The Silicon Amanuensis: Backup Without Tears
Steve Beisner -- July 1, 2007
How long has it been since you lost work because you neglected to backup your manuscripts and other important files? Feel that emotional cramp in the pit of your stomach? "I should have backed up. Why didn't I save my work?" It's happened to all of us. One day we discover that hours or weeks of our best work seems to have evaporated from our computer's hard drive. Do we have a copy somewhere? Murphy says probably not. What if there was a magic wand that you could wave to prevent all this pain? There is: read on.
The Old: Making Backup Copies
If you've used a computer for any time at all you know you should make frequent backup copies of your work, so that if the manuscript you're working on is lost or destroyed, you still have another copy which is more or less up to date.
You probably also know that it's a good idea that the backup copies you make be placed somewhere other than the same hard drive that contains your original working copy. So if you're diligent, you probably copy all your work related files onto a CD or external hard drive. If so, good for you. There are only two things wrong with this strategy:
- This sort of copying takes time, so you're not likely to do it every day. Maybe you won't even do it on a regular schedule. Remember, if you back up once a week you're saying you don't care if you lose a week of work.
- Copying to a floppy disk, zip drive, another hard drive, or a CD won't help a bit if your house, or even your office, falls victim to fire, flood, wind, or burglary. If you think this is only a theoretic danger, I'd like to introduce you to some of my writer-friends in New Orleans who lost years of work to a lady named Katrina.
The New: Automatic Off-site Backup
You can never have too many backups, so I urge you to continue making the planned or ad hoc backup copies that you currently do, but there's a better way now that you should also consider.
First, you should have all your work contained in a single folder hierarchy on your hard drive. For organizational purposes you can have as many sub-folders and sub-sub-folders as you like. Perhaps you'll do as I do and create a top level folder called "MyWork" with a sub-folder for each major project. Put all notes, snippets, and manuscript versions for a project into its own folder.
By putting everything work related into the MyWork "tree," you can be assured that if you back up that top level folder you will have preserved everything that needs saving.
The idea of Automatic Off-site Backup is that you sign up for a (free) account with a web-based backup service. You install their software on your computer and tell the software what you want backed up. The software then manages the entire process. The initial backup, even if you have a high speed connection to the Internet, can take a very long time, even overnight; however, after that initial step, the backup software will only send changed files (or parts of files), and the automatic backup will take very little time.
Best of all all the software will figure out when and what to backup to the service's website -- automatically and invisibly.
Details
I use the Mozy Remote Backup Service. Their web site is at http://mozy.com. You can open a free account that provides up to two gigabytes of online storage. A writer could go a lifetime without using two gigabytes, but if you want to include photos, music, or video in your backups you may decide to upgrade to the unlimited plan, which costs $4.95 per month.
On the website you will find software for both Apple OS-X and Microsoft Windows systems. It only takes a few minutes to download, install, and tell the software what you need backed up. There are options for how often you want Mozy to check for changes and perform backup. I have my laptop set for Mozy to run anytime the computer has been inactive for 30 minutes.
Mozy uses SSL (Secure Socket Layer) to secure the transmission of files between your computer and the Mozy servers. In addition, the stored files are encrypted, so that no one but you can access your work.
One you've started using Mozy, you should go to the website again and practice retrieving a backed up file. It's drop-dead simple, but it's a good idea to have been through the procedure once before you need to do it for real!
Now Relax
Have a tireless mechanical assistant safeguard your work and you'll sleep better and remove one more stress-causing worry from your writer's life.
Check Ink Byte soon for the next installment of The Silicon Amanuensis.