The importance of backups!

[Brian G Turner]

Remember to backup your work using multiple methods!

I've been relying on Google Drive - as has my wife - for all our creative projects as well as family photos, and other essential files.

This week she discovered - by visiting the Google Drive website directly - that Google Drive on her PC hasn't synced in around 4 years! That means she has a folder on her computer called "Google Drive" with all her important files in, but none of them have been uploading online.

I decided to double-check my own account today, more from idle curiosity. I mean, I know what I'm doing, and all my work is being saved online, isn't it? Except - the horror! - I just discovered it hasn't synced in over a year!

This would all be bad enough in itself, but I'm paying for the extra storage and my work isn't even being backed up as it's supposed to!

Anyway, my wife has dragged her recent folders into Google Drive online and we'll get her PC synced after.

Meanwhile, my account has a 100GB limit, but my folders had almost 120GB in them, so I've had to juggle things around to bring it under my limit.

I'm currently backing up to a USB stick originally intended to provide a hard backup, then once I've done that I'll re-installed Google Drive to make sure it's synced.

TL;DR - check your backup methods and make sure you use more than one in case one does fail, because chances are it will!

Although I've been reliant on Google Drive so far, now I'm going to ensure I do monthly backups to my USB stick - just in case!

Don't lose your work!!!

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

I would like to add that one should never rely totally on a 'cloud' solution. Just remember, the 'cloud' is just someone else's computer.
Invest in an external hard disk, find some backup software and schedule it to back up your work on a daily/weekly basis depending on how much stuff you produce.

Apparently Windows/Mac have their own backup utility built-in (I'm a Linux guy at home)

How to Back Up Your Computer to an External Drive

You never think losing your files will happen to you until it actually does, and you're caught without a backup. Backups are extremely easy to keep, s

lifehacker.com

 

[tinkerdan]

At work, we are trying to get AS9100 certification. Our consultant has been badgering everyone relentlessly and of course when he got to my IT and Backup stuff he was appalled that I don't rely on an on line cloud backup. [We do have Microsoft cloud(OneDrive)because we all have Microsoft accounts for both our document software and our emails using Outlook] I use a rotation of terabyte drives that are swapped daily and are updated hourly. The drives not in use go offsite with the boss to a safe at the end of the day. The cloud is just one more fall back; however my experience with the cloud is similar to that mentioned above. I explained this to him and was quietly and privately appalled that he relies solely on the cloud for his backup.

At home I use, once again, terabyte drives to store my work. Before I was IT at work the person in charge of the server and backups told me that backups were worthless[at that time they had these tape drives and they were somewhat worrisome at the best].

At work I have at worst had a single days worth of work lost with one employee and am glad for backups.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I use a cloud backup because if my house burned down, it would not only destroy my PC but also my external backups.

 

[sknox]

External backup copy goes offsite. That can be somewhat difficult, but if you have a day job, take the drive and drop it off at work. Keep it in your desk or locker or whatever. Just offsite. So it's really three spots. The cloud is primary because I can get to it from anywhere. That gets mirrored to a local drive--that's the sync that Brian talked about not working. Pretty appalling, imo. I use Dropbox and so far that's worked reliably. About three years now. The third is the drive-thumb drive, external disk drive, whatever.

That offsite storage became more difficult when I retired. I now have no regular place to keep that third copy. I might keep it at a relative's house, but the nearest one's about a half hour drive away and it does seem a bit awkward. Maybe the other guys in my writing group; that's a possibility. Maybe a safe deposit box at my bank? Anyway, off-site is now a bit of a challenge. The temporary solution is that I copy from Dropbox over to my Google drive manually. Not ideal.

Good thread, this!

 

[Lumens]

Remember to backup your work using multiple methods!

I've been relying on Google Drive - as has my wife - for all our creative projects as well as family photos, and other essential files.

This week she discovered - by visiting the Google Drive website directly - that Google Drive on her PC hasn't synced in around 4 years! That means she has a folder on her computer called "Google Drive" with all her important files in, but none of them have been uploading online.

I decided to double-check my own account today, more from idle curiosity. I mean, I know what I'm doing, and all my work is being saved online, isn't it? Except - the horror! - I just discovered it hasn't synced in over a year!

This would all be bad enough in itself, but I'm paying for the extra storage and my work isn't even being backed up as it's supposed to!

Anyway, my wife has dragged her recent folders into Google Drive online and we'll get her PC synced after.

Meanwhile, my account has a 100GB limit, but my folders had almost 120GB in them, so I've had to juggle things around to bring it under my limit.

I'm currently backing up to a USB stick originally intended to provide a hard backup, then once I've done that I'll re-installed Google Drive to make sure it's synced.

TL;DR - check your backup methods and make sure you use more than one in case one does fail, because chances are it will!

Although I've been reliant on Google Drive so far, now I'm going to ensure I do monthly backups to my USB stick - just in case!

Don't lose your work!!!

I fully back (up) your post!

 

[tinkerdan]

Storage box or bank box for offsite; though the best would be bank box for security.
If you have a secure enough building such as a shed that's distant enough from the main house you could use that.
That would be inside a 'fire resistant' lock-box. (which probably wouldn't be too safe in a catastrophic fire) ;however if you have several options and they all fail in one fell swoop I'd be suspicious of malicious intent unless you had them all stored in the same place.

 

[sknox]

The biggest danger is one that hasn't been brought up, which is saving a bad version over the top of a good one. This can be and simple and scary as saving a corrupted and unusable file over the top of a good one, but also includes saving a version of a draft that's older or that you've grievously mucked with over a version that is better. The mechanics of backups are part of the equation but so, alas, is the human component. There have been moments--dark, dark moments--when I've considered versioning software.

 

[CupofJoe]

Didn't WordStar automatically version documents?
I can remember [floppy] disks full of XXX.ws and XXX1.bak - WWWn.bak files

 

[mosaix]

That offsite storage became more difficult when I retired. I now have no regular place to keep that third copy.

In your car? Not ideal but better than nothing.

 

[Overread]

It's a very easy accident to make; many people setup a backup system and then never check the backups. Ideally you should use a calendar (written/digital) and (depending on the importance of the data to you) set yourself specific days when you check the integrity of your entire backup system. That's your local hard-drive mirrors; your cloud; your offsite backup; the backup under the mattress - all of it.

Otherwise you run the risk as you've found, that the backup wasn't working; or its not saved things correctly or there's a corrupted file. Indeed file corruption is a huge issue and its why some more critical data often gets partitioned off into its own double backup system. You might also divide your backup systems between long term static and short term dynamic files.

So for a writer you might shift a completed book or digital references into static backups; where basically you're not updating the data often so one or two identical backups should be fine and they shouldn't have to sync as often.
Meanwhile active data, like a book in writing and writing notes, you might well backup far more often even down to weekly or daily backups. You might also split it into several different backup systems. For example you might have local hard-drive backup and a cloud backup that you update each day; but you'd also have a separate drive for a weekly and another for a monthly update. This way if data corruption happens on one backup system you should, in theory (always testing the longer term backups integrity before updating) have backups from a short time ago. Data loss would still happen ,but you reduce its impact.

In the end backing up can get very complicated if you want to be very safe; plus never overlook the importance of paper copies as a backup too. For a book a printed out version is still a backup - sure its a pain if you've got to copy it all out or scan and check it to get it back in the digital world; but it at least avoids the issues of digital data loss.
The biggest key is to be organised, to write down your organisation system and setup a system of checks and backup schedules on paper to refer and stick too.

 

[sknox]

FWIW, Scrivener has a kind of versioning. You can take a Snapshot (that's what they call it) of an entire project. When Scrivener does a backup (it has its own backup files), those Snapshots get archived as well. When *you* back up your main files, you're making a copy of all those various versions of your WIP. Also, Scrivener doesn't delete files but only moves them to its own trash file.

IOW, the program gives you multiple ways to make sure that you can always roll back to that paragraph from three versions ago that you've decided had a good line in it. That, obviously, is not at all the same as the backup systems we've been talking about here.

As for the car, I would advise against it. In summer you risk excessive heat; in winter, excessive cold. Maybe just make a necklace of your thumb drive.

 

[Toby Frost]

Can I just recommend that people are wary of backing up onto memory sticks. For a long time they were my method of choice, but I've had two of them corrupt on me, with annoying results. I'd also echo the comments about making sure that you have two versions, both close to each other in terms of how different they are, so you don't have too much to rewrite if one goes wrong.

 

[Vertigo]

I've talked about having multiple backups many times before so won't go into it again except to agree with others here. Never ever rely purely upon someone else's system (ie. the cloud) to store your backups. You have no control over their reliability or their security it's bonkers to rely solely on such a set up.

Secondly for all you people saving your backups to the cloud, I truly and sincerely hope you don't have anything of important personal or professional security in those backups (bank stuff, unpublished work etc.); it is only a matter of time before one of these systems gets hacked, especially one like Google. The name alone is a planet sized target/challenge painted onto it. If there aren't significant numbers of hackers out there already trying to crack Google drive then humanity is far more trustworthy than I have so far experienced it to be. I have searched for information on books online before now and had Google deliver to me direct links to completely unprotected copies of the ebook itself. I have now twice passed this information on to the authors in question and on both occasions they have told me that those copies were stored on the cloud by their publisher...

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

I truly and sincerely hope you don't have anything of important personal or professional security in those backups (bank stuff, unpublished work etc.)

In an ideal world the cloud backup software would encrypt everything before uploading it, but of course, the world isn't ideal.
Therefore, a good practice to get into would be to encrypt your stuff first. This could be something as simple as password protecting a Word document, or password protecting a compressed file (zip/rar/7zip etc) to full on encryption with keys

Here's a decent article about BoxCryptor

How to encrypt your cloud storage for free

BoxCryptor is a freemium, easy-to-use encryption program that can help you keep your data private in the cloud.

www.pcworld.com

 

[Vertigo]

In an ideal world the cloud backup software would encrypt everything before uploading it, but of course, the world isn't ideal.
Therefore, a good practice to get into would be to encrypt your stuff first. This could be something as simple as password protecting a Word document, or password protecting a compressed file (zip/rar/7zip etc) to full on encryption with keys

Here's a decent article about BoxCryptor

How to encrypt your cloud storage for free

BoxCryptor is a freemium, easy-to-use encryption program that can help you keep your data private in the cloud.

www.pcworld.com

That's still only considering the encryption aspect (and I doubt most people are sufficiently disciplined to ensure they've encrypted everything). But why go to that bother when you can do the backups yourself locally? Which I would certainly do anyway. I just don't understand why people are happy to trust all their private data to someone else's computer systems. It just seems completely bonkers to me. But that's just me. Call me paranoid if you want!

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

I just don't understand why people are happy to trust all their private data to someone else's computer systems. It just seems completely bonkers to me. But that's just me. Call me paranoid if you want!

I'm with you on this.
At work we have to use MS Office365, SharepointOnline and other cloudy based software. Of course, the big corporates are trying to convince everyone to switch to cloud-based solutions, where, when the time comes, they can start holding everyone's data to ransom, or at the least, do some datamining

 

[Toby Frost]

I've emailed stuff to myself in the past, usually small bits of text, but I wouldn't put anything on the cloud. As has been said, it's someone else's computer.

 

[thaddeus6th]

It's a nice side-effect of sending stuff to beta-readers that you're also effectively saving the document at the same time.

I do need to back a few things up, (usually do it at certain stages). E-mailing myself stuff is the secondary method I use, flashdrives being the first. I tend to save various different stages of progress in proofreading/formatting too, just in case a file goes dodgy (annoying at the best of times but infuriating if you lose all the proofing of a 100,000 word document and have to start over).

 

[Dragonlady]

After a nasty ransomware attack we use synchronicity to sync to Google drive and each computer for important stuff, so if I start something on PC and it's not on the laptop next day I know the sync hadn't run!