TWCL

[Spencey]

Last week I switched on my computer and it failed to boot up. No matter what I did I couldn't get it up and running and I took it to a specialist. It turned out the Hard Disk had died.

This was inconvenient and expensive to the tune of £170, but the true cost of this crash was every single hi-res version of my comic "The Cat Comic" which I had never backed up. All of them. Gone. There are now only the lo-res web versions. Goodbye cats in print.

So, moving on, I wanted to share this experience so that others might learn from my mistake. Be smarter than me and take a backup of your work. Better yet, set up a system of automatic back-ups (which I now have) and save yourself a lot of heartache.

Hope this helps.
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[iser77]

I'm sorry to hear that

Which automatic backup system are you currently using? Is it free?
I'm doing manual backups myself, once every month or so - saving to an external hard drive or DVD-ROM, and occasionally uploading to remote storage servers.
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Yours Truly, "My 25 Percent"

[ttallan]

Oh, ouch. I'm really sorry to hear that.

It hasn't happened to me recently, but I've lost enough things over the years due to a failure to save that I'm pretty good about it now. I hope. I use Mozy, a service which automatically uploads all my files (and subsequently, any files that I've changed) to a remote server for backup. So far I haven't had to pull anything back off of it, but it's a comfort to know it's there.
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[smbhax.com]

I've been telling myself for a week that I need to make a hard backup of all my stuff. Methinks I shall do it now.
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[mooncity]

UGH! I feel your pain. Fortunately I was able to recover everything when my computer up and died on me. I save backup copies on an external drive, and/or burn 'em to DVD-ROM. And I have a back-up of the PC itself scheduled for at least once a month. Need to backup to the external drive this week!
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Mooncity
Reversing the polarity of the neutron flow since 1976!


The comic strip that never was.

[Lifes a Witch]

Oh Spency! *sympathy*

Thanks for the reminder. So sorry that it was a hard-learned lesson, tho.
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[Marooned]

Ok people, if nothing else - get yourself one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00176NOCM/ref=oss_T15_product



Super simple to use, set it up once, pick what it backs up. Plug it in once a week and walk away and it backs up everything. That is my first backup choice.

Secondly, I have this LaCie external HD

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001KFH6JC/ref=oss_T15_product



While you can automate that or use software, I simply drag my whole Marooned folder there every now and then as a second backup. It also functions as a scratch disk for Photoshop, which helps.

Lastly, get a free account at Dropbox

https://www.dropbox.com/



I believe you get 2 GIG free space. Put your most important files there, so even if you have a fire, and your house burns down killing your backup drives, you STILL have a backup of key stuff.

And last but not least, I have burned CDs of my stuff too.

Yes, that's FOUR backups. No, it's not really excessive to me - losing work sucks. But at least do ONE
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[dpat57]

Yeah it's happened to us all, I guess, and it ain't pretty. Now I backup daily to USB sticks (I have 7 which I cycle through the week, one for each day) plus I copy latest updates to a USB hard drive, plus I email ZIP files to myself once a week. Regular fresh multiple copies in different locations. It's worth an extra few minutes' work at the end of the day.
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[Zoe Robinson]

Being someone who works on multiple PCs and Macs during the day, I have to say a Dropbox is not only essential but if you set it up right, it becomes second nature.

All my writing work is stored in folders in my Dropbox, so when I click on my 'writing' shortcut (either on my PC taskbar or the Mac's Dashboard), I open the Dropbox instead of a normal folder on the computer. After that, there's no difference; yet when I turn off one computer and turn on another, there are my files.

I agree about having multiple backups, too. Burn a CD and copy your important stuff to another physical hard drive. A separate partition on the same drive is not enough. If the backup drive is in another computer, all the better.

As a final point, if you've got one of those lovely printer/scanner/copier things that has a card reader, see if it shows up as a network drive on your computer. If it does (the HP Photosmart C4780 does and I think Lexmark ones do, too) then consider getting as large a card as you can and putting it in the printer, so you have a separate, very portable backup there, too (I keep my music backed up on mine so I can play it from anywhere in the house).
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[steve_i]

I feel you pain Spencey. The same thing happended to me last week, but I didn't have quite such a dramatic loss. I only lost the hi-res versions of my last nine pages, but it's still massively inconvenient as I'll have to do them all again when I'm ready to print the comic. I'll be backing up after every page from now on!
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Blurred Lines Comics

[nothinghappenedtoday]

This thread just prompted my to back up everything to DVD. Before I started drawing my strip digitally, I never really had to worry about this -- my pen & ink originals are all on illustration board in a portfolio somewhere...
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nothinghappenedtoday.com

[henspacecwb]

Feel for you.

I've got a lot of stuff, and not much discipline, so I've been using a automatic online backup for quite a while now. Carbonite, which is unlimited, is the one I use but there are others. Mozy and Dropbox give you 2 GB free so they're probably worth a look.
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[Beertycoon]

ouch man that sucks...I've been meaning to make backups of all my stuff for a while now, I guess now's a good time to do it!
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[Spencey]

Thanks so much everyone for all the replies and back-up software suggestions.

iser77- I run a Mac which previously had OS 10.4 (pre-Time Machine) but when the new hard disk was installed we upgraded to 10.6 which has Time Machine as standard. So Time Machine will now take an hourly back-up in the background on an external hard disk, so I feel a little better about the whole situation.

ttallan - I hadn't thought about an uploading system, but it seems like a great idea, especially in the event of something happening to both the computer and external hard disk.

Glad my post served as a reminder to some of you good people to back things up. Although I lost The Cat Comic's hi-res files, luckily I had backed up my other projects so things could have been much worse. I did keep the faulty hard disk drive and I plan on taking it to a data specialist once my bank account has recuperated from having to buy the new hard disk, so you never know, I may yet be able to retrieve those cats. They do have nine lives after all
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[Metruis]

Zoe Robinson wrote:

agree about having multiple backups, too. Burn a CD and copy your important stuff to another physical hard drive. A separate partition on the same drive is not enough. If the backup drive is in another computer, all the better.

Oh... yes... I second this so hard.

Dear anyone listening.

The last time my computer died... I was reading a webcomic. An ad came up. Suddenly, popups everywhere, my desktop background changed, things went CRAZY, my resources shot skyhigh, and I was barely able to say to the person I was chatting with "shit, my computer just got a virus" before things went mad. I managed to get screenshots saved of the popups and the desktop change and, on another computer, began searching for a way to solve this virus. The most suggested option was MalWareBytes renamed so the virus wouldn't catch it. I ran this, and removed 64 viruses. It couldn't remove everything. The next time I tried to run it, it wouldn't run.

"Shit," I said to myself. "Time to back up everything and reformat."

I didn't turn off my computer. I plugged in an external harddrive and began the tedious process of backing everything up. Thanks to the viruses slowing everything down, this took a couple days. It was running that slow. About 3/4s of the way through my second drive partition--the one that was taking the longest, everything on C was nice and safe now--mom came and said "You know you don't have to back up your F drive, right? If you reformat you can just reformat C."

I looked at the percent and shrugged. "Eh, it's been this long, I'll wait it out." I did. Everything on my F drive was backed up. I ran virus scans on the externals and flash drives I was using to back up files. Removed the stuff that had snuck on board. With a gulp, I set aside my files, afraid of the external dying, and turned off my computer for the night.

I turned it on the next day to get a few things I'd missed in the backup process, things that wouldn't save naturally--Photoshop swatches and actions, and gradients for one. It crashed.

It wouldn't reboot.

I couldn't get into safe mode. I couldn't get into anything. "Thank goodness I backed everything up yesterday!" I said, and put in the Windows disc. Started the process of reformatting...

...It didn't work.

Yes, that's right. It didn't work. It wouldn't reformat. I tried again. I tried in different ways. I tried probably about 10 times to reformat that harddrive and every time it looped back to the start. I thank anything there is to thank that I DIDN'T KNOW you could only reformat one part of your harddrive and backed everything up. I had to buy a new harddrive.

Back up your files.

I keep all my stuff on an external harddrive, and really important stuff I email to myself, at least, occasionally.

And... sorry to hear you lost everything. Ouch. I haven't lost everything on my computer since I was 14 but I still kick myself for the things I've lost. Ever since then I've been obsessive about backing things up.
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