As a freelancer I obviously have to maintain my own back up of my work. It has amazed me in the past going in to some companies how little attention is paid into organising a CD/DVD back up. This means when an old job needs to be revised it takes forever to find it.
Personally I have 2 external hard drives which I use to back up all the current work on my Computer most nights (I confess I have the odd lazy day). I use these hard drives in rotation so hopefully I have two copies on external drives.
All completed jobs I put in a folder called “to backup” – within that I name folders by month (eg. June 2007 bk up 1) – then within that client then by job number. I burn 2 DVD copies before I remove the work from my computer and then use DiskTracker (Mac OS X) a great little programme which catalogues your CDs or DVDs.
If ever you need an old job you then open DiskTracker and can search by client, job number, job , date etc and it tells you which CD/DVD your job is on. It definately speeds up finding files
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11 Comments
That sounds like a pretty cool program. Our professors always tell us to back-up our stuff on at least 3 different things. I use my iPod to transfer and hold files (I actually had to take all of the music off to hold projects lol), each student also gets their own space on the course sever so that helps a lot, and I then I keep stuff on my laptop. I know I really need to backup my stuff on a CD or DVD in case something happens. The course server crashed the year before I started going there so all of the students and teachers lost everything they had on there, so they were screwed if they didn’t have anything backed up.
Its awful when you lose data. My old Mac crashed and the system and all the work vanished. Luckily I had back ups of nearly everything, but you always find there is something you lost, a useful programme you downloaded or your lorem ipsum. Its a nightmare to get everything back up and running too, its a whole day to reload everything and get it running as you want it.
I don’t back-up as much as I should.
In fact, you’ve prompted me to do it today.
Thanks Tara.
I don’t think anyone does (me included). I hate all admin and stuff like that, the worst is – accounts, and invoicing and quoting and….
I’m with you on accounts. For sure.
Don’t forget to back up your blog as well!
Do you have off-site backups as well? Mr paranoia that I am, if your backups are sitting next to your computer, they’re not that much safer than no backup. There’s plenty of online storage these days including your own webspace for that matter!
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your comments.
If you call an offsite back up in the boot of my car (how sad) then yes! I keep a copy of my archived work at my parents house too.
Online Storage is a good idea, but being print based and having large files means it takes a long while to upload.
Note to Self: Back up blog tonight!
Wise words. I’m a great believer in backing up off-site. I use my host’s ftp space and gmail. There’s gigs and gigs out there for free that we don’t use.
Obviously it take longer than burning to cd / dvd…
Hi Rob
Thanks for leaving a comment. I think any type of back up is well worth it. Its saved me a few times.
Problem solved. 5 days ago I bought a Western Digital MyBook 320 GB that comes with a very good automated backup system that you can schedule which folders (including their sub folders) and when to store them to my MyBook.
It is external sturdy and reliable.
I have been looking for a bigger back up disk. My 40GB portable back up drive is struggling a bit, I will take a look at Western Digital.