This week, we’ve talked about how to create copies of your work so that the actual loss of a file or even a computer doesn’t derail your whole career. But what about other acts of stupidity, like accidentally deleting a big section of text from your work in progress without noticing it? What if you […]
A good backup system creates multiple copies of everything to prepare for whatever circumstances may arise while remaining convenient (which means you’ll actually use your system). Here is a good, solid, and fairly easy backup system to make sure you have a reasonably recent copy of all your work whenever you need it.
In addition to local, immediately available backups, you also want to keep a backup somewhere off-site, in case of fire, flooding, earthquake, or other traumatic events that could destroy your home. One option is to store a set of backup CDs or DVDs at a friend or family member’s house, in a safe deposit box, […]
The most common danger facing your electronic documents is the loss of a file from your hard drive. Data loss can be caused by several factors: human error (accidentally deleting a file, saving over an existing file), hardware failure (hard drive failure, file corruption, the death of a computer), even malicious intent (a virus or […]
At the climax of Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys (and the film adaptation with Michael Douglas) the protagonist sees his novel manuscript, several thousand pages of typescript, blown into the river — lost forever. Though in the novel, the loss of his manuscript frees the author from years of stagnation and paralyzation, any writer can’t help but cringe […]
Like anything else technological, a website needs to be maintained and backed up. There is a lot that can go wrong with your website — hackers could get in and mess with your files, your web host could experience a hardware failure and not have sufficient backups to restore from, you could accidentally delete a crucial file […]
Regular readers have seen me rave about Adobe’s online word processor Buzzword before. Written in Flash, Buzzword provides a writing environment so slick that it’s actually inspired me to write more! This week, Adobe launched Acrobat.com, folding Buzzword and a couple of other projects they’ve been working on into a somewhat integrated interface. The total […]
