I can't stress enough the importance of having a safe place to store your precious writing. I learned this the hard way last year when my laptop was murdered by cat piss and I lost almost everything! Being broke as I was--and still sometimes am--I couldn't afford the fee of extracting my files. So there they remained, perfectly useless. After that, I decided to look into online data storage. Something good for my wallet and safe for my pretties.
It was a littl fruitless at first, so I basically set up an email account where I could send my work and also used my webook profile for a while to save some stuff. The only problem with that was that I'd forget to update one and not the other, resulting in a big mess. Then someone told me about this magical site called Dropbox. When you update a file, it updates it everywhere. On your laptop, your home computer, your phone, and even online! How awesome is that?
There is also Carbonite where it's only around 50 bucks a year and Mozy who offers a range of prices to suit your budget. So make sure you have a safe place to store your writing. Accidents happen and memory cards can break. Shop around though--why pay more if you don't have to, eh?
Oh do I EVER need someplace safe for my pretties. Especially after what I went through to salvage everything after an old laptop (it was 10 yrs old at the time--a Dell I think) crashed and was thus cleaned out a few years ago. I lost a whole file of work that way.
ReplyDeleteThen this time, recently, when viruses and a screwed up motherboard wrecked my portable Acer. Yeah, me and computers don't work well.
But at least now, I know how to not mess everything up: Keep the laptop clean, keep the files in one spot, don't do ANY traveling with the laptop (the Acer cover was pretty scarred through my journies but I got a good two years outta it) and, most importantly, KEEP YOUR ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE UP TO DATE!
...sigh.
Oh I know how hard it is to be without a laptop even for a few days. Idk how I got through seven months! So glad I got one now.
ReplyDeleteWow, you have got some bad luck when it comes to computers! Hopefully this one lasts you an extra two years eh?
Great little tidbit here. Every writer should have a safe place to store their stuff--OUTSIDE of their computer. I myself use dropbox :)
ReplyDeleteAgree! It makes me so sad when I hear about someone's computer crashing and how they lost all their files :( That is the most horrid feeling in the world.
ReplyDeleteHoly cripes that's awful! I think I've only had my laptop crash once--but then I haven't had one for too long. Very good advice!
ReplyDeleteSmart advice. It's great that there are so many places out there that you can really compare and get a great price. Thanks for a few recommendatons--gonna check them out.
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