Thursday, March 12, 2009

Storage Paranoia



From obsession to paranoia - I wonder if it is me or it happens to other writers and creative people? I'm paranoid about storage of my writing.

I've never had a computer crash (both at workplace and at home) which lose my work. But since I started writing seriously, I'm in constant fear of losing any work-in-progress.

What I do is:

1) I keep pressing Ctrl-S every 15 mins or so to save my W-I-P though knowing that the auto-save of my laptop is 100% functioning.

2) Apart from saving the W-I-P in the hard drive, I got myself a 80GB portable disk (the silver rectangular shape against the red file box in the photo) AND an individual 500GB Maxtor hard disk for storage.

3) I also make paper copy of all my stories and file them in boxes.

This gets better ...

4) I carry my silver box (the 80GB portable disk) and a USB cable everywhere I go. (in case something happens to my house!!!)

Am I crazy? (Possibly)

BTW - I'd like to know how other writers and creative people store their work. Do you make multiple copies and lock them in a safe? ;)


4 comments:

amanda said...

I have a note pad where I jot down ideas and thats pretty much it. If my computer dies so does everything I have written. Hmmm maybe I should go buy a USB.

sophie said...

At least you'll never lose your writing!

I've been meaning to get an external hard-drive for ages. For starters, my computer would run a lot faster if I had things I didn't need every day stored on that, rather than my laptop's hard drive. But I also live in fear of something happening to my laptop. I was actually going to buy an external hard drive last weekend, but I had no money and so, as usual, it became second priority...

Really must get onto that!

Hybrid J said...

Hi Amanda,

Oh, I really think you should get the USB! I had a friend who lost her best ever written essay when her computer crashed. It happened in the middle of the night and I still remember her wailing next door. (We shared the same house.)

Hybrid J said...

Hi Sophie,

Yes, I understand ... if only they could make those gadgets more money-friendly. *sigh* But may be you could start off by getting a USB just like what Amanda mentioned ...