Do You Back Up Your Work?!!

[Doom_Dude]

Seriously. Do you back up your Doom mapping projects and textures and music and whatever you're working on?

 

I remember one time many years ago, a fellow Doomer lost his Total Conversion due to a HDD mishap. That was heartbreaking and also a lesson I took heed to.

 

The power could go out or your computer could crash while editing your map or your editor itself could choke on a fat sector. I had a folder go missing from my desktop and I don't know if it was me lassoing files on my desktop and deleting it all, or if it was something that went AWOL during one of those rare computer lockups where a reboot was needed. The folder was full of misc unsorted stuff and at most I lost some textures. It still sucks tho.

 

I think external drives are terrible for keeping files that aren't backed up elsewhere. I've had three external drives die and thankfully I didn't keep my level / texture work on them. One drive I was able to retrieve files off of by doing the freezer trick and using a disc with Linux knoppix on it to access the drive. The 2nd drive wasn't so lucky and I know on that drive I lost a digital painting of a Doom 3 style Hellknight. The 3rd drive I saved because it was just a bad controller board and I put the drive minus the board inside my PC and the drive is still working.

 

Anyways, I recently backed up all my Doom stuff onto another drive and also on a flash drive. Should do that more often. I get lazy and don't back things up for ages...

 

Does anybody use any sort of automatic backup for their doom stuff? I have never tried ghosting drives or using any kind of back up service / program. Does anybody back up to the cloud or some other space?

[Phobus]

Back in the 90s and early 2000s, using DEU, I was plagued with hours of work disappearing in a nodebuilder crash whilst saving, so I learned the value of backups young in life. I used to just save regularly and alternate filenames so that I always had a second copy to fall back to with only some work lost. Nowadays I've got three storage drives in my PC. Doom lives on the big, old HDD (Drive D), there's a rarely-updated backup on a hybrid HDD I got out of a laptop that died on me (Drive E) and I've got my entire portfolio and WIP folder backed up to Google Drive, with the portfolio shared as a publicly accessible folder, which is linked in my profile.

 

The backing-up process is still manual, though. I copy stuff to Google Drive at the end of each editing session, where I remember to. The E-drive backup is more just to keep a local copy of my IWADs handy, than a genuine effort to replicate my work.

[Deadwing]

I've been using git to backup my projects.

It's manual backup, though. Everytime I finish editing my wads, I've to do commit.

[andrewj]

My coding projects are usually "backed up" by being on GitHub or GitLab, some are public and some are private.

 

Another major non-code project is also on GitLab (currently private).  Other stuff I generally copy onto a USB stick.

[noisebloom]

I also use Git for all Doom mapping-related stuff. Always get that sense of relief when I push up to the server. 

 

If you are paranoid about losing stuff accidentally, this is the way to go. 

[MFG38]

I always back up my projects, usually to Dropbox and an external hard drive.

[smeghammer]

Github.

 

I've used github for many years for real work and personal stuff. It can get complicated for multiple branches and contributors, but for a single user, its pretty straightforward. All you really need is 'git add .', 'git commit -m "your commit message"' and 'git push origin [branchname]'.

 

Leaving the defauft 'master' branch is usually fine for simple projects.

 

It's also really handy if you have multiple machines at home - saves carrying stuff around on a USB stick (lazy, see?)

 

There are plenty of GUIs for git as well as the CLI and there is usually good integration with IDEs too (I use Eclipse). Maybe an integration with github/SVN etc. for Doom Builder/Eureka etc. might be a thing?

 

Automation can of course be done with a batch/shell file with a bit of setup. I just do it manually however - a nice thing with ubuntu terminal is it remembers a command history between power cycles, so I can just up-arrow/enter a couple of times

 

 

[esselfortium]

Nightly local backup of everything to an external hard drive, regular during-the-day online backup, and duplicating current stuff to iCloud to work on it from different computers.

 

When I was younger I used to just copy my projects folder manually when I remembered to (so basically once per year or so), and it goes without saying that that could have easily ended very badly. A few years ago, the nightly local backup saved me when a hard drive failed in the middle of a weeklong music project. I still lost what I had done that day, though, so now I have the during-the-day online backup too. Backups are good.

[pcorf]

With the current megawad I'm working on I always back it up on portable HD or USB stick every time a new map is complete. Same with my non Doom related musical projects, the mastered .wav files are backed up.

Edited June 17, 2020 by pcorf

[Dimon12321]

There is an option in Windows 7 (and beyond), called "Restore the previous version" (of the file). I think it backs up the file after each change, so you can restore a successful save. Unfortunately, I've never tried this option.

[Immorpher]

I use dropbox and onedrive to backup my stuff in the cloud. Free and simple, but limited storage. Because of that if I finish a project I make sure to release it and upload it to an appropriate website. Sometimes for random stuff, archive.org will take it.

[printz]

I use Git. Locally I use the SourceTree tool and I push to BitBucket or GitHub. It's great because it's designed to easily save new changes as versions, and it's rock-solid at this. This way, not only I have backup (thanks to the freedom of pushing to BitBucket/GitHub virtually unlimited), but I also have versions to go back to, in case I mess up. This in turn lets me do experiments without ruining any of my work. The only downside is that I have to command the "backup" manually. It's still really easy to do, but requires me to "punch in" my changes. It's not a seamless background automatic process, like when working in DropBox or Google Drive. But I value the ability to store versions more.

[Doomkid]

I usually back things up online or on an external HD. I do so often enough and learned the importance of regular backups and data preservation a long ass time ago from losing 5 basically complete maps and a whole shitload of custom graphics in the midst of making a TC. Years later my friend Kitty happened to find a near-complete version I sent her, so it’s only thanks to her that my maps from 2004-2008 still exist. The first 3 years of my mapping discography are gone forever, even if the maps were assy I’d still like to have them around.

[Breeder]

I back up everything, usually to more than one location. I have work going back all the way to 2000.

[Killerratte]

I do map backups on cloud services.

[fraggle]

I use Git for all my projects. It's not about making backups, it's about changing the way you work, and I often find that the history, and going back to find out why I did things is just as important as the end result.

[xvertigox]

I backup my entire Doom folder. I have Google Drive watch my c:\idtech1 folder so I have all my projects, pwads, iwads etc easily accessible from any pc.

[noisebloom]

2 hours ago, fraggle said:

It's not about making backups, it's about changing the way you work, and I often find that the history, and going back to find out why I did things is just as important as the end result.

 

This is true. When I started using version control, the "fear" of ruining something I was working on went away. I could experiment as necessary, creating branches and committing. I never had to worry about losing the little tangents my brain went on or getting back to my "known good" copy. 

 

Version control is almost mandatory in the software industry, but its philosophies can be applied to any sort of digital record that one needs to change.

[WowozuelaSpammer]

nope.avi, GZDB does it already, and i don't actually need them, but when i started mapping they saved my crappy 6 map wad, because i put a script in Slade in the wrong place, wich deleted everythin, luckily, i had like 20 backups, i used the newest, copy pasted the map and the enemies, and voilah! Fixed

[Lila Feuer]

A USB stick decided it wanted to die, everything was cut-copied to it and it got loose during transfer. Corrupted and all my reserve Doom stuff was gone. Rebuilt what I really needed after that, but otherwise I worry about other mass collections already as it is, I think I have worse luck with game files than literally anything else.

[Jon]

Thank you for this PSA on the importance of backups. I love backups. I also love git. But I must point out, git is not backup.

 

for someone with limited resources, one computer and no prior experience backing anything up, a not bad option would be to immediately start using something like Dropbox or an equivalent service on their free tier. You are at least then covered if your house burns down. 

[BBQgiraffe]

I lost 5 years of programming projects when my hard drive died last year and ever since then I've backed up everything to two separate drives

[Sergeant_Mark_IV]

It was a habit I developed since my Warcraft modding days. After the end of a day, make a copy of the wad in a separate folder, store at least 3 of them, from each of the previous three days.
Nowadays with fast internet, I can upload it to a cloud to keep it even safer in case of hardware failure. 

I never had a loss bigger than 2 or 3 hours of progress.
So, do it everyday!

[Capellan]

I have continuous cloud back-up of all the stuff I don't want to lose.  My Doom stuff is only a small fraction of that, but it's in the list.

[Tango]

1 hour ago, Jon said:

Thank you for this PSA on the importance of backups. I love backups. I also love git. But I must point out, git is not backup.

 

GitHub and GitLab both offer free private repos now, which I've been taking advantage of for a few years. makes it really convenient to work on maps/mods across multiple computers, like when I'm on vacation or something

[Remilia Scarlet]

Yes!  I have a file server here at home where I keep most of my data (not just mapping-related) so that I can access it via NFS at home, and SSH from anywhere else.  I backup this data to external hard drives (plural) using rsync.  If rsync fails, I know one of my drives failed, so it's time to get a new one.  I also often make "tar cvJf some-project-backup-20200322.tar.xz some-project/" backups, mainly for moments when I screw something up, and keep only the last 3-5 of them.

 

My source code is all handled in Fossil repos that are kept on multiple machines, including the file server that I back up with rsync.

 

EDIT: My backup scheme is basically based on this, modified to suit my needs: https://www.jwz.org/doc/backups.html  I used to actually do entire system backups, but given how simple of a Linux install I'm running on my server, I figured a reinstall then copying of /etc was good enough :-P

Edited June 18, 2020 by Remilia Scarlet

[Doom Marine]

DropBox, there's no manual backup for something of my scope

 

I have like 4 computers in different places, so to sync the configuration for editors, I also have the installed directory on DropBox as well

 

Not sure how everybody does versioning of their WADs, but I increment my save name by one everytime I do it. So DVII-SE has roughly 2800 saves since the First Edition's release.

 

M is the map saves, N is the resource file saves.

 

[nicolas monti]

When I map I save the progress of every day in a different file, map01a, map01b, map01c etc or even after some hours of good progress because a couple of times doombuilder just crashed and destroyed my map, on the other hand I save my "in progress" wad in my phone and in mediafire. Not the safest way but if something bad happens I still have my work somewhere.

[silentzorah]

I don't really back it up, but I do work on it in several different media.  Most active projects, I keep on a USB stick, along with source code.  Full releases, I keep on the HDD, once I've released a build, and I just continue working on it like that.  As long as I've got the source code and an earlier release build, it doesn't bother me so much if a hard drive goes out.

 

And before someone suggests my USB sticks go out, I rotate those out every year.  You should see my shelving unit, there's USBs all over the place.  I really oughta clean up in here.

[Mr.Rocket]

I've made a habit of making a backup (well in this case saving with a new name _01, _02, etc.) before and after making changes to a new wad in development.

As well as making backups locally on external thumb drive and MS cloud based and google drive.

It sounds like a lot of junk floating around, but I've lost my stuff in the past, just before I made a backup.. which really sucked.

 

Yes, Always make backups, if at all possible!

Which reminds me, I need to get some recent changes on my google drive before bed. ;)

Edited June 18, 2020 by Mr.Rocket