7 Tips for Backing up Your
Thesis or Dissertation Work
by
Mary Beth Haines, Ph.D.
Many articles on dissertation or thesis help recommend backing up your work. Yet I haven’t found many that offer concrete tips about what is useful and what isn’t. Based on personal experience and what I have read of others’ personal experiences, here are a few tips on backing up material.
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Keep and back up
everything. You never know what material will come in handy and when. It’s better to have it than to lose it.
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Date all changes, starting with the year. That way, you’ll always know what the most recent work was.
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Copy all changes onto EACH backup place. If you have backups in several places, and can’t access them each time you add or revise, how are they helpful?
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When traveling, don’t put all backups in the same place. If that piece of luggage is lost, it might not get returned. You really don’t want to have to start over.
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Hard copies count as one type of backup. Personal experience: scanning in a hard copy can save having to re-write the dissertation when your computer crashes.
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Make backups of recordings, graphics or visuals. This sounds obvious, but it is possible to lose these, and some can’t be replaced.
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Make and keep copies of all communication with faculty and/or committee. For meetings, record and transcribe; for online or hardcopy, make copies.
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