security – Geralds Blog

BACKING UP YOUR DATA (PART TWO)

This is the only subject I’ll write about which has multiple parts – it’s that important. For the first part, check here: https://gerald-hornsby.com/blog/2024/06/09/day-7-monthofblogging-june2024-monthofwriting/ – where I went through some of the potential disasters that might happen which would cause loss of your data (your story files).

So, if you accept that there is a risk, what can you do? These dangers can be reduced, of course, but if one of them does happen, can we minimise its effect?

YES!

We’ll start at one end of the process, when we’re creating our data files which hold our story’s text. And today’s tip is a very simple one – and it comes from a place of horrible experience.

After every hour or two, working on a manuscript, I will not simply save the file. Saving and saving and saving means the only file you have is being overwritten. So I use the “Save As…” option in Scrivener, to save my file under a different filename.

For instance, my first file, when I begin writing, might be:

manuscript-2024-001.scriv

Then, after working for a couple of hours, I’ll save it as:

manuscript-2024-002.scriv

Different filename, different file.
Next morning, before I start, I’ll save the working file to a new filename:

manuscript-2024-003.scriv

All of this means that, at the worst, I might lose a few hours of work if a file goes bad, or for some reason it disappears from my computer (not that one ever has, but you never know).

Is this THAT important? How much is your work worth?

Say, you’ve written 100,000 words at around 250 words an hour (an optimistic guess which includes planning time and staring out of the window time). That’s 400 hours work, MINIMUM. At a minimum wage (the current UK living wage is £11.44 / hr) , that’s £4,576. It’s more likely to be double that or more for a completed manuscript. And yet, you mean to tell me, you only have ONE COPY of that in the whole wide world? Thousands of pounds-worth of your hard work?

That’s not very clever.

“But Gerald,” you might say, “doing all this backup stuff is rather a lot of work, isn’t it? And doesn’t it take up valuable disk space?”

Answer: No, and No.

1. It takes around 5 seconds, maybe less, to save your work under a new filename. Is safeguarding your work worth five seconds a day? Is your time so valuable you can’t afford five seconds?

2. A 50,000 word manuscript, with planning and research and ideas and so on takes up around one megabyte of disk space. You can have 1,000 versions of this to take up one gigabyte. Many laptops now have terabytes of disk space. If you’re really worried, you can delete the older versions of the files, if you so wish.

The last project I worked on included a lot of screenshots, and had a larger file size, ending up at around 20MB. My laptop (bought in 2015) has 500GB of storage space on it. It currently has 47GB of free space. Even with less than 10% space left, I could fit 2,700 versions of this Scrivener file on it, and still have free space.

Seriously, though – having incremental file names is the best way of ensuring that if the worst happens and you lose your working file, you can go back to a previous version which is, at most, a day old.

Part three will be coming along later in the month.

BACKING UP YOUR DATA

Let’s assume for the moment that you’re writing on a laptop or desktop computer. Or a tablet, or maybe even a phone? Let’s just say you’re typing your words into an electronic device of some sort.

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF YOU LOST YOUR WORK?

Yes, I capitalised it, because it’s IMPORTANT.

I know, I know, we’re all used to doing things on the spur of the moment. Quick photo here, quick note there. We assume that, when we open our device, all of our data is still there from when we last looked at it.

But our hold on this data can be tenuous. It’s just a bunch of 1’s and 0’s, after all. Teeny tiny bits of electrical charge.

Now, I’m going to be coming back to this subject again, later in the month, because it’s so important. I’m going to be running through some simple, quick and cheap ideas for how you can make sure that all of your hard work is secure and safe.

You might be asking: “But Gerald, it is really as important as you say?”

It’s a good question. After all, you’ve probably never lost a bit or a nibble or a byte or a word of data in your life.

BUT IT COULD HAPPEN.

It’s happened to me, and I’ve been close to people when it’s happened to them. The outcome of this can be devastating.

If you don’t consider backing up data as important as I do, maybe it’s a good idea if I go through some ways in which you could lose your data.

1) Hardware failure. Old-fashioned hard disks can fail, but even SSDs (Solid State Drives) can glitch or fail. It’s rare, I know, it it does happen.

2) Accident. Laptops and other mobile devices are… mobile. They can fall out of pockets and backpacks. They can be dropped. One of the things about digital devices – they either work, or they don’t. So anything dislodged or shaken inside the casing can cause trouble.

3) Problems at home. Every time we leave our home, it is potentially susceptible to burglary, fire, or flood damage. An unguarded and unattended home has risks.

4) Problems out and about. Theft from cars is common, especially if bags and cases are visible from outside. Devices can be left on a seat on a train, or slip out of pockets and fall under a seat.

I don’t mean to scare you, because there are some very simple, quick and cheap things we can do to ensure all of our data remains safe and accessible. But the time we invest in our creative efforts is huge, and is often worth far more than the devices themselves.

Check back later in the month for the simple measures I TAKE to keep my data safe.

Tag / security

DAY 14 – #MonthOfBlogging #June2024 #MonthOfWriting

DAY 7 – #MonthOfBlogging #June2024 #MonthOfWriting