Ok folks, here is a quick article on how to give yourself a fighting chance with decent backups.
Of course those of you with external hard drives and Mac's Time Machine are well blessed with backup, it's pretty much set and forget.
However these days many of us have more than one computer and a lot of people have probably bought a netbook with their very tempting promise of 'write anywhere' portability and ease of use. When you are sharing a script between two or more computers the challenge is keeping it in sync. Most of you probably use a memory stick - but the big risk here is losing the stick and maybe losing a days work because the version on the home computer (aka The Mothership) is now out of date.
So here is a fool-proof fully automatic way to sahre files with yourself (and even others) across multiple computers.
1. Dropbox
This is the key. Dropbox is an online service that gives you 2meg free (that's a lot of 'riting if you don't drop any pictures in it!). Dropbox also gives you a Dropbox application that you can run on *any* computer (and this includes PC, Mac and Linux).
The beauty of this setup is that whenever you are online your computer syncs your dropbox folder with the online account - and any other online computer that is powered up.
For instance I often have a Mac and PC running and use Dropbox to transfer files between them instead of diddling around with USB sticks - it's a poor(wo)mans network.
I currently don't have a proper workplace but it is easy to see that you could also use the online version of your dropbox folder to grab a script wherever you are and tap away, saving it locally and then uploading it into the online Dropbox.
2. Dropbox folders
So I put my current projects into the dropbox folder and viola, they are shareable and automagically backed up. Brilliant! Easy! Free!
3. Editing applications
Obviously if you only have two PC and have Final draft on both then this won't apply. However because I use three computers for writing (it's along story) I need an application that can run on Mac, PC and Linux and luckily there is the - free - Celtx to take care of this for you.