Written by Ken Walker
Recently, a colleague asked if I could send her another copy of a story I had written; she had lost hers in a computer crash.
When I sent it, I wrote, “Ouch; that sounds like a nightmare (times three).”
Her experience reminded me of similar fear-inducing scenarios I lived through after my freelance career had finally gathered some steam.
Manufacturers must be making hard drives better now; they don’t melt down as often as in the mid-1990s to early 2000s. Yet disasters still occur, be it fritzed-out internet service, power failures, malfunctioning laptops, or spilled milk on keyboards.
Nearly thirty years ago, I had no back-up system in place. Sure, I could have copied files to a CD-ROM, but I never found the time. Nor had I ever developed a knack for writing CDs.
Twice, when I had hard drive or other issues that required computer repairs, I kept going by doing research, conducting phone interviews, and catching up on reading material.
I did all this while my heart went pitter-pat as the day slid by and I called the computer shop to see when my desktop would be ready. (When I took it in, I begged on bended knee that they finish in one day.)
Backing up files is much easier now, thanks to thumb drives, removable hard drives, and Dropbox, One Drive, or other cloud-based alternatives. Yet, as my colleague’s experience proves, backing up files doesn’t always get done.
Whether you are writing, editing, producing a newsletter, or handling publishing tasks, having a back-up system in place is essential.
A couple years ago, interruptions in my internet connection made me wonder if my modem were deteriorating. I decided to bite the bullet for a new one but made the mistake of not asking a more experienced friend for help.
When I hooked the new modem to the cable system, I failed to make a good connection. The technician who helped resolve the problem also checked the wiring outside our house. That’s when he discovered a squirrel had nearly chewed a cable wire in two. Thus, the internet problems.
This all meant operating without functioning internet service for a couple days, leaving me unable to back up files to my cloud library. Since this was over the weekend, it wasn’t a major disaster. Still, I knew I needed a backup of what I had worked on, so I copied those files to a thumb drive.
This wound up creating a new habit. Ever since, I have been copying files I’ve worked on that day to my cloud service and the thumb drive. At the end of the week, I copy the entire contents of my hard drive to the cloud and the thumb drive.
You might consider this overkill, but when it comes to being sure I can stay in business, double back-ups stem from well-earned paranoia. When your life revolves around working with words, you can’t afford interruptions.
Ken Walker is a freelance writer and book editor with more than 4,600 article bylines to his credit. He has coauthored, edited or contributed to more than 90 books. The latest released in late April: a substantive edit of He Still Walks on Water by Gary J. Lewis.
Great reminder, Ken! Thank you. I think the idea of redundancy in backing up files is smart (and one I admittedly need to do better with). Any form of backup has its potential for failure. I’ve had problems with Dropbox in the past that have left me a bit of a reluctant user. As for thumb drives, I was copying some files from one computer to another about a year ago when an accidental bump of the thumb drive corrupted the whole thing. I ended up having to purchase recovery software to retrieve the files. So, saving to multiple devices/locations is well worth considering.