A couple of days ago, my primary desktop computer died. I had some concerns, like long was it going to take me to replace it and how much money was it going to cost me, but one thing I was not concerned about at all was, “is my novel backed up?”
There are lots and lots of different ways to back up your files. I recommend (a) using some sort of automated system, and (b) using more than one. Automated backups are great because, while all of us have good intentions, a manual process that you always forget to do isn’t a backup. I also recommend using more than one system. Why? Because things fail, and hardware fails. The third rule of backups is occasionally test your backups and make sure that they are working. There’s nothing worse than thinking you are backing up your files only to discover that the process quit working a long time ago.
I’m writing my novel using Google Docs, which saves all of my work on Google Drive (automatically) and also stores a copy on my hard drive. Every night at midnight, a scheduled task on my computer makes a copy of my novel folder and sends it to Dropbox. If my computer dies, I still have a copy on my Google Drive. If my computer dies and Google goes out of business on the same day, I have another copy in my Dropbox. If my computer dies on the same day that both Google and Dropbox close their doors, that’ll be a good sign to quit writing.
Lots of people save their work on their computer’s hard drive and back it up to a local USB drive, either a stick or an external hard drive. Any backup is better than no backup, but remember, if your house catches on fire or gets hit by a tornado, both copies of your work are physically in the same place. Sticking a copy of your work in a free cloud service or your email inbox ensures that there’s another copy “somewhere else.” If you’re the paranoid type who thinks hackers and nerds might be reading your email and stealing all your best plot twists, you can always carry a USB thumb drive around with you. If you choose to do that, you might spend a little extra and buy one that comes with encryption capabilities. They usually only cost a few bucks more, and will keep your files safely encrypted until you enter a password to access them. In case you lose your thumb drive, this will prevent prying eyes from accessing your work.
This isn’t designed to be a technical blog and I don’t want to get into the ins and outs of backups, only to say that if you are writing, you should be doing them regularly. If you need help coming up with some sort of automated system, any of your nerdy friends should be able to whip up a scheduled batch file that backs up your work for you on a regular basis. Get a backup system that is so foolproof that you never have to worry about losing your work.