Thomas Carlyle once asked his friend John Stuart Mill to read the manuscript of his History of the French Revolution. Mill took it home, and later claimed that his maid had used it to start fires. It’s not clear if this is true, or if Mill kept the manuscript for himself, since he had plans to write about the same topic. But Carlyle didn’t have a backup, and he had to start all over and rewrite the book.
With computers, we don’t have to worry so much about our work being used as kindling, but we do need to ensure that we have backups in case of other problems, such as computer crashes, disk failure, or theft. Fortunately, it’s a lot easier today to back up computer files, and to back them up in multiple locations. Ideally, for important work, you should back up your work following the 3-2-1 rule.
- Have 3 copies of your work – the original data, plus two backups
- Store the files on 2 different types of media – computer, external drive, etc.
- Keep 1 copy offsite – in a different physical location, or in the cloud
Just think of how much time you’d lose if your Scrivener projects got lost; you may never be able to rewrite them.
Read the rest of the article on The L&L Blog.
To learn how to use Scrivener for Mac, Windows, and iOS, check out my book Take Control of Scrivener 3.