My hard drive just died

[watervole]

I've had better weekends...

The hard drive on my PC just died. Luckily I didn't lose anything critical as most of my writing is on the Acorn, but I'm not yet sure if I have copies of all the software that was on it.

I'm getting paranoid about the stuff on the Acorn now. I back up my fiction onto floppies, but there's a fair % of dud floppies.

Comments

[kerravonsen]

I hope you aren't using some obscure word-processing program that has formats that nothing else can read...

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I'm safe on that score. Richard has an Acorn as well.

[kerravonsen]

But they're both equally old, aren't they? Granted, it's unlikely that they would both fail at once, but they won't run forever either...
Am I getting confused, or is it true that they aren't actually making Acorns any longer?

[julesjones]

I still have spare gmail invite codes, and I know quite a few sf writers who are using a gmail account as a secondary off-site backup. I know it means using a PC to get the files *back* (and to do the occasional logging in to keep the account active), but you should be able to email the files out of the Acorn.

Start putting the files in some format that any word processor can read, or make sure there is a macro available that will convert them. I know the humans are outnumbered by the Acorns in your household, but sooner or later you'll be down to one. You might as well start the file transfer sooner.