And I wonder if I should write an ebook on "How to write your thesis with a computer".

PM me if you want to collaborate. :)

It might suffice to only have one page with the big word 'BACKUP!' on it.

Later editions might expand to 'BACKUPS!'.

I'm in ;-)

I really wonder how often Students loose their work. Hence nowdays it's so easy to have a good backup running...

When I studied they had some small coursework you had to do in the first few weeks to indicate you understood what plagiarism was so there were no excuses if you got busted. Perhaps something similar for backups would be good.

I lost data on the weekend whilst trying to resolve differences between directories on machines. I was using meld (at 2 o'clock in the morning) and clicked 'delete' on a selection when I meant to click 'right'.* Spent several hours after that scanning sda1 for byte segments resembling the beginning of xlsx files (no luck). Serves me right for using dumb binary formats that don't lend themselves to diff-based source control.

* Brilliant the way the app places those buttons right next to one another.

There definitely seems to be a disconnect between schools forcing laptops and tablets on students without any education in backing up their media.

I'd think there's an opportunity to collaborate with universities and offer a system that's available (and maybe even mandatory) to every student.