Backup copies of your writing
A few days ago my son transferred all of my computer files from a positively ancient six year old computer to my new laptop. The transition took a while and was relatively painless. It would have taken me days to do what my son did in hours.
One of the topics we discussed during this process was the importance of having secure backup copies of all computer files. I don’t have to tell you how devastated you would be if you experienced what happened to a friend of mine.
He had been writing a novel on his laptop and this computer contained the only copy of this story. It was almost finished. He didn’t even have a paper copy or draft on paper. Some low life stole his laptop from his office and it was never recovered. Needless to say, he was devastated and took several years to get back to writing the story from scratch.
Always have backups of your writing.
My son has set up automatic backup systems of all my files. In adition, I will have copies on my stand alone USB drive. I am thinking of using DVD copies of all files, as well as on flash drives. They are now cheap enough to buy several of them and store them in different locations. Several years ago I copied all my writing files on to a CD and left them at my daughter’s home, some two hours’ drive away. This might seem overkill, but we live in an area where there is bush fire potential. We nearly got burned out five years ago so we are no longer complacent.
Good writing.
Writing on a new computer
I have a new laptop computer. Yay!
My old laptop was just over six years old and was getting really, really slow.
I mean – r e a l l y s l o w. There wasn’t much space left on the hard drive either, which was causing me a few headaches too.
That’s all in the past now that I have my new Lenovo T510. Plenty of space, some new features and a lovely new feel. Now I have no excuse – I should be very productive.
My son is the techno wizz in our family and he helped me transfer all of my files from the old computer to the new one. Everything seems to be working fine, though I am still getting used to using Windows 7. One of the things my son is very careful is making backups of all one’s computing files. I don’t do this often enough on the separate USB drive I have for this purpose. I did do a full backup of all files before leaving on my current holiday visiting my son in Sydney. He is also very careful about backups of all files and he has set up some safeguards for my files too.
All I have to do now is get on with my writing…
…but I am on holiday for another week.
Good writing.