Please back up your book

[whitehawke]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I just heard of someone who had saved her novel on one floppy disk. The other day she went to work on her book as usual, but the floppy was broken and she lost 16,000 words. Furtunately, her dad was able to salvage her work off the hard drive. Anyway, she hadn't known to save it on CD, but now she does. I just thought I would bring this up incase there are others out there who don't know to do this. Also, please make sure that you make your CDs compatible with other computers. I once took a copy of my novel around to show a friend, but their PC couldn't open the file. I probably over do it a little, cause I have about 4 CDs with 8-10 copies of one novel on each one. Hee hee. :D Anyway, I hope that this helps someone to keep their work safe.

[dublinheart]

Good advice at the appropriate time, because I've just started to put together a book. Thanks

[whitehawke]

Good advice at the appropriate time, because I've just started to put together a book. Thanks
Cool, !thumbsup! glad that I could help. May you do really well with your book. :)

[ChristChild]

Any novel not over about 210,000 words should easily fit on a floppy in WordPerfect or Word format. I always keep two copies with me in my binder with my paper copy, and I keep two copies on different areas of my hard drive. The floppies will eventually wear out, but usually both will not wear out at precisely the same time. I then replace the worn out floppy, and still have the other floppy with the latest version of the manuscript. When my CD burner worked, I use to burn copies to a CD as well.

Shane

[Ellesar]

I usually just save it on my hard drive on my computer after I'm done working on it for the time being. Maybe I should start saving them on a CD also...

[whitehawke]

I have just heard that some author's also save their work to gmail as well. Such a cool idea. !thumbsup!

[kerux]

Kind of reminds me of what a prof. in college told us once. "Always keep a backup of any paper, because we have been known to lose things or throw them away on accident, so be safe and smart."

[whitehawke]

I usually just save it on my hard drive on my computer after I'm done working on it for the time being. Maybe I should start saving them on a CD also...

I think it would be a very good idea, Ellesar, Computer crashs can kill a lot of hard work and cause a lot of strife. Do you also save a printed copy? I do. I cant stand the idea of lossing a single, well placed word. :D
Rulan

[FireFeet]

Yahoo has a handy briefcase where I always keep a back-up of my work, and I'm sure there are other sites that offers this type of service as well.

[wgjones3]

http://www.ripway.com is one.

You can also email yourself a copy of your wok. As long as you're emailing it to a service like Hotmail or Yahoo, the email service will hang on to the email and attatchment even if your harddrive crashes.

[Sea Star]

You can also email yourself a copy of your wok. As long as you're emailing it to a service like Hotmail or Yahoo, the email service will hang on to the email and attatchment even if your harddrive crashes.

Wow! I had never even thought of emailing it to myself at a Hotmail site. I keep an account there altho it isn't my normal email server, great idea, thank you for sharing that! I have also emailed a copy to my mom & my sister, figuring the odds of all three of our computers crashing at the same time are fairly slim!

[whitehawke]

Gmail has more room than hotmail. I have over 2000 MB's of storage space. And no unsightly picture adds.

[alicelewis]

My husbands computer is connected to mine via LAN (Local Area Network) so besides saving my work to my harddrive, I e-mailed it to him to save on his harddrive as well.
Then I also had a paper copy of my work. It would be just awful to lose work that I spent so much time on. And then the time is not the only thing. It is the gut effort of turning out good writing.
Alice
http://wordsfromagarden.blogspot.com

[Jess411]

I'm paranoid about losing my work. I think because we had a computer get hit by lightening, and I lost my only paper copy of my poems (there were about forty that I'd edited very carefully). Now, I have all my work saved on my hard drive, on disks, emailed to myself and I keep a hard copy.

[wgjones3]

Did you have it plugged into a surge protector when it got zapped?

[whitehawke]

I'm paranoid about losing my work.

I don't think paranoid has anything to do with it. I think it comes down to being careful with the work you've done. All those hours you've put in. It's a horrible feeling when you even think you have lost something.
I have a surge protecter for my PC, but I still unplug the whole thing when I'm finished or there's a storm coming. I don't care what they say. To me, a hunk of plastic doesn't look that strong compared to so many thousand vults of lightning. :eek:

[ruki]

This just happened to me on Friday, April 15, ahh I remember the date well.

I'd been having trouble rebooting the computer, and turned it on that morning and NOTHING. I did it again and it had some screen that said "go to the last known source ... something something" something about safe mode and a couple of other options.

Well none of the black screens suggestions worked, So I'm pretty much starting from scratch. The only thing that saved me is I'd been sending a lot of my work to be edited and proofread, so a lot of it, Not all, but a lot of the material was still maintained as attachments in my email.

The computer I have now does have a burner so that won't happen to me again.