Backing Up Work

Ever been in a situation like this? In that case, you are living life on a razor wire!

Backing up of work is a standard instruction we get when we join the university or start a job. But how many times have we lapsed into that dangerous zone of complacency? It may be useful to keep the following in mind:

• Backup on networked user space
• Backup on your personal computer
• Backup on a detachable hard drive, rewritable CDs.
• Reminder: the age of floppy disks is over. Please don’t use them. They are risky!
• Organize your files into folders so you can find them easily and back them up easily.
• Save current work as regularly as possible.
• Backup regularly.
• On networked computers, save files in an appropriate directory. Find out which folders are private, which ones are shared and which ones are backed centrally. Saving on desktops is not very safe.
• It may be a good idea to email really important files to oneself.
• Reminders to backup: sometimes I get too engrossed in my work and realize that I have not backed up work for two weeks. It is worth making backing up a planned task if one is forgetful like me!
• Always think of the worst case scenario
• Keeping the backup and the original together is not clever at all. Sometimes people keep their backup hard drive in the same bag as their laptop, which means that if the bag is missing, the data is also missing.
• If you become extremely paranoid, it might be good to keep some important printouts too.

Do you have any other safety measures? I’ll be happy to add to the list.