Always save offsite.
ALWAYS.
There is no exception to this rule. If you want to see the file again, save offsite. Get a DropBox account. Get an external hard drive. Get something!
Or, like me, sob because you were "going to back up later" and your hard drive just blew up and you've lost a week's worth of writing work, plus family photos, plus or miscellaneous files you thought you'd never, ever, lose.
*sob*
My desktop is down. It crashed. It died. And it's going to take over $300 to repair. You know what that means: shelve it and save. With some careful spending I'll be able to afford repairs in October.
In the meantime, I'm running everything off my Ancient Laptop that is Older Than Dirt (or at least 3 of my kids) and trying to piece back together everything I had. I've lost passwords, bookmarks, chapters, outlines, entire books...
*more sobbing*
SAVE YOUR BOOKS!!!!
Because the Ancient Laptop is very ancient and prone to dying if you try to run it for more than a few hours at a time, I won't be online very much until I figure out a way around computer deaths. What computer time I do have I'm hording for writing. Yay! More books!
While I'm writing, go save your stuff.
- Liana
Sorry to hear about your dilemma. It happens to most of us sooner or later I guess. I save everything to my thumb drive, well I say I do, but I know a lot of my stuff is not on the thumb drive. Hope an alternative plan comes through for you. My daughter had that happen and she is saving the old computer till her son gets his degree in computer maintenance and hoping he will be able to save it. Maybe a friend will upgrade and give you a hand me down. That is how I get most of mine, but lately people have been being nice to me and giving me new stuff. Anyhow, good luck
ReplyDeleteOh no! I know how that feels! I had a hard-drive crash a few years ago and almost lost 7 years worth of computer code. I was lucky.
ReplyDeleteNow, I use dropbox to store my files.
Did that sound like a commercial to you?
Anyway, I'm sorry you lost all that. Hopefully they'll be able to recover the data. Depends on what happened. Good luck.
I feel your woe, from having prior machines bust their processors, burn out their memory, or have their hard drives lock up.
ReplyDeleteI use Dropbox, back up regularly to a 2nd internal hard drive and an external drive, as well as to my laptop. Learned my lesson about 5 computers ago!
In addition to Dropbox, you might want to check out LastPass too. ;)
I have dropbox, and I have backup discs, but still there were things I though I'd backed up that I hadn't. Pictures and notes, and little things that are essential to life that you don't think about because they're always there.
ReplyDeleteI'd definitely look into seeing if they can do anything, recovery-wise. That stuff may not be lost after all (not trying to get your hopes up only to have them come crashing down, but you never know). Try putting out some tweets to see if anyone is getting rid of a computer after an upgrade. If I had one to give you, I would :-( *hugs tight*
ReplyDeleteOh, I am so sorry to hear this! :( :( :(
ReplyDeleteI once lost a bunch of things and immediately got Dropbox. It has saved my life several times.