I'm currently using a USB key to work from just in case something goes wrong with my laptop and backing up every couple of days to my external hard drive. I've learned the hard way both at work and home that one cannot trust hardware or software with important information. I really don't want to rewrite something I spent four hours agonizing over. I definitely don't want to emulate Hemingway in this respect. Trying to decide if paying for Cloud storage is worth the money. How do you prevent loss of work?
I write on the laptop and back my work up to multiple flash drives every night. I also back up the file every month on the laptop itself. And I have print copies of most all of the chapters because I've taken them to critique group, but I can't imagine trying to recreate the book from those. Also, when I leave my laptop at home, I always take two of the flash drives with me, on in my pocket and one in my purse. That protects me from a house fire. Pretty paranoid but every time you lose a file you get more nervous. I haven't yet been backing up to the cloud, but I suppose I should.
There is no such thing as paranoid when it comes to data. Back in, oh must've been around 2005, I was on a team working on an RRFP. The company had just completed a state-of-the-art data center with all the bells and whistles (redundant digital access requirements, concrete walls and roof, specialized climate control, etc) which we were using as an argument for our getting the contract. Late one afternoon the fire alarm went off and we all went down 13 flights of stairs to get to the designated location in the parking lot. The next day we learned what precipitated the fire alarm. Someone left an access hatch to the main power trunk open and a squirrel got inside. They found a little of the tail and nothing more. The squirrel had chewed through the plastic on the high-voltage cable and caused a short, which in turned set one of the super-special fans afire. When we returned to the RRFP we couldn't decide whether to admit we were susceptible to squirrel attacks but other than that our new data center is completely secure, or just leave that part out (the latter won by a landslide.) A team member gave me a little Rocky figurine to make up for the 20-some-odd pages I lost when the electricity went out.
Google docs is a pretty good way to have your work saved. It saves as you write and you can always access it from anywhere. Also, emailing stuff to yourself works.
When I was attempting a novel, I mailed each day’s work to my third-party ‘access from anywhere’ email account.
I keep backups in my laptop, phone (memory cards), Google Drive, external drive, and usb sticks. You might wanna check out reviews before you buy a portable storage. My old external drive died while I was just copying my files. Repair costs much more than buying a new one. (at least from where I live) I loss all the stuff I had back then, save some that's in cloud. Then I found out that certain brand has problems in its hardware. Never gonna buy it again.
I'm fortunate when it comes to hardware. Hubby was able to retrieve all files from the last hard drive crash we experienced. If he can't manage it, one of his coworkers has some software to deal with collapsed disks, etc. I am hyper-conscious of data maintenance and security but sometimes I go overboard. I don't care for Google as an entity but emailing stuff to myself is a great idea! My email server has excellent redundancies. Thanks to all who mentioned that.
