An Introduction to Backups

There's a saying among technology experts:

There are two kinds of people: those who backup, and those who have not lost all their data yet.

Which one are you?

If you don't back up what you write, you will lose it some day. Hard disks die, even modern SSDs just stop working sometimes. People erase things by accident, laptops get stolen, houses flood or burn down - there are as many ways to lose your data as you can imagine, and then more.

But you can prevent it easily. Right now, go and find that USB memory stick that’s been in your desk drawer for ages and copy your current work in progress onto it. There, doesn’t that feel better? But we can do a lot more. We can automate it so you can never forget to back up.

Setting up an automatic backup that protects you from pretty much anything is not all that complicated. This book will provide simple advice to follow to ensure you don't wake up one morning to find everything you did this month has vanished into the ether.

Some of these techniques are completely free of charge, some cost a little bit, but all will help to ensure you never have that awful feeling when you open up Scrivener and realise there’s nothing there.

Where possible I have included screen captures to guide you through the settings you need to pay attention to - depending on your exact software version, you might see something slightly different. If you find anything that doesn’t line up, drop me a line at [email protected] and I’ll do my best to help you out.