After my bachelors program, I worked in IT (it was strange since I studied philosophy and sociology). Soon after starting, I was absorbing as much as I could about computers and IT infrastructure. It took me a short period of time to understand the systems and understand the faults with corporate network architecture. Nonetheless, I built a home lab and run about five different servers for my home office. This was designed for training purposes, but I applied best practices to my home. One of those best practices is having UPS (battery/surge protector) to protect and keep your computer online in case of a power outage. Being an impoverished writer and graduate student, I can’t afford 100 dollars for my desktop computer that runs my servers. While I have the money, the reason I wont buy one is for a different reason.
I have a laptop. If you want to avoid losing your data during a power outage, but don’t want to spend money on a UPS, use your laptop as your primary writing computer (it comes with a surge protector and battery in case of a power outage). You also have a small screen making it harder to see notifications from social media.
I decided to offer this little tip, because I have lost work in the past due to a power outage. Those documents were not related to my writing. Now, I know myself very well. When I write something, I write it and say, “Awesome! That story is done!” So if a power outage wiped out my files and corrupted one of my manuscripts I know I wouldn’t go back and rewrite it. It would be lost to the ages. Luckily, I am paranoid and designed my infrastructure to mitigate any disasters that could happen (all document files are automatically backed up across three computers, a raid 5 NAS, and onto a server with my website host). No matter how impoverished you are, make sure to protect your data from loss. I doubt many people would rewrite a manuscript after it was destroyed. If you can’t afford fancy computers and things, just get a thumb drive and make sure your files are replicated on the thumb drive and your hard drive after a session. That way you have at least two copies in case one fails (you can use a service like dropbox, but I suggest you read the terms and services so you don’t end up indebted to a company).