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I almost don’t like to talk about things like this for fear of jinxing myself. But I want to mention backing up your work.
It’s important for us, as Architects, to back up our work. Your creating digital files. These days most our work is created digitally. Iteration after iteration of pixels on the screen.
Don’t only save the current files but to save the iterations of your work. When you do this, focus on your local backup but also get same backup off site. It’s actually pretty easy to do these days.
I remember when I first started in architecture. We had these large tape backup machines and each day the server would be written to tape. Each week the tapes would be swapped out with the bank. We actually took the tape to the bank and dropped it off in a safe deposit box. It was a huge amount of intellectual property.
Now it’s as easy as having an internet connection. Everything is seamlessly backing up in realtime as we work. The key now and after talking to many people about this in the past is to ensure that it is in fact working. You have to check to make sure it’s working.
Making it easy has caused us to forget about it. To assume it’s being taken care of. Double check each week or each day if you are really concerned. Double check the off site server to ensure your files are there. But don’t rely only on that. Have a local backup as well.
You should never have to use the online backup. Its for a catastrophe. The local is what you go to first. I have a series of hard drives that work as a raid. They mirror each other and copy the files to a backup drive automatically.
A raid allows you to have one copy and have it duplicate itself automatically. It’s actually an ingenious setup and makes redundancy very easy. But again, you need to ensure it’s working. Take precautions with your work. Back up.
