‘Isn’t it ironic…It’s like rain on wedding day….’
I wrote here before about karma. I kinda made a joke of it. I don’t believe that good things will come to you by just sitting on your ass all day long praying, wishing and dreaming about them. I firmly believe that you have to work hard, study and stay positive.
You gotta watch your energy. Yeah, yeah….I know I sound like a hippy but I am a Reki Master so it is part and parcel of who I am. Blame my grandmother who bought a book on positive thinking in the 50’s, I read it every year from the age of 7. I thought it was the most interesting concept, like, ever. Until I got side-tracked by The Famous Five, boys and TV.
Why am I ranting about karma, energy and watching it? Well, a few weeks ago, a twitter friend of mine, Martina Reilly, lost a lot of her work and was forced to do a lot of re-writes. I felt sorry for her and tweeted her my consolations. But I thought how could anyone loose data in this day and age? We have USB’s with huge capacity, we have the cloud* and we have external hard-drives. Yeah OK, so I once lost everything (my first teaching practice data), but since I have bought an external hard-drive, so I was golden. Right?
Wrong! The only thing golden about me is my hair.And even that needs help! After having broken my 3rd laptop in as many years I was using my sisters one. Thanks Sheevaun! I backed-up sure, but sporadically (love you Cher!). Now, while sporadically may be the best thing to have come from Clueless it is not a word that we should use when discussing backing up data.
And I should know this, sure wasn’t my first job writing up the procedures for my IT department?
To go in a tangent for a sec, how many times have you read interviews about women writers being asked; ‘How can you juggle writing and being a mother?’ or ‘How do you manage your relationships and writing?’ Well these questions use to make my blood boil. You never, ever, read interviews of men being asked these questions.
I guess I never realised what special roles us ladies play in society. We can earn the dough sure, but we also have to cook, serve and clean up after it. Equal rights exist in the fiction we write.
Now, to combine my two parts to this story, I did not have any procedure to back-up, and while tidying my laptop and USB I was being pestered and bombarded with questions by someone wanting my attention, urgently! As a result I ended up deleting my book. I hit the delete button when I was mid crys of, ‘give me a minute, please! I will help you in a minute!’ Hello delete button, hello being a chick who is distracted by domestic duties and goodbye book.
It. Is. Gone.
Thankfully I entered the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair so I have the first three chapters, at least. I tweeted about my loss and as a result Caren Kennedy, has backed up her data. So that’s good, I helped my karmic future.
My tips? Have a look at my procedure and come up with your own then FOLLOW it!
- Use three separate sources to back-up data such as:
- The cloud (*saving to google docs, Dropbox, or saved drafts in email.)
- A large capacity USB stick (you can work on the go)
- An external hard-drive.
- Have a DR plan (disaster recovery) If my laptop dies I have my work saved on x and can work from…
- Back-up to all your 3 devices daily.
- And for the love of God, don’t get as easily distracted as me!
Oh Gawwd, how I now pray, wish, and still dream I can find my lost data somewhere and yes, the irony is killing me softly.
COMMENT ME PEEPS!
What back-up procedures do you use?
Has this ever happened to you?
This has happened to me (an IT guru (!!)) about 5 times, will I ever learn?
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Michelle Moloney King 
Love that phrase Elise, words to live by!
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I've been bad about using Cloud/external hard drive. I have my USB & I copy to a CDR daily. I hope it is enough…I might have to consider the cloud 😉 Karma, once you know better, you best do better
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Hi Krystal,
It is so good to be back, I have the laptop back and it is working great and this had to happen!
You are so right to use email to back up, when I think of the work that I put into it….
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Oh. My. God! I have my books backed up on my home laptop and carry a USB everywhere I go. Occasionally I email the files to myself…just to be safe!
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Hi Orla,
I have heard so many wonderful things about the cloud, I installed Dropbox today and will use that EVERY day, along with my other methods, of course.
Life is like school….will we ever stop learning?!
Onwards
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Hi Louise,
No such thing as a stupid question. I had saved a copy of the book onto my USB stick and deleted the file and then my recycle bin. Then I accidentally deleted it from the USB. So it is gone. I have since learnt that if I had left the USB in the pc there may have been a way I could have gotten the data back. But I didn't.
Still I can remember it so I just need to work harder. And BACK UP!
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Okay going to say something really stupid here, but when you press the delete button, does it not just go in the recycle bin, which you can go into, right click the file and restore?
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Great post Michelle. You are so right about backing up. As another great female singer put it, “You don't know what you've got til it's gone”…
Years ago I lost a file I had been working on for ages. Still haven't got over the trauma!! Now I am a backup nut.
My favourite backup option these days is the Cloud one as you mention above – specifically, Dropbox. I can use any one of the many computers in our house (our house is where computers go to retire, thanks to a husband in the IT industry). All my files are there regardless of which computer I use, and they are always backed up.
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