A few years ago my husband sent me this reminder of why writers, editors, designers — well, everyone — must have a system in place for backing up files regularly (ideally, automatically). An entire issue of Business 2.0 magazine was accidentally deleted before going to print.

Much of the content had to be recreated from scratch — and still make the print deadline.

Dragonfly uses a company called Carbonite, which automatically backs up our active work area several times a day to a web-based server. It costs us less than $10 per month (costs are based on the plan you choose).

I hope that wasn’t some sort of company secret I wasn’t supposed to share.
This post was originally written and published by Samantha Enslen in 2007, but the importance of backing up your work remains the same.