Forum: Author Hangout

Thumb drives aren't that reliable to use for that.

I have one computer

Part of me knew that they weren't BUT with how my writing style has developed it seemed like the most logical solution at the time. I write at different locations depending on where I am and what I'm doing. Sometimes I'll get my laptop and sit on the couch and write with something playing in the background (damn ADD). Sometimes I'll use the laptop and sit in bed or sit outside if the weather is nice. Then other times I'll get on my desktop. So the thumb drive seemed the best way to be able to do that.

Though I fully admit I should have started backing up everything to my desktop. That was my first mistake.

Also, do you work as a single document, or multiple documents? Myself, each chapter is a different document. So at most, I lose only a chapter or two in the event of a crash.

I started off working under multiple documents but switched to single once I started using Scrivener. It was so convenient to be able to navigate through an entire book to reference things I had already written. Scrivener does have the "Export" option as well as the "Compile" option. So for the future what I think I'm going to do is each time I make a change I'm going to export it which will put it all into multiple files. That way I can back up each chapter individually, but still have the convenience of Scrivener.

I've had several external hard drives crash recently.
Part of the problem was that I ran into an issue with my Mac Mini; the computer was on when I used the remote monitor for my heart pacemaker to log in to the company that manufactured the pacemaker to send them the quarterly report of how it was functioning, something I never needed to do before covid.
Anyway, the remote monitor trigged the Mac's bluetooth search function and I couldn't shut that down. The computer wouldn't accept input from the keyboard OR the mouse, meaning that my small bluetooth keyboard's directional arrows didn't work either.
I finally got online and found a work-around, but after that the computer had issues when waking from sleep mode. It also kept dumping the external hard drives, including a three-month-old Western Digital Black unit.
I now have a replacement WD Black drive, but I also have cloud storage. Two accounts, one from Apple that costs a bit over a dollar a month, the other is a freebie that comes with Office 365.
That really helped when I started working on a book I put aside two years ago. Some of the chapters I'd written were on my iPad, others were on the Apple cloud account, so I think I got most of them back. PCBondsman, who edits for me, had some of them too, although he writes that he's had issues too.
Belt AND suspenders, gang; 'privacy' is overrated, not to mention that it no longer exists. Notice the articles about posts that were written, then immediately deleted?
Anything and everything is out there if someone wants to find it.

'privacy' is overrated

Sorry, but that is a plain stupid remark. Privacy is very important for everyone, it's part of who and what you are. That big business crushes it without any regard to who it will damage does not make it 'overrated'. It will still take some time but the likes of facebook et all will pay in time for their criminal behavior.

Anything and everything is out there if someone wants to find it.

Except maybe ASSTR.

I simply mail my day or nights progress to my work email address. It had a 10gb limit and acts like a cloud account.

You could get fired for misuse of company systems for that. Especially if you have stories from or for SOL in that.

Fire myself? Why? even though I feel like it sometimes.

I work in Google Docs now. I write on any of four devices, without worry about backups or syncing.

For the time being I'm going to do that since I'm working on 2 short stories that are companion pieces to my main series. Once I start writing the next novel then I'm going to have to find a different route. I write my books in Scrivener. I could also upload the Scrivener file but I don't really want to do that.

You don't need Scrivener to keep a manuscript file.
I write individual chapters, and after the first edit (I've got three SOL volunteers who help me with that) I post to a manuscript file, all in Word.
When the final chapter's written, I post that then start reading the MS from the beginning. The title page, copyright page, by-the-author page, and the table of contents are already there, making it easy to ensure that all chapters are present. I've got an instant word-count at the bottom of the page and doing a global search-and-replace is simple when I notice that 'Edna' somehow became 'Emma' later in the book.
Finish that final edit, still in word, and upload it to Amazon. By then, I'll have found a photo to use for the cover (most of them free, and the cover photo for one I took myself!) and creating a cover takes half an hour at most. Upload, write the blurb, finish Amazon's three pages or so of price information and such, hit send, and it's done.
The next day I'll reformat the manuscript. I will already have the print cover ready and uploaded, so uploading the print version of the MS is easy too. Hit send, and it's done too. One more thing to do, jump through ACX's hoops and send the MS to one of my Audiobook narrators. I'll need a different cover for that, but half an hour or so will see it finished.
Lazeez did me a huge favor when he kicked me out of the nest. Last year, that favor grossed $44,000 for me.
The new Mac Mini, ~$1500, to replace the one that was giving me fits? It's a business expense...

I hope you use more than just Cloud Service back-up as my concerns with Cloud Service back-up isn't privacy, per se, bu the fact that in the past several have gone belly up and taken all of their clients' data with them when they shut down at short notice so the clients could recover all of their data from the Cloud Service servers.

You are misunderstanding cloud service backup. For the cloud back up services, backup is all they provide, they aren't like google docs or Microsoft one-drive. Your primary data is still local. Even if they do go under, you don't lose your primary data, just the backups.

The only lose everything scenario with cloud backup is you have a system crash at the same time your backup provider goes under.

However, the reality is the cloud services promote themselves as being the best main data storage to allow people to access from any location

Those are separate companies from the backup services I am referring to.

There are services that offer cloud backup and cloud backup only. You get an app that backs up your files as a background process to their cloud servers and can be used to do a restore, but the cloud storage in question can't be accessed as live storage even if you wanted to.

Well, I've not yet seen any advertising for such limited services, but seen tons for the types that promote themselves as primary data storage in the cloud.

I posted a link to the website for one of the bigger ones up thread.

ETA: I wouldn't call them limited. They are an entirely different thing from cloud storage services.

I posted a link to the website for one of the bigger ones up thread.

ETA: I wouldn't call them limited. They are an entirely different thing from cloud storage services.

Real cloud backup is indeed something else. Another very good one is https://www.backblaze.com. Not free ($60/year), but very reliable. They are well known for their yearly report of HDD/SSD failure rates.

Microsoft wants the government contracts so they leave my shit alone.

Don't bet they aren't feeding your shit to the government.

So you're running Linux on laptops? Is that simpler now? I remember trying to get laptops running most distros to be a total PITA back in the day.

So you're running Linux on laptops? Is that simpler now? I remember trying to get laptops running most distros to be a total PITA back in the day.

I've used Linux on laptops for many years now, even once threw an Ubuntu on and EEEPC, worked perfectly out of the box. It's only in rare cases that you have troubles finding the right driver for the touch pad or something. Once I had problems with recovering from sleep mode when opening the laptop but that too was solved pretty fast.
Nowadays it should run without any troubles, maybe if the laptop is really latest of the latest and specifically build for Windows (i.e. surface) you could have some problems but not likely. If there are problems it's mostly with NVidia graphics. Just use the official NVidia Linux drivers and never Nouveau.

maybe if the laptop is really latest of the latest

Then use something like MX Linux AHS ((Advanced Hardware Support). Made with newer kernel, newer firmware, newer drivers... Still based on Debian Stable.

Still based on Debian Stable.

Good option, yes. I mostly use Debian Stable, very reliable.

Of course there are only about 40,000 free Linux APPS. A full office suite is included in the basic install.

Great use of the different Linux distributions/desktops. Your minimum system requirements are a bit high, Linux can run very smoothly with a lot less depending on the desktop you choose.
You're also a bit low with the available programs (I hate the buzz word 'app'). The current repository for stable runs up to almost 55000 and for sid the number is over 60000 at the moment. And indeed, all free.