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What with both Final Draft and Celtx coming out with new versions in recent weeks, plus me getting a new computer, I have blogged quite a bit about computer stuff lately while not really blogging so much about screenwriting. Well today I’ve got another computer post, but the information is so useful that you lot should shut up and take it.

How to back up your work like a pro

Basically there are two types of people in the world, those who back up their data and those who don’t. Those who don’t are just waiting for something bad to happen to their most important files. Something that can only ever end in tears.

Manually backing up your files is a pain the butt though, so thankfully automatic data back up is a feature built into new versions of Windows and Macs these days. The problem though, even if you one of the people making use of this feature (most don’t I’m sure) all you are doing is copying the data to another harddrive/thumbdrive in your house which could just as easily be destroyed in a house fire as your PC itself. To be truly 100% sure your data is never gunna be lost you need to have more than one back up and to have at least one of those backups be “off site”.

So the solution…

Dropbox is an online web service that everyone raves about. I have been using it for a while now and it totally lives up to the hype. In a nutshell, its 2GB* of free storage online that syncs with a folder on your computer. So anything you save in that folder on your computer automatically gets uploaded to your Dropbox account online. (*More storage is available if you need it).

Primarily Dropbox is described as a method of syncing multiple PCs to have the same files available, since if you install Dropbox on multiple computers as soon as a change is made to a file on one computer it is uploaded to the dropbox site then redownloaded by all your other PCs, completely automatically.

The way I use Dropbox however is as a backup solution. I have my Screenwriting folder on my computer inside of the Dropbox folder. That means every single time I hit Save on a Screenplay it is instantly, automatically uploading that file to the web while I carry on working. Now I know even if my house burns down I can simply go on any other computer in the world and using a web browser, log on to the Dropbox website and download my screenplay again.

What is especially awesome though is Dropbox tracks revisions, which basically means every single time you save your file Dropbox makes a record of that particular version of the file, it doesn’t simply save over the old version. So say I accidentally saved over my amazing screenplay on my computer, or I wanted to go back to a version from 6 months ago, I can go on the Dropbox website and go download the version I uploaded 10 versions ago or 6 months ago or whatever.

In this respect it is a boat load better than the crude thumbdrive backup method most people probably use. Personally though I use both. I have automatic backups to Dropbox every single time I hit Save and then at the end of each day I’ll save it to a thumbdrive manually.

Other Uses

Aside from being the best way to sync your files across multiple computers and an awesome easy way to back up your files, Dropbox has other uses to. You will never have to worry about file attachment sizes ever again as you can simply drag big files into your dropbox folder and rightclick on the file to get a link which you can then give to your friends to download the massive file from. If the other person has Dropbox installed you can even set up a shared folder where anything you drop in that folder gets sent over to the mirror version on your friends PC and vice versa. This feature is particularly awesome for collaborating film makers who wanna share project materials.

Download it already!

So yeah, Dropbox is awesome. If you are reading this and know you are kinda lax about backing up your scrips, please in the name of all that is holy install dropbox right now. Automated, Offsite, Revision Tracking backup for the sake of 3 minutes of installing a tiny application is a life choice you should be making.

If any of this doesn’t make sense then watch this video tour of what Dropbox is.

Get Dropbox from here and we both get extra storage space for freeeee.