Friday, April 1, 2011

Writers: remember to back up your WIP!

What is the sound of one computer crashing? A friend of mine answered: Expensive. But the cost of replacing a hard drive is minimal to the cost of losing your work.

My hard drive crashed this week. There was no warning, except a weird fading out of my browser. Then my computer got really spastic and a simple restore point wasn't even possible.

Amazingly, thankfully, I had backed up my WIP the day before. In fact I had backed up all my files to a flash drive recently. I'm up and running again with only three days of computer withdrawal.

So today's tool is a simple, but important reminder: Back up your files, especially your beloved book in progress. Keep a flash drive handy or simply email it to yourself as an attachment.

You never know what you're computer is up to when you're not there! Even though this is April Fool's Day, losing your work is no joke!

Happy Friday. Please share this with a friend.

5 comments:

  1. I hear you, Rahma! Though the Apple "geniuses" couldn't fix my iBook, they did back up almost everything onto an external hard drive I bought specifically for the repair job. Now, I've got my new compute set to automatically back up every week and I always back up new changes to documents on my flash drive.

    Glad you're up again with a minimum of withdrawal pains. ;-)

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  2. Sound and wise advise!!! Thank you! Take care
    x

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  3. Thanks for the reminder, Rahma. I will do it ASAP.

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  4. I'm sorry for your computer troubles this week, but bravo for doing the backup! It is a great reminder for the rest of us.

    Best wishes!

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  5. We all need reminders from the time. Especially me! I think I was just lucky this time.

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