THE Group for Authors! discussion

Another easy way to get the same result and not send your work to someone else is to open a gmail account and send your work to it. You can save a new version every day and never fill up your gmail account. And if you want to look at an earlier version of your work, just download it from the email.

Glad you had your work saved. It's a terrible feeling to face doing it over.

Ever hear of Carbonite folks. It's cheap and you'll never have to worry about losing your writing, your photos, etc. It's not the only one. I don't care which one your use, but it's the kind of insurance that lets you sleep easy.

Peter wrote: "Ever hear of Carbonite folks. "

I hear ads for Carbonite dozens of times a day on liberal talk radio. My question always is: how secure is my confidentiality on someone else's server? Seems like such places would be ripe targets for hackers; a gold mine of personal data from hundreds or thousands of people. And what about NSA crawlers and Patriot Act abuses? Can the gov't access that data without a warrant as it now does with our bank and library records?

I think you'll find the answers to your questions on their website.

By the way Peter, you only backup the files that you want to back up. You have full control over that. I mainly back up my writing because that would be impossible to re-produce.

Marty wrote: "Peter wrote: "Ever hear of Carbonite folks. "

I hear ads for Carbonite dozens of times a day on liberal talk radio. My question always is: how secure is my confidentiality on someone else's serv..."

If you're concerned about your security, encrypt the files before you upload them. There are programs like TrueCrypt that are uncrackable and are very user friendly. I keep all of my writing, contracts, and work files in TrueCrypt vaults just to be sure no one accesses them that shouldn't.

There are lots of backup options, not just online. But at the very least copy your most precious files to a USB drive or similar and store it in another building. Seriously. We had a house fire a few years back and we would have lost it all except that the backups were stored elsewhere. Storing online is okay assuming you have good internet connection and trust the provider re privacy issues. Personally I prefer owning the process myself.

Carbonite charges for its service. I use one that is free. Plus I alternate flash drives for backup on whatever WIP I'm on. I also use an external HD, make b/u copies on CD's, etc. No need to pay anything to back up.

Some people like to spend their time backing up their files, encrpyting files, taking disks off-site, etc. I like to spend my time writing (and reading). Using a service that does the back-ups automatically is worth a few pennies a year so I don't have one more thing to do that interferes with my getting on with the stuff that counts.

David H wrote: "Carbonite charges for its service. I use one that is free. Plus I alternate flash drives for backup on whatever WIP I'm on. I also use an external HD, make b/u copies on CD's, etc. No need to pay a..."

Who do you like, David? Our grandson recommends dropbox... am sure there are others...ideas?? thanks!

I've been using Windows Skydrive since they opened it, 25 gigs of free storage. I also back up on usb flashdrives. It takes less than a minute.

Dropbox has become my defacto backup and file sharing tool for all my writing related data. Not only are your files backed up "offsite", but they become available to any desktop, laptop, tablet or whatever systems you use. You can also invite others to share folders. Free basic service gives you 2gb of storage which is plenty if all you store there are document files.

I'm a little late to this party, but I wanted to throw in my support for Dropbox. I make sure every new writing doc is saved there so that as I add to it, it automatically uploads, plus it syncs between desktop and laptop (and Droid app).

I once accidentally deleted an entire folder of WiP notes, and didn't realize it for a month. The deleted folder was still stowed away on the Dropbox website, saving me from a frantic panic and rescuing my husband from trying to console me and my muse.


For all of the flash drives that have ended up in the washing machine, I finally gave up on those, and have one portable hard drive to store a monthly back up, and then lock it in a fireproof safe. Both Dropbox and the hard drive might be overkill, but I have a knack for messing up electronics. I'd rather have the extra protection.

Oh, and one other nice thing about Dropbox is the Shared folder. I can send an invite to my critique partner to view it directly on Dropbox instead of emailing attachments with every revision.

Nope, DB is not giving me kickbacks. ;-)