OMG I cant tell you how relieved I am!
I foolishly left my USB stick (with my entire phd on!) in one of the public access computers in one of my university buildings!! Was having a major panic but one of the security men just let me in and it was stilll there.....so relieved!!
I of course do back up but must admit havent done so for about a week or two and have written loads so would have been absolutely gutted! Phew.
Note to self (and everyone else!)......attach USB to self at all times!!!!

USB sticks can fail, so make sure you backup regularly by other ways.

When I was finishing off my thesis I used Dropbox to backup and synchronise my files between computers, as well as sending copies to my husband at the university, and emailing myself regular updates. Oh and backing up my laptop to a firewire portable drive every few weeks. I got rather paranoid about how many times I backed up, but I didn't dare lose the data!

Phew!! It's so easy to not back up for weeks on end though, but I'm sure you'll remember now!!

Just a note - put your details, name, where you can be contacted, etc. on your memory stick, it means it can easily be returned to you if you leave it somewhere. I suggest this only after having tried to locate the owners of numerous USBs in school. Now I have made a point of suggesting all students do this - and the teachers too catually, saves a lot of panic, and prevents me ending up with even more USB sticks in my drawer/on my desk which are never likely to be returned to their owners.

Jeez, that is a real shocker :-O

BTW, as the others just said, put some identify facts on it - I have mine attached to a key ring, with one of those cheap plastic bits, and have inserted my name and mobile number in it!! And back up regularly!!

BTW, I also, every now and then, back the whole thing up on my parents' computer.... I know someone whose house burnt down near the end of their phd taking everything with it - computer, usb, everything on paper........ they were able to cobble some bits back together using the chapters they had sent to supervisors, and had to rewrite a lot. It was a herculian effort.

I get really paranoid about this sort of thing. I have now developed a slightly obsessive routine whereby every single time I save something I save it straight away to 2 different USB sticks (one remains in my desktop at work and the other travels wherever I go!) and to the desktop itself, and then my laptop at home! I have even gone back to my office in the middle of a lunch out once because I realised I had left both memory sticks in my desktop and worried that if the building happened to burn down within the hour I would lose all of my work! On reflection, I am probably a little bit too paranoid, but better safe than sorry! KB

Good job there weren't any naughty pictures on it. That would have been more terrifying!:-)

On reflection, I'm not too sure why I said that. But if that DID happen, then at least you wouldn't have had to worry about it being identifiable! Tee hee!
:-)

I back up everything I do online. There's a lot of free stuff available to do this and you can set some of the software to back your stuff up continuously in the background, as you work. This has actually saved me more than once.

Thanks for the tips guys! Now have USB attached to my house keys......so come to think of it if i do it again Ill not only lose my work I wont be able to get in my house either! lol but that wont happen. Never lose my keys!
And no there were no pics on there! lol

I just looked at the Dropbox website to investigate online backups. They give you up to 2 GBs free, then they start charging... how much is 2 GBs in layman's terms?

Not much at all, Ogriv, if you have lots of audio data like me. It should be fine if you just have word documents and .pdf articles though. I'm not a reseller or anything and this isn't an add, but I use I-Drive E. You get 2 GB for free and, for £3-50 a month up to 160 GB.

Oh, that's a snip for so many gigs, Wal. I will check them out!

Dropbox is ample to backup my main thesis files, which is what I used it for. I have 3GB free: the 2GB to start with, then extra 250MB chunks for referring another person to Dropbox, installing on a second computer, etc. Even with lots of stuff in there I've still only used 10% of my allowed free space.