Baby Got Back(up)

5 years ago my house in Keswick, VA was robbed and my laptop was stolen.  Years worth of work on that computer, and I hadn’t backed up for 6 months, so I lost everything I’d done in a half a year.  I was devastated.  It’s bad enough to have someone go through your home and mess with your things, but to know that so much hard work is gone, well, that’s just about unbearable.  Yeah, insurance eventually replaced the laptop, but no one could ever replace what was on the old computer.  That was gone for good.

5 years later, and the replacement computer’s hard drive is bad.  Thankfully, I learned from my mistake back then, and I back up at least once a month, usually once a week, on an external drive.    So I haven’t lost any work.

I read that Hemingway’s first wife Hadley packed up all his manuscripts, every page he had written, and took them with her on a trip to meet him in Switzerland.  The case containing all of that work was stolen off the train before she even got out of Paris.  He had no copies of any of it, and had to start everything over, all of his short stories and novel beginnings.

Hemingway turned out fine, but don’t you take chances with the product of hours of sweating over a keyboard.  Back up your work, and back it up often. I hope you’ll never need that back up, but if you do, you’ll be glad you took the time.  I know I am.