Don’t Forget! Back up those files!!

I’ve received tons of great feedback on last weeks Tribal Council column  from hundreds of people on my in depth look at the intricacies of the comic book industry as it relates to the progressive movement in the use of font Papyrus. The 5700 word epic may truly end up being my masterpiece.  Wait…you didn’t read it?  Oh! That’s right!  I almost forgot.  (can you sense the sarcasm??) My column last week was preempted by a complete hard drive wipe out on my wife’s laptop.  All of her school work (she’s in her final year of nursing school) and 20G of photos stranded on a hard drive that wouldn’t load. A week later (and WAY more hours dealing with this problem that I would have liked to have spent) it feels right to spend this weeks edition of the Tribal Council to remind everyone of one very important thing: DON’T FORGET TO BACKUP YOUR FILES!

13 years ago when I got my very first job in a print shop (wow…I suddenly feel really old) the boss had a little computer on his desk to process his accounting numbers and the occasional PageMaker file (if you’ve been around long enough to remember that program…feel free to “Uggh” with me).  We did just about everything manually.  Paste up galore! Flash forward to today: my job is 50 hours+ a week at my desk in front of 2 computers doing design and prepress.  Also the other desk I use with 2 more computers for proofing and imposition. Then of course there’s the other computer down the hall I use for plate making.  It’s ALL digital now. I might paste something up once or twice a year and that’ only because I have to.  I work at a university print shop that’s really not that big but we store literally Gigabytes worth of data every month. Our customers depend on us to keep all those files safe.  Luckily for us…we have an IT department that automatically backs up those servers at least once a week.  If something happens all we have to do is make a quick call…and we can have our files returned within just a few minutes. What about you? Are those files safe? If you got the blue screen of death (or the death balloon if you’re on a Mac) today…would your files be safe? All your drawn, scanned, digitally inked and colored pages…do you have them saved in more than one place?  If you don’t have a backup solution now’s the time to start thinking about it.

Backing up your files

There are as many different ways to back up your files as there are ways to render a face in Photoshop.  You can buy software that manages it for you automatically or you can just copy/paste files.  It truly just depends on how comfortable you are with the technology. However, my tech genius had this one very important piece of information for me: If your only backup is moving files to an external hard drive, you’re still facing a single point of failure.  That external hard drive could crash at any time just like the hard drive on your computer.  His suggested burning a DVD of all your files each month (or per project) as well as keeping an external hard drive. Keep those DVDs in a safe place and that hard drive not plugged into your computer.  If lightning or something hits your house chances are your computer and everything plugged into it is going to be cooked. Another option available these days are the online file backup sites.  I don’t have any experience with these but the theory seems sound to me.  Your file are all off site and can be accessed by any computer with an internet connection.  The only draw back is the monthly subscription.  Over the course of time this may become pricey…but if your house burns down or something…all your work is off site and safe.

Have more questions? Not sure what to look for? You can check out PC Magazine’s website for some backup software reviews here and Amazon.com for some deals on external hard drives here.

It may be a bit of an investment to buy a hard drive, DVDs, software and/or paying for a monthly subscription for an off site back up plan but just so you know if your hard drive does completely die and you HAVE to retrieve to the data you may have to take it to a data retrieval company with it insanely expensive.  You’re looking at a range of $1500 – $5000 to get it. So don’t forget to back up your files!!

BONUS TIP: Did your hard drive crash on you? Are you seeing some strange blue screen of deaths? Stuck in a reboot cycle? Hearing a strange ‘clunk’ from your hard drive?  Open up your tower, remove the hard drive and put it in the freezer over night.  The next morning plug it in and fire up your computer.  It’ll work like new until is starts to thaw out.  That way you can attempt to get the files. When it thaws out and starts to crash again…just throw it back in the freezer. Sounds crazy…but it works.