Backing up your work

As I was catching up on fellow writer and friend Lisa Shearin's blog, I noticed she discussed backing up your work. She gave her rituals and noted that they probably weren't particularly obsessive. I have to agree, and to make Lisa more certain she's not alone in her paranoia, I thought I'd review my own backup strategies.

I put each day's work in the following places:

* on the hard disk of the system on which I'm writing it (of course)
* on each of three separate USB keys (because I can)
* on my home server (unless I'm on the road), which is a RAIDed box with multiple disks

On a weekly basis, I copy my work to the following places:

* my main home system
* some remote storage my Web site host provides

Each time I change computers, which is often (you don't even want to know my whole computer setup; it would just make you jealous), I copy all work in progress to it.

Now, do I consider these many copies obsessive? Not at all. I wonder only how I can streamline these processes, automate them so more copies are available.

My goals are simple: when some piece of my tech infrastructure dies, I don't want to waste any more time than is absolutely necessary before I am up and writing again, and I never, never, never want to lose any work.