Time for backups

I realise it's been about two weeks since my last blog post. I apologise. Life stuff got in the way. Despite that, I've been able to write and I've been able to back up my work.

The other day fellow Romance author Julia Quinn suffered a computer hiccup that caused three newly-written pages of her WIP to go missing. That sort of thing make you want to freak out when it happens to you.

Thanks to a clue from a fan and some deeper digging, she was able to find a copy of those three pages hidden on her computer.

And there was much rejoicing and grateful sharing of some really nice prose on her Facebook page.

Most writing programs have a little temporary file backup they create of works in progress, just in case the computer goes *hiccup*, as they are wont to do. These backup files have saved my sweet rear end more than once. (They have also made me look like Scotty at work on occasion.) However, if the computer works as it should, and you close down the program properly, those temp files most likely are not kept.

By day, I'm an IT professional and have been for the past twenty-five years. I know a LOT about computers, how they work, how they fail, and have personally seen some of the absolute worst things that could possibly happen to data.

Back up your work.

Do it regularly, do it frequently, do it multiple times, places, methods. Don't just rely on a single thumb drive to hold the unique contents of your laptop. Make more than one copy, and store at least one of those copies off-site. Don't keep all your backup copies together in the same location as your original, ie, that thumb drive in your laptop bag.  (Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not disparaging the delightful thumb drive--far better than the floppy disks they replaced. Just don't make a thumb drive your only backup.)

If your computer dies, if your laptop is stolen, if your house burns down, do you have access to your backup copies, should you need to restore to new hardware?  Consider keeping DVD copies of your work at a friend's house or at the day job, and keeping stuff in some cloud somewhere.

Losing three pages of brilliant prose can hurt. Imagine losing three years or even three decades of work.

Back up your work, folks, back up your work.

You have been warned.

__________________________
Her Grace has always believed in backups, since her first storage medium was the failure-prone 5.25" floppy disk.

Back Up Your Work!

I know, two posts from me in one day.  Normally I'd space stuff out, but this is very important:

BACK UP YOUR WORK!
BACK UP YOUR WORK!
BACK UP YOUR WORK!

Reason #9:  Cryptoviruses are Scary. Like, total freaking-out make-grown-men-cry scary.

Today at the Day Job one of our users picked up a cryptovirus.  It scanned her whole computer (including connected network drives) and encrypted all her data. Then, it told her that unless she paid them a ransom of  US$300/EU€300, her data would remain encrypted forever.  The program included payment options that are rather untraceable.

If you read about something like this in the news you'd be, "whatever".  But to witness it in real life was SCARY.  The moment we identified that we were dealing with a cryptovirus, we went to battle stations.

1.  We unplugged the computer from the network.  Isolation of an infected computer is paramount.

2.  We diagnosed the disease.  While you'd think that step #3 would be the logical next step, we always do a touch of investigation when this sort of thing happens.  What are we dealing with?  Is it a danger to anything else on our system? This is important in case something spreads.

When we tried to clean it off the machine, it upped the stakes:

See that bit at the bottom that says if you attempt to clean off the virus, your stuff will remain encrypted forever?  That's just mean.

3.  Nuke the machine from orbit.  It's the only way to be sure.  Now that the machine is confirmed infected, we completely mind-wipe the sucker--virus, documents, operating system, everything.  Completely gone.

What, you say?  What about the poor lady's documents?

This, dear readers, is why we have backups.

Backing up your work isn't just for writers and accountants.  If you're an average joe with a computer, chances are you've got personal stuff on there--photos of the kids, etc.  A cryptovirus will scramble these into an unusable state.  I've lost personal stuff like photographs before (when a HDD went ker-splodey).  Broke my heart.

I don't want to see that happen to you.

Please make a backup of everything on your computer that is important to you.  (If it's not important, why are you keeping it?)  External hard drives have come down in price. Even the humble thumb drive may save your bacon one day.  Other computers, burnt CDs, Clouds...  There's plenty of options.

I will cry if I hear something happened to you and you didn't have adequate backup.

Go back up your work.  Please.

__________________________
Her Grace believes inadequate backups are like kicking puppies. It makes the whole world cry.  This Public Service Announcement brought to you by real-life tragedy.