I read recently of someone whose notebook computer was stolen. The computer contained most of a book he was writing and he was beside himself with terror. No backup. No printed pages.
Nothing new, I suppose. I can imagine authors of old slaving away by candlelight, falling asleep at the quill and having the house burn down along with the manuscript.
Sometimes I imagine Blogger - if not the entire internet - disappearing into thin air because my book is a blog. There will be seven chapters and an introduction and half of each chapter is a blog post.
I printed out the first six posts - three chapters - delivered them to the commissioning publisher and breathed a little easier.
Nothing new, I suppose. I can imagine authors of old slaving away by candlelight, falling asleep at the quill and having the house burn down along with the manuscript.
Sometimes I imagine Blogger - if not the entire internet - disappearing into thin air because my book is a blog. There will be seven chapters and an introduction and half of each chapter is a blog post.
I printed out the first six posts - three chapters - delivered them to the commissioning publisher and breathed a little easier.
You must backup your data.
ReplyDeleteYou must backup your data.
You must backup your data.
You must backup your data.
You must backup your data.
I use MozyHome and am really happy with it. You set it up and it runs automatically and your data is safely copied to the internets that you can restore from if needed, all for free(2Gb). No connection other than satisfied customer.
You will feel like an idiot if you lose months of work like my upstairs neighbour nearly lost her dissertation for a 2 year masters degree. You should have seen the look on her face when she thought it was gone.
hunty
Yes, that was definitely my nightmare when I was writing my dissertation. I kept backup disks in friends' freezers up & down the Eastern seaboard.
ReplyDeleteAndrew, that sounds a good system.
ReplyDeleteAnne, I can't remember what we did pre-IT. It's happened to me on a smaller scale with writing jobs short enough to 'remember' most of the work. If I lost a book I think I would give up, thinking it was pre-ordained.