# Back Up Your Writing?



## Black Dragon (Jun 5, 2011)

I've always been diligent to back up whatever project that I'm working on.  I've heard stories of writers losing nearly complete manuscripts to hard drive crashes and fires.

What steps do you take to back up your writing?


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## balthore (Jun 5, 2011)

I have a jump drive that is always on my car key chain with me that I keep updated, another that stays in my fire safe, I also save to a couple online spots, my stories are stored on the card of my phone, I have hard copies, they are on my computer at work and (don't tell) actually backed up on the main server of work off site.

I'm not paranoid, just prepared!


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## Kelise (Jun 5, 2011)

I usually just email it to myself often, but that's more a case of working on my MS at work and then needing to send the latest version home again ^^


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## Derin (Jun 13, 2011)

I've never even thought to back up my writing. And I have all these external hard drives lying around...


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## TWErvin2 (Jun 13, 2011)

Yes, I know a few authors who have lost a lot of material due to hard drive crashes, and then they go to their backup disk or flash drive, and it's bad too.

I have all of my writing files backed up a few places (2 home computers and I give a burned disk to a friend every few months) in addition to flash drive backup. I also email versions of works that I am currently working on to myself on free email accounts (such as Yahoo and gmail).

There are also a few hard copies of things, but that's too expensive to print out everything simply for backup purposes.

For example, last night I added 500 words to a current project. I saved and sent an email with the updated version as an attached file.

Of those authors I spoke of in the first paragraph? It only happened to them once. A tough lesson. Learn from the experiences of others--don't let it happen you you, ever!


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## sashamerideth (Jun 13, 2011)

I use dropbox, a USB thumb drive, and my laptop as places to save my stories. I will occasionally email my story to myself, to my gmail address. 

As another place, I also use Amazon S3 as nowhere is perfect and I won't trust my stuff to a single point of failure. Geek chick coming out there.


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## J. Rosemary Moss (Jun 16, 2011)

sashamerideth said:


> I use dropbox, a USB thumb drive, and my laptop as places to save my stories. I will occasionally email my story to myself, to my gmail address.
> 
> As another place, I also use Amazon S3 as nowhere is perfect and I won't trust my stuff to a single point of failure. Geek chick coming out there.



Same here. Gmail, Dropbox and Amazon.


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## Fodwocket (Jun 16, 2011)

I use a external hard drive, my laptop, two different drives on my computer and email it to myself (to my main email, and a secondary one every now and then too).  I do it every time I write something new really (though not to all of them each time, I'm paranoid but not very organised).  Email and ext are always up to date though.  I hate losing anything I've written cause it'll never be the same the next time, no matter how much I remember.


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## Fodwocket (Jul 3, 2011)

Sorry to res an old thread, but Starconstant linked this on Facebook, and with so many of you listing Dropbox here I thought I'd better let you know that they've changed their Terms to say:

"you grant us (and those we work with to provide the Services) worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to the extent we think it necessary for the Service."

Put it in the Cloud? Are You Nuts? at Literary Abominations


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## Nick (Jul 4, 2011)

i have a cruzer mini flash drive that claims it can automatically sync and back up files from your computer but i don't know how to make it work.


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## Dante Sawyer (Jul 4, 2011)

Every couple of chapters or so, I send my MS to my usual editors and people who are willing to read it for content.  I have yet to have an epic hard drive crash, but this way I have the MS saved in my "Sent" emails and those close to me also can just send me a copy of the latest thing theyve read.


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## Donny Bruso (Jul 4, 2011)

I do all of my work on a flash drive that is backed up to my desktop and laptop. Unfortunately I don't back it up as often as I should. My previous flash drive was corrupted by my laptop on some kind of weird file system rearrangement on startup, and it cost me several months of work and one story that I lost completely.


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## BeigePalladin (Jul 5, 2011)

I have here and OWC for backups


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## Waltershores (Jul 5, 2011)

Flash drive and laptop for me.  Lots of other good ideas here that I might start using as well.


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