Backup Drill

With a computer, bad disks, damaged files, computer lock-ups and hard disk crashes are a fact of life. Although these occurrences are few and far between, they inevitably seem to happen to everyone at least once. Take the precautions mentioned below and your drill designing days will be virtually trouble free.

Separate Files for Each Movement

To prevent losing large amounts of work, it is advisable to create a separate file for each drill segment or movement. Smaller files will also speed up animation and at times, solve certain printing problems.

Save Often

Your time and effort is very valuable. We suggest saving every fifteen minutes when working on a file. Nothing is more frustrating than losing drill all because you did not save your work. It is easy and takes very little time. Just select Save from the File menu.

Keep Multiple Files Multiple Places

Work from the drill files that you have stored on your hard drive, however, also put your drill files on disc or an external storage device and store them. Keep copies in multiple locations. Hard drives crashes can completely wipe out your entire drill design library as well as other important files stored on the computer. Never keep your files at only one location.

File Versioning

Make quick hard drive backups by choosing Save As from the File menu and changing the name of the file. One common method of making backups is by ending a file name with a number such as 01 and then incrementing the number for each backup. For example: Name your opener “Opener01”. After an hour of work, choose Save As and change the name to “Opener02” and so on. The name with the largest number is the most current and all others are older at one hour increments. This makes it easy to go back to earlier versions. After you have collected several copies, start deleting the oldest ones, and occasionally move copies to the external storage device.

Automatic Backups

Use the Backups section of the Application Options found in the File menu. Check *“Always backup after using Save.” See the Backup section of Menu Bar for details.