Have you backed up your computer lately?

Have you backed up your computer lately?

It is something I seem to do only when I hear someone lost everything in a crash, or my computer lady harangues me during annual tune-up time.

I am able to start up my old laptop still, so I have been emailing files to my new old computer as I need them. It would be faster to back up on a flashdrive, but truth be told, I am rusty. That's how often I don't do it.

My new old computer is a desktop Mac from my daughter's college days. She is on her third mac laptop, and they are definitely wonder machines. Except that a week ago, when she was upgrading her operating system, her hard drive locked. Tighter than Fort Knox.

She's home for a medical procedure and when she feels up to it, she has been writing character profiles and a plot outline for a new feature film. She hadn't backed up since she left New York.

She lost the work she'd done since she arrived and everything else. Music. Pictures. Old projects. Ideas. The latest version of Final Cut Pro--formatting software for scriptwriters. Hopefully, she will find in her i-phone a copy of the expense spreadsheet for the U-Tube show she recently produced. Tax time is always around the corner. (She kept all the hard copy receipts.)

It's been a week since I wrote the above. My daughter's laptop's OS reinstall said 'Welcome' after sixteen hours of downloading, so her hard drive does not need to be replaced. Whew. It is blank, though. Some software on her old Mac transferred to the new one. Word did not. 

I cheerlead that she has all the creative ideas in her head and will be able to reproduce them in an improved rewrite. Her subconscious is working with the ideas, and they will emerge better and stronger. Just like her body. 

Back up your files.