Several writers on the 'net (including Ken Levine) are discussing this matter. Long story short: A wanna-be screenwriter, a guy who'd never sold anything, had three spec screenplays on his computer. A technician from SBC did a little work on the fellow's computer and innocently deleted what were, for some reason, the only copies of those screenplays. The writer sued SBC because he believed he was close to selling the three scripts for 2.7 million.
The court didn't agree the sale was likely but did award the writer $27,000 in compensatory damages and $33,000 in punitive damages. Both the writer and SBC appealed and the California state appeals court dismissed the punitive part of the award. The compensatory damages were upheld but the writer was ordered to reimburse SBC for its legal fees in the appeal, which pretty well wipes out any gain on his part. It might even mean he loses on the deal.
For professional writers — heck, even for non-pros — there are a couple of issues raised by this case. One is how non-professionals — heck, even pros — usually delude themselves into believing that a big sale is Almost There, certain to happen, virtually a done deal. Go to any gathering of aspiring writers and you'll hear an endless loop of such tales; of deals that were "99% set" but somehow, due to treachery or some caprice of nature, didn't happen or haven't yet.
It's possible the writer in the above-described lawsuit was an exception. After all, there are scripts that do sell and at some point, all those deals were "close." Still, a lot of us though hear of so many "done deals" that don't get all the way done that we develop a skepticism to all such claims. If you disbelieve them all, you'll be right at least 95% of the time and that estimate is, if anything, low.
The other issue, of course, is summarized by the phrase, "Why the hell didn't you have backups?"
Back when working on computers was somewhat new, the Writers Guild computer room used to get panic calls from members. The computer room had nothing to do with PCs or Macs — it was the operations center for the WGA computer which stored members' records and processed residual payments — but members in distress would phone there and ask for (or demand) aid. The folks there didn't know from PCs so many of those calls were referred to me.
One was from a woman who'd put in (she said) five years on what she called "The most important novel of our generation." She hadn't sold it (or anything, ever) but there was no doubt in her mind it was Hemingway-like in its greatness and importance. She kept telling me how "important" it was. She'd written the first half on paper. Then she got a computer and she'd dutifully typed that material onto a disc, then discarded the paper and finished the manuscript on her PC. You smell where this is going?
The computer, she insisted, had malfunctioned and deleted her life's work, all on its own. It was definitely not anything she'd done. Now, she demanded — like I was her paid employee — that I drive out to Chatsworth (45+ minutes) and get it back for her. I asked her if she had a recent backup. She said — this is verbatim or close to it — "I don't have time to learn that technical crap. I have a book to write!"
You can guess how much help I gave the lady. I did refer her to a friend who handled such matters for a fee. He trotted out to Chatsworth and managed to salvage a little of it…a service for which she ultimately refused to pay since he hadn't saved it all. She also refused to listen to him when he tried to explain to her about routine backups…or any of that technical crap. My friend still makes snide comments about the favor I did him with that referral.
Anyway, us sane people need to back stuff up so let me tell you what I do…
First off, my two non-laptop computers have mirrored harddisks, so when I write a file to disk, I'm making two copies of it.
Then I use a filesync utility to synchronize between computers. The one I use is SmartSync Pro, which I've been using for some time and which works fine. I haven't investigated to see if there are better ones…and I know there are now some free ones out there that are supposed to be pretty good. I paid a few years ago for SmartSync Pro so I keep using it…to, for example, sync my two desktop computers' data directories. So if something gets lost on one, it may be on the other. (I have SmartSync set, by the way, to retain the last three versions of everything.)
Plus, any time I'm about to travel or back from travel or otherwise using my laptop, I employ SmartSync to sync the data directories on the laptop with the others. They're all networked so this doesn't take a lot of time.
No matter which computer I'm using, I have an 8gb Flash Drive plugged into it. I wrote a special SmartSync profile and I have a shortcut to it on my desktop. One click and it backs up my "current" working directory to the Flash Drive. Every time I finish a few pages of something or leave the computer for a while, I click that shortcut.
About once every six months, I burn a data DVD with whatever data files strike me at that moment as recent and irreplaceable. This is not a formalized procedure; just something I do on an occasional whim.
Beyond all that, I do the following: Every month or so, I zip all my data directories into a file and e-mail them to a special address I set up on the server that hosts my websites. You could do this with a GMail account, too. The idea is to just have a copy of it all that's off-premises.
Finally, I routinely back the entirety of all three computers up to external hard drives. I have a number of these and I rotate them, doing both full and incremental backups. Originally, I did these with Norton Ghost but found that too buggy and clunky. Now, I use Acronis True Image, which seems much better…although I haven't yet had to use it for a restore so my recommendation can go only so far.
And even with all that, would you believe it? I still sometimes lose something. Fortunately, it's never been anything in the professional work category…but don't worry. It'll happen someday, probably as soon as someone offers me 2.7 million for three unsold screenplays. Just my damn luck.