Technical Writer

 For years now disaster recovery has been a hot issue in larger companies.  Smaller companies don’t take as much notice, and little one or two people contracting companies often take no notice of it at all. Yet for writers, whose future work depends on what we can show prospective clients, disaster recovery is a must.

Some of us work from home either full-time or part-time. Many of us have work samples and partly completed work (and even partly completed novels as well) on our PC at home. 

What would happen if your hard disk crashed, or someone stole your PC? How much would it set you back?

I am not talking about a simple lack of a computer here. You can walk into any computer store, buy a new one, and be up and running within minutes—or at worst in a couple of hours if you have to install special software.

I’m talking about work in progress, your portfolio, your notes, your contact information and your emails.

Many people only realise how valuable this is when they lose it.

Writing is a business, and we have to treat it like a business. This means keeping our business information protected, and ensuring that we have a back-up plan for when disaster strikes. 

Most of us insure our homes and our health; many of us also insure against loss of income. Yet there’s one really important thing that many of us don’t consider. Ensuring your data is safe. This one doesn’t even cost as much as the other insurances, all it takes it some time, a blank CD/DVD/flash drive, and a regular back-up habit.

What sort of things should you back up?

• Any work emails on your home PC
• All work, particularly work in progress
• Your portfolio of work
• Contact information
• Invoicing and billing detail

at the very least.

Where should you back it up to?

• Copy it onto a CD or DVD or flash drive and store it away from the PC.

When should you do it?

• Do it regularly.  I do mine once a month, but it really depends on how much you can afford to lose. I should do it once a week, but the monthly one is an easier habit to build because I do it after the bills.

Automate the process as much as you can. In an ideal world your whole backup process would run automatically, and all you would have to do is put a disk into the drive to write the data.  That’s my ideal, but I haven’t got around to it yet.

If you don’t yet back up your home PC, you should at least consider the consequences of losing the data. The worst time to discover you need that data is just after your PC has died.

In part 2, I look at another area of back-ups where tech writers often run into problems.

Last Modified : June 19th, 2008
Filed under : Tech Writer
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