you store. It is open source too so can be trusted to not to have backdoors. Also, make other backups anyway. Just in case :-S

 

[Mirannan]

One thing that might help for really important text is to store a second set of copies of it in RTF or even plaintext, to avoid file format gremlins.

 

[C. J. Watterson]

One thing that might help for really important text is to store a second set of copies of it in RTF or even plaintext, to avoid file format gremlins.

It might even be a good idea to write in this format. I've lost a few paragraphs a number of times just due to auto-save messing up (don't edit on a network drive is another piece of advice), or Office crashing for no apparent reason. These formats will never be obsolete, and easily re-interpreted. Even if somehow in the far distant future we lose the ASCII and UTF character maps - we'll still be able to recover it, just a simple substitution cipher. On the other hand maybe in the far future, when everyone speaks Chinese and the English language is lost, all the rosetta stones of the future will be encoded in stupid, fragile and proprietary file formats... Your RTF file will just be another random binary blob.

Formatting requirements are so tricky for print and ebook, you may as well not bother until you get to the publishing stage.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Google, Amazon and Microsoft are NOT backup solutions, no sane IT dept would use them as that.

Sane IT dept? Whoever heard of one of those?

 

[mosaix]

The trouble with Dropbox, as with any other software that saves only a single copy, is that if your file is corrupt then so is your backup. I use Dropbox as a distribution mechanism not as backup.

For backup I have an external Western Digital drive. The software supplied with it keeps a (configurable) number of backup versions. So if the last version is corrupt then you have previous versions to fall back on.

Periodic trial restores are a good idea.

The ultimate, and most reliable, backup is a printed copy.

 

[willwallace]

Like Mosaix I use an external USB drive and just use Windows built-in backup program. It has saved me once already about a year ago when my internal hdd died, and only lost one day of work.

 

[tinkerdan]

I have thumb drives and two usb drives but I also email stuff because if I have internet access that's the quickest way to get it back from any computer.

I've heard paranoid complaints about cloud stuff and that ; but honestly what works for you is best. Most people who complain end up being those who tend to never back anything up because they figure no backup system works at all. I recall having someone like that working our IT department. [They also left our server open enough to let a hacker write all zeros to the hard-drive.]

Still with what I do use I have times when work disappears and I look at that as an opportunity to really get things -Write.