THE ARCHIVE GAME: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

It's that time of the year again. Put the whole year's archive to bed, instead of keeping it in bits.
   What does that mean? Everything is backed the fuck up - for all time. Or until the rise of the Skynet computer replaces the human race with overly-muscled Austrian-accented killing machines.

*

Putting the whole archive to bed isn't about backing everything up. (It is. Not JUST that, though.) Archive bedtime is about making sure all the material I backed up is...well, at the very worst...semi-organised.

   Unfortunately, I'm Jack Lemmon. Watch The China Syndrome. Jack talks about defence.
   In depth.
   This is the second time I've mentioned that in a blog post. See what I did, there? If you haven't read the earlier post, it's okay. You caught on to the idea here.
   Your back-up system has a back-up system, and so on.

*

It's important for authors (and others) to save their work. The best form of backing a story up is still publication.

*

What changed, this time around? I shuffled the deck before I dealt new cards in the archive game.

   The emergency reserve laptop was still the machine of record as far as the archive went. Content grew there. I copied that content over to the internet-linked computer via an external hard drive.

   And files crawled from there to cloud storage. Two computers. One external drive. The cloud. And the odd USB memory stick, for core files.

   Time passes. Data requirements balloon. The smaller computer is no longer the best place to run the digital archive from. Every year, the process shifts and changes.

   This year, most of the over-duplication problem was dealt with when I converted  to the latest version of Windows. I always create too many copies of vital files...

   Well, that's better than the alternative. Two folders, with different names, housing the same effing files? Well. Damn.

   Annual archiving, putting the whole thing to bed, involves killing off screeds of duplicate files - without killing off the WRONG files.

   I put that crap in order when I jumped to the new operating system in 2015. So this January's final final check was not-so-secretly prepared way back in misty September.
   And this brand new year, my double-check of a double-check of a double-check spotted...
   Two rogue files.
   An hour spent scouring folders, and I nailed the problem. Problem solved. As I type, I am halfway through loading the most recent update onto the cloud, replacing the earlier cloudy version.

*

Always review how you archive things. Change for the sake of change is nothing special. But change dealing with a shifting tech situation beyond your control...at least you can dive in and have some input on what happens next.

*

So. This year's lesson, at the last moment, is that I had a tail computer and a dog computer. Switching those labels around made more sense.

*

On a separate point...

   I'm about to have coffee. Though that sustains me, it is unlikely to send me soaring back to the giddy heights of weekly blogging. I'll continue to blog monthly, if I can.

   Too soon to say, in cold grey January. But. I hope to have something worth blogging about in dreary February.

*

Back up your work. Enjoy writing. Drink coffee. I think that about covers it. Except for all the other things I left out.

SAVE YOUR WORK. BACK IT UP. COPY THAT. AND DON'T FORGET TO PUBLISH: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Archiving on my mind. Or...
   On the brain.
   Once upon a then, I lost two computers to an evil kidney transplant. The evil kidney was a defective DVD player. It killed the donor and the donee.
   But I didn't lose data - only the primitive machine husks surrounding all my precious, semi-precious, and not-so-precious info.
   The info escaped in pods designed for catastrophe.
   This year I spent a long time archiving last year's material. The better part of three weeks, as I type.
   Save your data from the cold. Wrap the info in multiple layers. Watch Jack Lemmon talk about defence in depth in The China Syndrome.

*

So what did I back up, where, how, when, and why?

Why? To preserve my files.

When? Periodically. Often. We're appropriating a military term, defence in depth, and applying the notion to the saving of work. Let's run with that military theme...
   At the tactical level, I save stories paragraph by paragraph. Down at microscopic size, I may save after a witty line of dialogue.
   Up at the grand strategic level, I'll make sure I have the whole year's output saved come the start of a new year.
   Rising to cosmic levels of awareness, each year's archive is shunted over to a new year after saving. So the 2011 archive is the 2012 archive. And that's also the 2013 archive.
   The 2011 archive is saved three times over.
   This isn't of great concern in terms of size - Microsoft Word files may be wordy, but they are rarely massive. Just checking this, I see the 2013 archive has around a thousand files - and that doesn't amount to 400 MB of material.
   The 300-odd MB is mostly taken up by cover art experiments. Typically, a FICTION FACTORY story file uses 400 K.
   I'm writing this directly into Blogger and saving it. The autosave refused to work and gave me a warning. I saved.
   Whoops. For a few seconds there, the blog post accidentally published. Mouse took a spasm. I was able to revert to unpublished mode.
   Time to refresh my memory. AND DON'T FORGET TO PUBLISH. Perhaps I should add, WHEN YOU ARE READY.
   Okay, so you get the idea. The 2013 archive is the 2012 archive with more material, and the 2012 archive is the 2011 archive with more material.
   All of those archives are backed up. Copies of copies of copies. We'll hear from Swift...

So, naturalists observe, a flea, Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.

How and where? Digitally, for the most part. Files are stored on two computers, on USB memory sticks, on the (koff) external hard drive, on DVD, and on the mystical cloud.
   Non-digitally, some material is printed or written by hand.
   Organically, I store material in the mind.

*

Where else? On Amazon. My stories are published. Where else? As a matter of record, with the British Library. Where else? In the minds of readers.
   Just remembered, I gave a disc to someone for safekeeping. And there are printed stories in the clutches of assorted night creatures.
   Also, my two living hard drives from dead computers? They act as back-ups, even though they'll gradually fall out of date.

*

I'm going to mention the external hard drive. It died. No it didn't. The external hard drive was there to act as an extra line of defence. (Though I archive annually for convenience, I don't wait the whole effing year to save files to separate sources.)
   Couldn't access it.
   Tried everything. (Koff.) The only way to make use of the device was to format the poor thing. Didn't work.
   What's the punchline? I removed the dead drive from this machine with the intention of trying, one last time, to access the drive from another computer.
   The second I unplugged the USB connection, my computer flickered. I realised, instantly (far too late), what I should have suspected FROM THE START.
   My USB cable was defective.
   And so it proved. I performed a simple transplant operation, sliding another cable into place. Suddenly my extra back-up facility was alive again.
   Immediately, I deleted files from the drive. Duplicate files that are truly redundant? Remove those. After that, I updated the external hard drive. An extra layer, protecting against the cold.

*

What happens if defence in depth fails?
   Let me think about that. All the paperwork would have to burn. And drives? Count them. Five separate hard drives must also burn beyond repair. Three USB sticks, too. The fireproof safe? Ditto.
   I'd have to lose paper stories out and about. And any discs I gave for safekeeping. Oh, and the cloud storage...
   If that stuff goes, yes, all of that, I'll step out into the glowing landscape and embrace the fucking meteor-strike.

*

By far the safest method of backing up your work is PUBLICATION. Run a test. Go to AMAZON. KINDLE STORE. Type RLL. That's my back-up system.
   Make it yours. Publish your stories.