Saving and Saving and More Saving

Published 24 October 06 12:52 PM
When I first looked at myresearchspace, the immediate attraction was yet another place to store copies of my thesis. I've started uploading files in the ongoing quest to prevent disaster by sympathetic magic (ie save enough and the bad things won't happen) and realised that I have copies of the thesis on:
  • new laptop (current working copies)
  • iPod (using as flash drive)
  • old laptop
  • CDs
  • other flash drive
  • emailed to self
  • hard copies (in three files - master copy including my annotations and a copy from each of my supervisors with their editorial comments)
Some of these copies are more up to date than others, but I find that knowing it would take something severely wrong to lose everything somwhat reassuring. (That hasn't stopped me from crossing fingers and touching wood while writing this).

So, how obsessive-compulsive are other people about this saving thing? How often do you save? And where do you save to?
by Karen.Hall
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# wayne.griffiths said on October 24, 2006 7:49 PM:
I don't think I'm as obsessive-compulsive as I should be about this. I probably only have about 5 or 6 different copies, and all are at different levels of completion. But this was mainly motivated by my trip to Sweden. If I hadn't moved here, I think I would only have about 3. So far I have not lost anything.
My main backup is my USB stick, and I try to save to it every week.  
# Krys.Haq said on October 25, 2006 12:00 PM:
I think some degree of obsessiveness about saving is good - I'm one of many people who've had their laptop stolen during their PhD. Luckily I had everything backed up on the shared drive in my School and in hard copy, but it was not as organised as the material on my laptop had been. It took me a couple of months to find everything and put it in order again - so for rest of the time, I not only made sure everything was backed up, but that the back-ups were better organised eg old drafts clearly marked as so, or deleted.
# robyn.owens said on October 25, 2006 2:33 PM:
Lots of saving is good, but version tracking is really important. Make sure you clearly date each version.

The advantage of saving on myResearchSpace, by mailing copies to yourself and using an internet browser to read your mail, or by saving onto a portable device like a memory stick or iPod, is that you have total mobility - your thesis is always accessible. And mobility is freedom.
# Krys.Haq said on October 25, 2006 3:06 PM:
It's also important that clear pointers to particular versions of work are included on copies of work that supervisors have. I know of one case where a supervisor offered to send a copy of "the latest version" to a cosupervisor, on a student's behalf. Unfortunately the supervisor sent an old version in which the cosupervisor's previous comments had not been addressed. Needless to say the cosupervisor was not impressed.
# Robyn's Blog said on October 18, 2007 9:07 PM:

I was told today that one of our postgraduate students had her laptop stolen last night while working

# Susan Clifford said on October 22, 2007 3:16 PM:

Not only is it frustrating to lose these files, it's also important that the person who finds them can't open them, in the case of sensitive data. My USB was stolen last weekend and luckily all the anonymous questionnaires I was working on were password protected (and backed up, thank God)

# kari said on October 22, 2007 4:06 PM:

I had to reformat my hard-drive on my laptop twice during my thesis- only 1 month apart! I had only just got it back to normal before it keeled over again. Thank goodness for my external hard-drive and the  CD's of all my data, photos etc. And lucky i had backed up regularly (as soon as something was changed i backed it up).

I learnt to back-up when i lost a small amount of my honours!

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About Karen.Hall

I've recently submitted my PhD thesis, titled 'Discovering the Lost Race Story: Writing Science Fiction, Writing Temporality', for examination. In the meantime, I'm teaching in the discipline of Communication Studies at UWA and starting a new project on medievalism and media through a Whitfeld Fellowship.