Back up your files! Back up everything!
Do it!
My laptop, after seven years of service, has finally shuffled off this mortal coil. Unfortunately for me, the hard drive with all my back-ups on it kicked that self-same bucket about a month ago and I stupidly hadn’t prioritised its replacement. All of my university work is stored online, but I have really been set back by losing all my recent sketches for one of my portfolios. I am particularly crushed by the loss of my sound recordings library; hours of painstakingly collected sounds have been lost, not just interesting ones but those that mean a lot to me – recordings taken from a trip around Japan, recordings of my partner and I moving to Bristol in first year, and all the concerts I have recorded while at university.
I cannot emphasise enough the importance of planning ahead with technology. While I’m lucky in that I’m writing this post on a lovely new machine, and haven’t yet begun the first essay for the Film Musical unit I have just started, I’m now saddled with the task of writing out a year’s worth of music in the next few months out of email attachments and sketches on scrap paper, and the financial burden of paying off the new laptop has made planning for the future all the more stressful.
This is honestly the most important lesson to learn at university, and the sooner absorbed, the better: be organised, and back up your files!
Harris 
Leave a Reply