How do you save your work?

**TheIELighten** · February 17th, 2012, 07:03 PM

Hello

I was wondering how all of you writers who use a computer solely to do all of your writing and world building on save your manuscripts and world building/story planning details?

Do you use online backup? Flash drives? Your computer's hard drive? Email? Or do you employ some other means?

I am looking for ideas ..............

**MrBF1V3** · February 17th, 2012, 08:04 PM

I work on my older laptop, keep a dedicated flash drive fairly well updated, and occasionally copy the files to our main computer. I'm never more than a few days out of date.

B5

**Rob B** · February 17th, 2012, 08:14 PM

Flash drive, hard drive, and sometimes, I e-mail the document(s) to myself.

**RedMage** · February 17th, 2012, 08:19 PM

I do not back-up half as often as I should. When I do, I have an external hard drive and a private/closed Mobile Me account that I use. (which I know is going to be upgraded to the Cloud system--or something like that--and all I can think is that I hope it is more user friendly!) I like the idea of the Mobile Me/Cloud system because, as long as you have an account and a computer with internet access, you can access your work from anywhere. Albeit, it would work best when it is all current and up to date.

Since I don't update very often, I'm usually just copying whole folders rather than individual files.

**Atw** · February 17th, 2012, 10:01 PM

I have two flash drive that I save my work onto. I like having all my work separate from my computer, and flash drives are my favored method.

**hippokrene** · February 18th, 2012, 05:43 AM

I have an automatic back-up every Sunday to an external HD.

**Taramoc** · February 18th, 2012, 06:31 AM

I use Dropbox. Automatically syncs your files to every PC you use (I write on my Desktop and laptop). And also keeps a backup of everything, so if you need to revert to a previous version is easy as pie. Highly recommended.

**Holbrook** · February 18th, 2012, 07:05 AM

Originally Posted by Taramoc

I use Dropbox. Automatically syncs your files to every PC you use (I write on my Desktop and laptop). And also keeps a backup of everything, so if you need to revert to a previous version is easy as pie. Highly recommended.

Same here. Even if I use the laptop off line, when out and about, next time I am at home it backs up and I can access it on the desktop.

**zachariah** · February 18th, 2012, 01:05 PM

Some friendly advice from an IT monkey:

Do not trust USB sticks with anything.

Do not trust consumer hard drives, internal or external, with anything you can't afford to lose.

Anything you've spent hundreds of hours creating should be backed up to enterprise-level storage. For almost everyone, emailing it to yourself using a major provider (GMail, Hotmail etc) qualifies. For the paranoid, buy yourself a domain from a decent but cheap hosting company (start with the big sheds like Bluehost, Godaddy and look around to see if you can better their deals), and dump your stuff in the inaccessible areas of the webspace they give you.

For the truly paranoid, use a computer with no internet access and print your stuff every night and put it in a safe.

Belts and braces. I'm not saying never use USB sticks, they're great for transferring data, but always have important data in more than one place where you can.

**Cirias** · February 18th, 2012, 03:07 PM

I save all my stuff to Skydrive, aswell as backing up to a USB stick. As I progress further into my novel, I find myself becoming more and more paranoid about storage!

**TheIELighten** · February 18th, 2012, 08:07 PM

Thank You everyone for all of your replies. Especially the warning about flash sticks. Unfortunately I am going to be moving and losing my internet connection, but my ipod does allow me to save email drafts when not connected, so perhaps between gmail drafts and flashdrives I shall get through.

**TraciLoudin** · February 21st, 2012, 01:00 PM

I'd recommend Drop box and Google docs. Way more organized than emailing it to yourself. You can keep things in folders (or labels in the case of Google docs) that mirror your file system on your computer. I upload the latest version every time I finish writing.

**kmtolan** · February 21st, 2012, 01:28 PM

I use a backup hard drive as well as a copy on my main machine and my portable. Nothing "in the cloud" for me. I don't like the idea of some distant server holding my work. One change to ye olde Terms of Service and presto! What's yours is theirs. Server crashes. Hackers. Hell, my life is already complicated as is (grin).

Kerry

**Zalz** · February 21st, 2012, 01:44 PM

I store it on the laptop that I write on, of course.

I store it on two different USBs, one which I keep at home, one which I generally have on my person.

I finally store it in an external harddisk that is attached to my desktop.

If my laptop breaks down, my house catches fire and burns the harddisk + USB, and I get robbed of the USB on my person, all at the same time...

Well, in that case I will assume the universe is trying to send me a message.