#computerbackup

When it comes to making a backup of your writing, it's easy these days to default to saving it in the cloud. Services like OneDrive or Google Drive make it easy to keep copies, but with companies selling your data to train AI, increasing threats from political regimes, and companies cracking down on what's stored on their servers, making a backup of your writing needs to think beyond the cloud. When you backup your writing, it's important to think about the ramifications of where you're backing up, as well as how you're backing up. I recently experienced this when a hard drive on the computer I use as a file server got corrupted. All of a sudden, I almost "lost" the outline and paper I was working on for college. And there, I used OneDrive as a redundant way to keep a copy of my work while I restored my file server. But before that I used my pc backup solution, Backblaze, to grab a copy of the outline to save locally. Without Backblaze, I would have lost a day's worth of work, and while that doesn't sound like much, it was pretty vital work to my paper.

There are a few issues to be aware of when using services like OneDrive or GDrive.

- These companies (Microsoft and Google) are known for using your data to train their AI models, infringing on your copyright. - Google has been known to remove erotic or adult backups from Drive or prevent people from sharing files like ARCs with multiple people because they see it as a violation of their Terms of Service - With concerns over censorship and cracking down on LGBTQIA+ and adult content due to the political environment, you can't trust these companies not to turn over data or other identifying pieces of information in an attempt to avoid repercussions.

So what options do authors have?

Similar to ‘war games’ that you hear about militaries doing, your managed service provider should run through a ‘disaster simulation’ with you at least once. This is akin to a ‘what if’ scenario wherein the recovery procedures are tested against best practice, with any weaknesses analysed and improved upon after the simulation. This should be done on a test server (possibly hired on a temporary basis) to ensure no damage to important data. The main reason for practising your plan is that irretrievable data loss can be crippling to companies, sometimes lethally. From that, as they say, ‘if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail’.

It's World Backup Day, because the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and it's about damn time it learned how to parallel park.