Just as a quick aside from all the elearning info being passed around, a gentle reminder to review your backup policy and make sure it is fit for purpose. Until yesterday morning I thought my own was fairly robust but that was mercilessly proven untrue upon discovery of a corrupt project file. The big takeaway is that:
Backups of corrupt data are more corrupt data!
Because I hadn’t opened the file in over two weeks, during that time it had been automatically backup up in several locations, overwriting the good copy. So I had 6 totally useless copies of the same file and nothing but remorse.
My incremental backup was set for 10 days, fine if I suffer a complete system failure or some other dramatic, noticeable event but I certainly don’t open all my various files every 10 days. This is what caught me out yesterday. For important but not frequently accessed work I should have had a- a known good copy that wasn’t touched and b- much longer file history.
Anyway, I’m sure you’re all smarter than me but it is worth thinking about and identifying any weak links in your backup chain.
Gareth
So, I lost a 3 page French paper (in French) because I went to dinner and left the file open on my computer Freshman year of college, and when I came back it was corrupted . . . the night before it was due. Ever since then, I have a standard practice of saving pretty constantly, and renaming files regularly. In a Microsoft Word file, that’s about every page. Sadly, Google Docs is teaching me to be less militant about saving things (and I’ve regularly seen this problem with my students who don’t save or back anything up for love nor money). But the takeaway from my years of changing file names is that if my final file corrupts, I’ve only lost the amount of work I’ve added since the previous name change, which is generally “one page” worth of work. Might be something worth doing for you as well. It would be unlikely for them all to corrupt.
Gareth, I’m sorry to hear this situation. I’ve been there! I now use the following setting to create a backup of the Captivate file.
Edit < Preferences < General Settings < Generate Project Backup.
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