Backing Up Your Work

Today my parents' computer crashed and as yet, it seems that everything saved on that computer is gone. (Reason #1 to get your own personal laptop.) This is a testimony as to why writers should always, always, always back up their work in at least three places (some of which should be non-digital). Things happen--- viruses are released, spam filters fail, small children press the wrong button, MSWord crashes. There's a particular feeling of devastation that comes with losing your work, especially when it happens to be a very long or involved piece, and here are some ways that you can prevent that.

• Save your work. Every few minutes, just click ctrl-S and your work saves. It becomes second nature, so it may seem annoying at first but it'll be worth it.
• Don't open suspicious emails, don't click icons, immediately exit questionable sites. As preventative healcare, take precautions. You don't need an adorable new mouse icon, nor do you need to bring your monitor to life with bird-festooned screensavers. You certainly don't need to view your possible matches for free, today. I don't care if y0uu Have : 7 new crushs, clickk n0w t0 meet!!. Exit the browser ASAP.
• Use a USB or similar device. Get a handy gadget, insert it into your computer routinely, and save your most important documents onto it. Unless you drop it in a pool or something foolish like that, this is an easy, failsafe way to save your work. It's also useful to have all your work stored in one place, and is especially helpful if you're ever in a situation where you want to bring pieces of your writing, but can't/don't want to tote your laptop.
• Print copies. It's a pain to print large documents, and it would be positively hellish ton retype a 50+k manuscript if your computer crashed, but it's better than nothing. In the case of lengthy pieces, I try to have at least a couple chapters of a hard copy.
• EMAIL IT TO YOURSELF. This, as far as I can tell, is the best way to ensure that no work is ever destroyed. Emails are accessible anywhere there's wifi, so you won't lose it should your computer crash. If you're feeling iffy about attachments, paste the whole manuscript. Ideally, you'd email your manuscript to yourself at several different addresses, or send it to several trustworthy friends as well. That way, if your email were to ever be hacked, it would still be intact.

Daily prompt: Hardly a prompt, but go and back up your most important work in at least one way. Hopefully you'll never need to thank me for telling you to do this, because in a perfect world, computers would never crash, but better safe than sorry. In the comments, feel free to post a cautionary tale or your best method of backing up your work.