Great, just when i thought things couldn't get any worse.

my main desktop pc decides, that it no longer wants to connect to the internet.

everytime i try to connect it, it would say computer has an invalid IP address.

so i then tried to do system restore, it was working fine, and i wasn't even working on my computer, it just stopped working all of a sudden.

now i am doing my 2nd system restore, and now it's just looks like it's frozen on "please wait" ..

luckily i have a laptop, which is connecting fine to the internet. and luckily all my phd work and thesis stuff is on an external harddrive.

i don't know what to do though about my desk top pc :( i have alot of other stuff on it though, like a dvd burner etc, which i do need. and i need an internet connection, for my endnote.

i know worst case scenario, i could write my thesis on my laptop. :(
:-(

anyways tip of the day, everyone back up your stuff today!

hurrah for system restore. i went back several days.

okay people back up your stuff. even if it takes a day away from writing, it's worth it. i am now going to back up everything onto dvds. and not putting it off anymore.

and just updated my antivirus software aswell. today is all about backing up...

question for you folks who are writing up at the moment.

how often do you back up and what do you use to backup?

external hardrive? dvds? online storage??

i use external hardrive and dvds.

and a memory card for daily backups.

and planning on doing weekly backups onto dvd. and then giving a copy of my backups of the dvds to my brother to keep at his house.

Every time I make a substantial amount of changes to a chapter that I wouldn't want to have to redo or risk losing I email a copy from home to my uni account so I have latest copies of each chapter there (I prefer separate files per chapter). That can sometimes mean emailing multiple times a day if I'm on a roll. Every week I backup my laptop where I'm typing to an external hard drive. Every few months I burn to CD.

I have several backups, and also e-mail myself the work. One thing I would say though is make sure you change the name of your save several times. In the last year a couple of times I have pressed 'save' only for a notice to come up saying that the work cannot be saved because it is invalid, and it has turned my precious work into gobbledygook. Thank heavens for regular savingand different names, at least I only lost a little bit, not the whole thing

Nightmare! Its good that it seems sorted though.
I back up on memory stick daily, and to DVD just about weekly. I would recommend keeping all your dvd backups rather than re-writing to the same disk, even if it means you have 15 dvd's when you have finished! I also take the DVD backups to my bf's house. While I'm writing, if making major changes, I also save the documents as new versions. E.g. I'll have introV1, introV2 etc. I put all the versions I'm not working on in a "versions folder" which goes onto the DVD every week, and then deleted from my computer.

Ooh, and to all those relying quite a bit on external hard-drives - They break! A lot! Same goes for pen drives. DVD's are the only safe option.

thanks everyone!

and good idea about saving the "versions" and then deleting them from current computer. that will save up space.

thanks!

and thanks for the advice about changing the names. good to know