PSA: My digital art file corrupted right before a deadline last Tuesday

I was putting the finishing touches on a piece for a gallery show in Portland when my tablet froze and the whole file got corrupted. I spent 3 hours crying before I remembered I'd set up an auto-backup to Google Drive the week before. Did I get lucky or does everyone have a backup system they swear by?

3 comments

3 Comments

dakota_miller937d agoMost Upvoted

Read an article last month that said something like 60% of creatives don't have a proper backup system. That number seemed high until I talked to a few people in my illustration group and half of them just rely on external hard drives that could die any second. Google Drive auto-backup saved me twice now, once for a commission and once for a personal project. The trick is setting it up to save every 15 minutes so you don't lose more than a few brush strokes. External drives are fine for long term storage but you need something automatic running in the background for active work. That three hour cry session could have been avoided entirely if you'd trusted the cloud earlier.

ryan_hart387d ago

Three bucks a month for Google Drive is way cheaper than a new external drive anyway.

sagejackson7d ago

and that's exactly it, the whole "it won't happen to me" thing we all tell ourselves until it does. i see this with people i know who never back up their phones either, they just assume their photos are safe until one day they drop it in the toilet or something. the same pattern plays out with everything from not saving drafts of important emails to not having renters insurance. we all think we're the exception until we're sitting there staring at a corrupted file or a broken screen. the real trick is to automate that backup so you don't have to remember it, just set it and forget it like you did.