Back up, back up, back up!

I've been doing an editing course run by Angela James (fantastic by the way). One of the things I've learnt during this course is about using clouds as a back up method. If you are like me you think clouds are only found in the sky, but apparently not.

At the moment I use DVD's, flash drives and windows live office to back up my work. But it was a bit ad hoc. I wouldn't do it every day. I was definitely putting too much faith in my laptop.

But now I don't have to worry. I'm using a cloud back up system. There are a few around that are free (DropBox, and the one I've chosen SugarSync). SugarSync gives 5MB free space and you select the folders you want to be backed up. Then every single time you save a file in a folder that you've added to SugarSync it backs it up *immediately*. It runs in the background all the time - so if you lase your hard-drive, you don't lose any information.

Even better, you can set up your tablet, smartphone or another computer with SugarSync which means you don't have to worry about transporting files. You can log into your SugarSync account and access them straight away - no confusing your current version or accidently saving over something.

I feel much better knowing my work is automatically being backed up the minute I save it.

Back Up!!!

I'm having computer troubles.

Not small hiccups where MSWord suddenly reformats my document, but the scary kind. I'll be using my computer, not doing anything much, just typing away at my ms, when suddenly it turns off. No warning, no shut down, just bang, no power-everything gone-kinda crash.


I think it might be terminal, and I'm very worried I'll lose something important. It certainly highlights the need to back up. I've backed up my files twice (just in case) and am sending my ms edits to hotmail every night, but a few times I've been caught out. I get on a roll and am madly typing, when WAM, there she goes. And everything is gone. So I'm trying to save every few minutes, but time becomes a vacant black hole when I get into the groove.