What's the best way to back up your work on your computer?

Question

I write a lot and want a sure fire way to back up my work for future references. What is the best way and how?

Answer 1

The cheapest way is to buy an USB flash drive. How much capacity is completely up to you, but don't underestimate the amount of data you have. Buy for the future as your amount of data will probably grow. I usually buy at least twice as much as I estimate my data to be.

Another option is to purchase a USB backup device. These can range in cost from about $50 for a 40 Gb device up to $1300 for 1.5 Tb. Again, don't underestimate the amount of data you have and buy for the future.

Yet another option is to purchase a NAS (network attached storage). These devices are really handy as they can be set up to automatically back up your data and they can be put anywhere near your home router. They are purchased without a hard drive - you buy that separate so as to get the amount of storage you need.

Something I've done is use an old computer that I had and installed 3 hard drives in it that I had, then loaded FreeNAS on it. FreeNAS is a free network area storage server. I simply connect to drives now and all my data is backed up on drives of 20 Gb (install programs), 40 Gb (music) and 120 Gb (movies). FreeNAS can be set up to backup its data to any of a variety of devices as well using a variety of protocols. You can even set up a RAID with inexpensive IDE hard drives. It's worth checking out if you have any computer savvy at all.

Answer 2

On a Mac, shift/control/3 takes a picture of the screen. If you press shift/control/4, you can click and drag over the area you want; the picture is taken when you release the mouse button.

Answer 3

I personally use a system called Subversion for my source code and documentation. Google for it -- very useful and backup concious.

Answer 4

Buy an USB flash drive!

Answer 5

copy your work to a CD.