The return of Back It Up Wednesday.

This is my weekly* reminder folks, especially you writers out there, BACK UP YOUR DATA.

Yeah, you should be doing it regularly.  You should be doing it automatically.  But maybe you got out of habit.  Or your thumb drive is full.  Or the software went FUBAR, and you meant to get around to fixing that.

Back it up.

Don't wait for tomorrow.   Don't wait to do it later.   Do it now.  Make sure you've got your important files somewhere other than on that one single computer.   Make sure you know where the INSTALL files for your software are too.  Where is your MS Office install DVD? Where do you have your download for Scrivener?   What other apps are critical for you to work?   Where's the install media? 

What's that?  Your DVD is four years out of date, and you've just been using the "update" feature online?   That's fine as it goes, but maybe it's time to download the latest install so you have a copy that can save you a lot of time later.  What about license keys?  Does the software require it?   Do you have them somewhere available at a moment's notice?   How about putting them all in an email to yourself, tagged and placed in a folder of your online email account.   Does it mean if your email gets hacked, your license key could be compromised?   Sure.   If whomever hacks your email wants it for anything more than to snag a copy of your address book and forward off more viruses and spam to everyone therein.

Things happen.  Computers crash.  Hard drives go belly up.  Software corrupts the file you've been slaving over for two months.   Backups prevent heartache.  Backups save hours of toil.  Backups bring peace of mind.

So, when did you last backup your data?