When was the last time you backed up all your data, including your scripts?

One screenwriter who wrote a script for The Impact 50 lost their work as they accidentally saved the wrong draft on top of their most recent draft. That’s a simple mistake to make, but can be catastrophic.

And how many of us are fully prepared for a hard drive failure, laptop crash or even a theft?

I have found one fantastic solution that I am amazed so few people use.

Dropbox.

Install it, use is as the place on your hard drive where you save all your work, and you will find you are always backed up.

It’s so good I would recommend it for all your data, photos, documents etc.

1. Save all your documents and files to Dropbox. This will create immediate backups.

2. Accidentally save something and need to go back to a previous version? No problems, Dropbox has backups of past drafts too (up to 30 days with free account).

3. Cloud storage like Dropbox means you have all your devices in sync. Plus you have physical backups on those devices as well as in the cloud. I have three main computers and all three have all my data, as well as a backup in Dropbox in the cloud. That’s pretty secure.

4. It’s free… or if you need more space it’s very cheap even for the paid version which effectively offer near unlimited storage for files (excluding great big files like video files).

5. Yes there are other solutions, but right now DropBox looks like the market leader to me. Personally, myself and my team have been using it for five years now without a single hiccup.

6. You can share files and folders with others so you can collaborate easily. You can allow people ‘view only’ rights too, and they can leave comments on those files without modifying them.

7. Yes it’s encrypted and as safe as any other technology in the digital world is right now.

8. Set and forget – I have all but forgotten that I have Dropbox now as it’s so transparent. I even have my iTunes folder in it allowing me access to all my music on all my devices. Very cool.

9. Peace of mind. Hit save and so long as the file is saved in Dropbox (and you are connected to the web), within a few seconds you are backed up. The reality is you don’t need to think about backing up so long as you save files to Dropbox.

10. Constant evolution. The best thing about successful web tech is that they are constantly improving. DropBox are now beta testing ‘paper’ which I suspect will be document sharing tool like Google docs. Next month there will be more updates. Some invisible to the user, some visible features.

If you have not got DropBox, sign up for a free account at www.DropBox.com.

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones
My movies www.LivingSpiritGroup.com
My Facebook www.Facebook.com/ChrisJonesFilmmaker
My Twitter @LivingSpiritPix