Save Your Darlings

Recently, and seemingly suddenly, BET Digital pivoted from text to video. In the process, they permanently removed all of their digital articles from their site. Some writers were able to save their stories. Some were not. In addition to the personal losses suffered by writers who lost work, as some of the tweets in response pointed out, this also represents a cultural loss. Information and artifacts that can’t be republished, regardless of future copyright status because it’s all gone.

Some discussed new digital archives going forward. Some discussed using the Wayback Machine, hoping at least some fraction of the data can be retrieved.

Perhaps the most important sentiment that came from the replies: SAVE YOUR WORK. As a writer who has worked in technology for decades, I agree and I have always advised my coworkers not just to SAVE their work, but to SAVE AND SAVE OFTEN.

Also, as a writer who has also worked in technology for decades, I have my own digital archive where I save my creative output, my writing and my pictures. While developing a digital archive for an entire culture would be out of the scope of this article, I will discuss some of the options for writers to save their work as well as tips to create archives to preserve their work in the ways that best support their needs.

Three Copies

Three copy rule

The goal is to have at least three copies of each work. The three-copy rule. While you’re actively working on any given piece, you ideally would have your working copy, one local backup copy, and one off-device backup.

For example, if you’re using a word processor that exists on your local PC, for example, Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, or Pages, as you’re working on any given document, you have another copy of it saved somewhere else on your PC and you have saved one copy somewhere not on the PC, such as a flash drive, external hard drive, or in the cloud.

3-2-1 rule

IT departments the world over have used the 3-2-1 rule for decades now. 3-2-1 goes further than just the three copy rule. 3-2-1 also calls for 3 copies of the data. What’s different is that the rule calls for the data to be held on 2 different storage types with 1 copy of the data stored off-site.

As a writer, for you this may look like storing one copy of your data on your main PC, one copy on a NAS, and one copy in the cloud somewhere. Or perhaps you copy your data at a regular interval (or perhaps at the end of the day’s writing session) to a high capacity flash drive from your local hard drive.

If you use a cloud-based service like Office 365 or Google Docs or Proton Docs to do your composition, you have already fulfilled having a copy off-site. You may want to add a way to get a copy on-site as well, which is possible.

It’s also important to remember that how you put together your backup strategy will be based on complexity, how many copies you want to have, and how much time and money you are able or willing to put into it.

Note: All of these options can be combined with others to make for a more comprehensive method of preserving your data.

Emailing it to yourself - the least expensive option

For decades, writers have emailed their work to themselves, both for establishing a date proving creation as well as for archival purposes. Yes, you can email your writing to yourself still, but your email isn’t a storage space and storage spaces are readily available. For instance, if you use Gmail, you likely have access to Google Drive. More on it and other similar options below.

Pros: Good if you really have no other choice.

Cons: Have to search your email for your documents instead of searching a storage space, which is meant for this purpose. If the email service goes away or you change email addresses, you’ll have to do the legwork to find all of your emails with documents and re-save them elsewhere or email them to your new address.

The venerable local hard drive or solid state drive (SSD)

The next least expensive option. A hard drive, whether a desktop style or portable style should be plug and play and work with whatever kind of desktop or laptop computer you’re using. Saving files to it should only require your computer’s file manager. Some even come with software to enable encryption.

Pros: Cost and ease of use. Like other options, can be combined to create a more comprehensive backup strategy

Cons: If you have only one drive, It’s only one hard drive, therefore it’s likely to be just your regular storage or a backup, not both at the same time. Also, if your main computer is a laptop and you travel with that laptop and your hard drive, you run the risk of losing the drive. You’d be better off traveling with a flash drive, leaving your hard drive or SSD at home, and copying the files over when you get back.

DAS, NAS, and RAID

DAS

Let’s say you’re ready to get your backup strategy in place. You go to your local tech store or you look online and you see the hard drives. You get the idea that you will copy your data to two separate hard drives.

That’s where a DAS comes in. DAS stands for Direct Attached Storage. And instead of being just one hard drive, a DAS is a box that holds two or more hard drives and then attaches directly to your computer and is accessible through your computer’s file manager.

The advantage to buying a DAS over multiple hard drives isn’t just that your desk would be less cluttered, there’s also RAID. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. In short, RAID allows you to use all of drives you put into the DAS as one big storage drive or to store multiple copies of your data in the one box for redundancy. It’s important to remember, however, that RAID only provides redundancy, but can not product against deletion, data corruption, or malware or physical destruction by fire or flood in your home.

If you use Google Drive on your desktop PC, you could theoretically have the Google Drive software make a 1:1 copy of your entire DAS inside of Google Drive, depending on how much data you have on your DAS and capacity you have in Google Drive.

Pros: Multiple disks inside of the DAS means a higher potential storage capacity vs. a single hard drive. Can interface with some NAS systems directly. Can be potentially turned into a NAS using a Raspberry Pi.

Cons: May require advanced setup. Expensive.

NAS

NAS stands for Network Attached Storage. Just like its DAS siblings, they can hold 1 or more hard drives or SSDs. The difference is that instead of physically interfacing directly with a desktop computer, a NAS resides on your network, usually connected via Ethernet.

A bigger difference is that most modern NAS devices have software that’s been designed to accomplish other tasks on the network like serving media as well as other more advanced tasks.

Pros: Doesn’t have to be on site at your home, so can be protected from any damage that might occur there in the event of a fire or other disaster. Is fully under your control. Usually can be configurable for sharing and/or collaboration. Also, some can be used in a hybrid setup with a cloud solution or another NAS device. If you’re a tinkerer, there are ways to purchase hard drives and the other require hardware separately and build it yourself.

Cons: may be outside of your technical abilities to assemble and configure. Expensive. Price of storage has gone up recently.

Print

Pros: Keeps a non-digital copy. In case something happens with a digitized copy, a paper copy can be scanned on a copier, which can recreate digitized copies.

Cons: Paper catches fire easily and can also be destroyed by moisture.

Cloud

Google Drive

I’ve had Google Drive well over a decade and stored not just my writing there, but pictures, and often times, important documents. In the early days, Google just kept giving storage out. And eventually, when I got YouTube Premium, I got more storage. It’s convenient to say the least. I just threw it on my Windows machine, told it which folders to copy to the cloud, and off it went. And when I started seriously shooting photos, all I had to do was copy the pictures to my phone and then to Google Drive right from my phone. When I wanted to back up my files elsewhere, all I had to do was request them and once Google had put together the backup, was download them. And when I got my first NAS, I was able to configure the software on the NAS to make a copy of my files right on the NAS. Google Drive has been one of the most convenient apps in my storage and backup strategy.

However, as the extent of Google’s scanning, even pre-Gemini- started to come to light, I made plans to move my data out of Google. More on that later.

Pros: In addition to the above, great mobile app that enables uploads and composition.

Cons: Google is all the way up in your business.

Microsoft OneDrive

Just like Google Drive, I’ve had OneDrive since it’s been a product. I’ve used it mainly to create documents in Microsoft’s native formats or when the equivalent Google Workspace product didn’t work in a way that the Microsoft product did. For instance, formatting a play script in Google Docs can be an exercise in frustration for me.

However, just like Google’s meddling in your data, I moved completely out of OneDrive. More on that later.

Pros and Cons: See Google

Box

I accumulated a bunch of storage and left data there. More on that later.

Proton Drive

Same story for how I came to Proton Drive as soon as it reached production. It does a lot of the same things as OneDrive and Google Drive, albeit in the Proton ecosystem. Two things that it doesn’t do as well as its domestic, bigger tech cousins:

The interface to compose documents, at the time of this writing in late 2026, is not ready for prime time. For one thing, headers don’t format as well, so I will sometimes compose documents there, but I have to format them elsewhere. Also, there is no way to access your data from a NAS.

Pros: Encrypted. Android and iOS apps work well for uploads and decently for composition Also, encrypted.

Cons: Proton can’t personalized ads to you based on the data you uploaded. Well, that’s actually a pro. But the inability to save files directly to a NAS is something I don’t like. That doesn’t stop me from using the service, however.

File Formats

One of the tweets I saw recommended saving your documents as Word documents. While it’s likely that Microsoft will be around a long time as will Word format, you may not always use it. Office 365 is a paid product and while many other software packages including ones like Google Docs and Pages can read Word Documents, you may want to save your text in more flexible formats.

I personally learned this lesson of using a format that’s tied to a single software platform. I still have files in my archive in .wpd format. WordPerfect. Those files are old. Thankfully I’ve long converted them.

The best way to ensure that you’ll be able to access your documents holding works you’ll want to edit or revise well into the future would be to save them in text (.txt) format. It’s not likely to change any time soon, meaning that you will not need a converter to access them. It’s easily readable by software on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android. See also: .rtf, Rich Text Format.

If you’re in a situation like the unfortunate BET writers were, once your publisher publishes your work and especially if you do not have access to the work in another format where you can download it, create and download a PDF of the published file by going to it in a web browser. Save the PDF to your storage. If you are able to revise and re-publish the document in the future, there is software that can pull text out of a PDF.

A fun little thing you can do to hedge your future bets in case something happens to your own archive and your created PDFs: make the Wayback Machine save your URL so you can come back later and get it. To do it:

• Go to the Wayback Machine website at web.archive.org/save
• Paste the URL of the published piece and hit save
• The archive’s crawler fetches the page and files the snapshot
• Bookmark the resulting link

Note: If a page requires a login or sits behind a paywall, the crawler can’t see it and won’t get a snapshot. This isn’t a replacement for making your own copy and saving it.

My backup strategies

I purchased my first NAS in 2018, a Synology. Since I had already copied my data from a bunch of external hard drives, flash drives, and my Windows machine into Google Drive, I didn’t have to plug the hard drives into the NAS to populate the NAS’s drives. Instead, I connected the NAS to my cloud services --Google Drive, OneDrive, and Box-- and let it rip.

That worked well.

I used Google Drive to compose my writing for the most part. Formatted my plays and some other manuscripts inside of 365. Backed up my photos using my phone, but eventually I switched over to using my PC and backing up that way to Google Drive and letting my pictures filter down from Google Drive to my NAS.

Crucially, I set up a Wordpress backup of my website that stored all the infrastructure file, the posts, and pages to both my NAS and my Google Drive. I would end up needing that backup when I managed to forget to renew my domain (a long story in and of itself). I went into my domain control panel and saw the domain was gone and the website was definitely not resolving.

Thankfully, I was able to purchase another domain. Whoever had purchased it stupidly thought I’d want to purchase it back at like $1000, when I just added a hyphen into the original domain’s name, purchased that domain and it into my hosting, uploaded my Wordpress backup and got running again. I changed my email signatures and answered any inquiries concerning the site, and kept going.

I’m sure there are writers out there who are using Wordpress and other website CMS’ and it’s important to back those up. Those who aren’t using their web hosts do have other paths to backup and it’s important to do so.

Yet the story is not without irony.

Last year, I began planning an update to my backup strategy.

The original vision contained several new NAS devices spanning different NAS operating systems, locations, and one new NAS specifically for my pictures. The plan was to encrypt everything before it got to Google Drive, which I then planned to use for just storage. I’d be using LibreOffice on my Linux box for formatting while using Standard Notes for composing. Standard Notes is an online, fully encrypted note-taking app. Everything I write these days, including grocery lists, exists there and is private.

Later, because of equipment prices, I pared the idea down. Eventually, I bought a single Synology NAS, a single external hard drive to plug into the new NAS, and two hard drives for inside the NAS. I got to the testing phase right before a move, which saw both of my NAS boxes and all my hard drives end up in storage.

Fortunately, I’m still composing all of my writing in Standard Notes. I format in Google Drive which I will do until I get my stuff out of storage. Then it’s back to the original plan. And I saw instructions to connect Standard Notes to my NAS if I want to.

Conclusion

There are lots of ways to back up your writing. Hopefully the information and experience in this article will help you some or at least inspire you. Even if our publisher or our own publishing platforms or our own mistakes fail us, we can and always should be able to come back and preserve what we’ve written.

Originally published at https://kesschristopher.substack.com on September 8, 2026.