Yikes! My hard drive crashed today.

Joy! I use the Mac’s built-in Time Machine functionality, so that I’m continually backing up to a 1T hard drive. I lost–nothing. Took my MacBook Pro (unlike most laptops, it’s not a do-it-yourself hard-drive machine) to the techs; 3 hours later, voila! The Mac’s ready to bring home. I turn it on, plug in my backup drive–and 3 hands-off hours later, all 350 gigs of applications and data are back–and even the tabs I had open in my browser are open.

Backup was not this easy in years past. And for many PC users it still is not. I haven’t done the research, but I use MirrorFolder on my PC; every action I take on the PC is mirrored on my backup drive. If the PC drive crashes, I’m completely up-to-date.

If you are serious about writing a book, you should either keep all of your writing (and other important files) in a secure online service, like FastPencil.com, or get a good backup system. Otherwise, you are betting against entropy–the proven tendency of the universe to go from order to disorder. Right here, on your hard drive.

Filed under: book writing • tech • write a book

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