Backup and restore

I’m writing a book, but more about that in a later post. Today I’m talking about how a good backup and restore process saved my neck during the writing process.

Last Monday I fired up Microsoft Word and went to open the file of my manuscript. Nothing happened. Nada. Word hung with the little circle just going round and round and round. So I killed word and tried again and naturally got the same result. The prior Friday I had backed the file up to a removable hard drive, so I attempted to restore the backup file with the same result. Panic began to set in.

Now, you may remember that in a post a few weeks ago I mentioned subscribing to an on-line backup service called Idrive.com, which automatically backs up specified folders every night, and which keeps prior versions of all files it backs up. Idrive came to my rescue.

I logged onto Idrive, found the Friday backup and downloaded it. Same thing – Word hung. Panic continued, and escalated when Thursday’s file also failed to open. Wednesday’s file worked!

I had to reconstruct work done, mainly editing, for three days which did put me back a bit. But, as I’m virtually finished writing this 224 page book, I’d hate to think where I’d be had I not been using the daily backup service that keeps prior versions. I just can’t sing the praises of Idrive loud enough. If you’re not using Idrive or a similar service, don’t wait to sign up and start using a good backup service. Today.

Will Limkemann