Well, dropped is probably the wrong word, but it works. And here it is:
If you look closely, you can see that the place where you attach the key ring is completely broken off. I bought this stupid nubbin of a thumbdrive because it had a metal hook to attach the key ring to. That was supposed to make it so that they stopped breaking. Instead, it broke way quicker. Piece of crap! At least somebody found it, and it made its way back to me.
So, my files, stories, and the like are saved. I've already backed them up onto another thumbdrive, and will back them up on my hard drive when I get home too.
Some folks have told me that I need to get with the times and start saving important files on a cloud server. I think I need to look into that. I've got a Google account, that comes with Google Drive, which I believe is something you can save files to, right? Also, I know I have 5GB on iCloud automatically with my phone, but I'm not sure how to save particular files with that, because it's new to me, and doesn't seem to have an option for just dumping whatever crap I'm working on into it...unless I work on it with Pages, I think, which I suppose I could start doing. If you have knowledge of iCloud or Google Drive or anything else that I should use instead, let me know, I'd love to get with the times. I hate being left behind.
9 comments:
IMO Google Drive is the way to go. There are apps that allow you to access and edit files (word, excel, text) on most mobile devices, and there is a web app for editing in your browser as well. If you have a gmail account, you have like 15GB free for saving stuff. You can access it when you are logged into your gmail account. Nice thing is you can share documents with other gmail users, so colabing is easy also.
For iCloud, that's down to various programs using it. (apple's notes app can, for example). Dropbox is nice and is pre-integrated into a number of writing applications, so you might want to look at whatever program you like to write with and see what options it supports natively.
I've recently used Google Drive quite a bit. As Jason says, 15GB comes free. It syncs through the cloud. I worked on that recent audio production pretty much entirely on g-drive. I would work on a little laptop on the train, then it would sync when I got into wireless range. When I got home, I could let my laptop sync for a few minutes, then continue on the home pc.
I would still recommend you use a regular hard drive back up to your main pc. I had one or two Audacity data files that didn't seem to always sync correctly, although a second attempt usually sorted it.
Obviously, the hidden cost is Google gradually becoming omnipotent, knowing all about your every move and piece of data, but I figure as along as they don't join forces with any terrifying robotics companies, it should be ok.
Oh crap:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2013/dec/17/google-robot-maker-boston-dynamics-video
I use skydrive, but i know plenty of people who use google drive as well. There are some reservations of needing to be online for cloud to work, I know with Skydrive and probably google drive as well, it saves the newest copy down to your PC every time you connect to the web, so if you're not on the web you still have the newest cached copy.
Dropbox has worked great for the limited stuff I use it for, but I recall hearing on a podcast (I cannot for the life of me remember which tech related podcast it was) have had a case where files got replaced with older versions. That was a while ago and may have been fixed though.
You'd think that Satan would be the only person disappointed that you found your thumbdrive. But no, it's Satan . . . and me.
Now we won't be doing that That Gets My Goat episode about it.
You really want at least one species of off-site back-up (something that will exist even if all of your stuff burns up in a wildfire). Something that syncs in the background is ideal, because it's hard to remember to back stuff up all the time. I use Carbonite, because I want my entire harddrive backed up, including hundreds of gigs of audio files. It costs $100 per year, runs in the back ground, and I can access the files from anywhere with internet. There are other services like that now, and some of them might be better, but that's the one I use.
I also use Dropbox to back up files and move them around. I do the $10 a month thing, because the free space is just not adequate for audio files. Text files could easily be backed up via any number of free options. I haven't tried skydrive or Gdrive, but people seem to like them, and that's plenty of space for text based documents.
Another thing I used to do when I would write during snippets of downtime at work - I'd open an email to myself and write in the body of the email. If I was interrupted, I would hit send or perhaps "Save as Draft" and close. Very quick, constant back up, available anywhere with a wifi connection.
But, yeah, saving your WIP or any other important files solely to a thumb-drive is courting disaster. That's crazy talk, my friend.
Dropbox is great, and it does file versioning, meaning if a file gets deleted or overwritten you can get back an older version.
Google Docs does versioning too, if you use their word processing software.
If you use Microsoft Word to edit your files I don't know if it does the file versioning or not.
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