My computer crashed :(

dreamsofnever · Apr 29, 2008

So I used to be in the habit of making sure to email myself a copy of whatever I was working on at least on a biweekly basis. I've been slacking for the last two months (possibly three) and now, wouldn't ya know it, my computer crashed.

It just wouldn't even load windows until my husband did a system reboot (not sure if that's what it was called) and basically from that, the computer started as a fresh slate. We're talking NOTHING loaded. He's currently searching for our Microsoft Office because it doesn't even have that on it.

This just really sucks. Sorry for the whine/rant, but I'm pretty bummed about losing this much work because of my own stupidity.

But I will rewrite and hopefully it will be better than the first version.

Anyone else had this happen? Or are you all smart back-uppers? If not, learn your lesson from me and email yourself copies of your wips!

RumpleTumbler · Apr 29, 2008

In the inexpensive data recovery department this should get your files back if you're so inclined.

http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

Namatu · Apr 29, 2008

That sucks. My computer hasn't (yet) crashed on me, but it did lose some new material I'd written, despite my saving it to both my hard drive and a jump drive. The save as date and time were right, but the words weren't there. I now email new material to myself, save it as the old file to the hard drive and jump drive, and save it as a new file too. I don't feel even slightly paranoid. Technology is both friend and enemy.

JamieFord · Apr 29, 2008

Ouch. I use a $20 jump drive. I don't back-up my WIP file every day, but fairly often. Or I'm copying files from my desktop to my laptop, so I have tons of copies at various stages of progress floating around. (Knock on wood).

drachin8 · Apr 29, 2008

Oh, ouch, that sucks.

*hugs*

If it happens again, sometimes you can always hook up the failed hard drive as a secondary drive in a working computer and very likely still find your files. Or boot up in super safe DOS mode and manually crawl through the directories to grab your files. I've had to do both of those before, and they are usually successful (although the time we lost all of our honeymoon vacation photos was killer sad). Not fun, but better than losing stuff.

*more hugs*

-Michelle

Virector · Apr 29, 2008

Oh yeah. That happened to me just last week. I kept no back up copies of anything then my computer ugraded itself to SP1 for Vista, I prompted me to restart, I did so then all hell broke loose-- The file *weuhgfr/dh/leh.dll/djhc/dhdc.dll* could not be found (well, not exactly THAT file, but you get the point) and I lost A LOT of stuff, including a near-completed manuscript and a massive project I'd been working on-- I honestly broke down and wept... I feel your pain, and I guess we all learn a lesson from this.

dreamsofnever · Apr 29, 2008

RumpleTumbler said:
In the inexpensive data recovery department this should get your files back if you're so inclined.

http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

Oh wow! Thank you. If this works, I may just have to send you a basket of cookies

I can't wait to get home and try it!

writin52 · Apr 29, 2008

Oh, yes! It has definitely happened to me! :rant:

All my snips of ideas, outlines the works gone as a sacrifice to the cybergods! Luckily, always make a hard copy of everything(computer is not a paper saver for moi, I'm afraid) Also am a dinosaur as have diskette drive and store on diskettes until they are full, then transfer to CD. All this I learned the hard way. Deepest sympathy for your loss, but as u say, rewrites will be better and brighter, they cannot help but be

At least you have a savior who lives in-house! :Hammer:

dreamsofnever · Apr 29, 2008

Michelle, I would have cried if we'd lost our honeymoon pictures! Luckily, I'm a picture sharing addict so they're on my myspace and facebook, just waiting to be downloaded right back to our computer.

And Virector, that really really sucks.

Jamie and Namatu, you two are very smart. I use a jump drive as an extra backup, but I haven't put anything on it in a long time and the husband confiscated it for his school stuff after he lost the one he bought for school.

So now we apparently can't even connect to the internet until we can reconfigure things and we can't find our microsoft office cd anywhere so we probably have to repurchase that. So that really really sucks.

But we'll rebuild and on the bright side, at least I don't have to do a big cleaning of my unneccessary files.

Mel · Apr 29, 2008

Get a gmail account, makes a good backup/storage for important files.

dreamsofnever · Apr 29, 2008

Mel said:
Get a gmail account, makes a good backup/storage for important files.

I have one. Do you store things by emailing them there or does it have an additional storage option? Man, I really should have done SOMETHING to back this stuff up.

Ah well. Part of the reason I wasn't all into backing up was that I wasn't always happy with my writing for the day, so this clears the way for bigger and better rewrites!

eveningstar · Apr 29, 2008

dreamsofnever said:
I have one. Do you store things by emailing them there or does it have an additional storage option? Man, I really should have done SOMETHING to back this stuff up.

Ah well. Part of the reason I wasn't all into backing up was that I wasn't always happy with my writing for the day, so this clears the way for bigger and better rewrites!

There's Google Docs which works through your gmail account and is a great, easy way to make extra backups.

I'm sorry about your crash! It has happened to me before, now I back up everything in multiple places.

kuwisdelu · Apr 29, 2008

That sucks.

It's always good to have a backup. Thank god for my MacBook's Time Machine. I always have an up-to-date backup on my external hard drive.

External hard drives are pretty cheap these days. It would be a good idea to pick one up and backup to it. Of course most people never realize this until it's too late

I believe Vista has a similar feature to Time Machine called Windows Shadow Copy or something like that. And now you know not to slack off on the writing backups, too.

Oh, and until you find your copy of MS Office--or if you can't find it--you can download OpenOffice.org to write. It's a free, open-source office suite. You can open/save in .doc or .docx format so it's fully compatible with Word.

girlyswot · Apr 29, 2008

I use Mozy which offers free, AUTOMATIC, online backups. After the first backup, you then schedule it to back up as often as you want. It will check for any new or updated files and add the backups accordingly. I love that I never have to remember to back up any more.

Last year I used my mozy back ups to transfer all my files to my new computer and it worked brilliantly. Downloading restored files is quick and easy. It's really, really, worth checking out.

dreamsofnever · Apr 29, 2008

Eveningstar, Kuwisdelu, and Girlyswot, thanks so much for the resources. Those are all awesome and I will definitely put them to use! I really appreciate the help!

Mel · Apr 29, 2008

dreamsofnever said:
I have one. Do you store things by emailing them there or does it have an additional storage option? Man, I really should have done SOMETHING to back this stuff up.

Email them. There's lots of storage and if you want more just make another account, or as many as you want.

Check out Google docs, too. Not sure how much you can put up there but someone else might know.

Tish Davidson · Apr 29, 2008

For $50 per year you can sign up with Carbonite http://carbonite.com for automatic backup on line. You do nothing - no equipment, no remembering to back up, no choosing what to back up - it backs up everything. It's good for people like me who always intend to backup but never do. I learned my lesson when my computer sparked, belched smoke (no exaggeration) and died so dead that nothing could be recovered.

stormie · Apr 29, 2008

Yep. You could have thumb drives, emails, cds, anything you can think of to back up your stuff. Then one week goes to two weeks then three weeks...and you forgot to do a backup. And Murphy's Law--that's when your computer dies.

I feel so bad for you, dreamsofnever!

BlackViolet13 · Apr 29, 2008

The same thing happened to me a year ago, during finals week. I had backed up my PC just two weeks prior, but was so totally in the closet about my writing at that point (hubs didn't know, I was too shy about it) that I hadn't backed up any of my writing

I lost all of my study guides, essays, and other things that I'd gotten ready for finals, which still hurts me to this day whenever I think about it. The thing about my writing was that it was a fresh slate. I grew. I got better. And I never EVER have to look at the first two books I'd written ever again

Now I use OneCare, which automatically backs up everything to my external hard drive (it's also an anti-virus/spyware program). I also use SkyDrive, and MS Office Workspace which is by far my favorite because it's integrated into your Office programs. I've learned a girl can never be too careful

Best of luck to you, my thoughts are definitely with you!

Birol · Apr 29, 2008

Back up your files, People. (Speaking of which, I'm past due for that action myself.)

stormie · Apr 30, 2008

Could be a new rule on AW: "Back up your work now or no signing in!"

RickN · Apr 30, 2008

I use a jumpdrive/traveldrive/smartdrive and the Windows Briefcase accessory. I have my entire writing directory tree in the briefcase on the jumpdrive. At the end of the day, I click on the briefcase icon on the jumpdrive, select 'update', and it copies any files that I modified onto the jumpdrive. This keeps a current copy of work handy and lets me transfer updated files between laptop and desktop with a couple clicks.

I also burn cds with lots of stuff on them every so often and I keep a copy in the non-public ftp area of my website.

When you're compared to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck* as often as I am, it pays to believe in backups.

*That's Bob, Rudy, and Earl, respectively. You thought I meant someone else?

ACEnders · Apr 30, 2008

Oh no, I'm so sorry! I'd be crying right now!!!

I back up, fortunately. But only after almost losing everything when I switched to Vista (then switched back to Microsoft 2003 because Vista Office sucks)

My computer keeps dying on me now, but I keep everything backed up. I use a flash drive, and I do the email thing also.

Old Hack · Apr 30, 2008

I had a computer meltdown this time last week. Hard drive failure, couldn't boot it, couldn't do anything but watch it do... nothing.

I'd not backed up for about a month.

Luckily I have a friend with a computer business, who supplied me with my computer.

He told me to go out and buy a USB hard drive caddy for a SATA drive (you can also get IDE drives, but mine are SATAs) before I did anything else. I did, it cost me about £20/$40, and was pretty easy to use. I took the hard drive out of the box, whacked it into the caddy, and then plugged it into our children's computer. Then all I had to do was copy everything over from the old, damaged hard drive onto the kids' machine. It was REALLY easy, took less than an hour, and I didn't lose a thing.

Then I put the hard drive back in, phoned technical support, and with their guidance reformatted the drive and reinstalled Windows.

Honestly. It was not difficult. If I can do it then so can you all. But it would have been easier if I'd have backed up. Point is, back up as often as you can but if you forget and your computer goes into meltdown, make sure you retrieve what you can before you try to mend the hard drive.

dreamsofnever · May 1, 2008

Awesome news!

RumpleTumbler said:
In the inexpensive data recovery department this should get your files back if you're so inclined.

http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

I found my WIP using this

The hubby had to convince me it was worth the $60 to buy the program, cuz I was just like "I'll rewrite." But we also located some of my husband's schoolwork and our list of addresses for friends and family, etc. So it was worth it.

But yes, definitely going to be more vigilant with my back-ups!

My computer crashed :(

dreamsofnever

RumpleTumbler

Loves Joni Mitchell

Namatu

Lost in mental space.

JamieFord

giving resonant directions

drachin8

post-apocalyptic bunny

Virector

The only one

dreamsofnever

writin52

dreamsofnever

Mel

Never be completely back to normal.

dreamsofnever

eveningstar

circus girl without a safety net

kuwisdelu

Revolutionize the World

girlyswot

dreamsofnever

Mel

Never be completely back to normal.

Tish Davidson

stormie

storm central

BlackViolet13

Birol

Around and About

stormie

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RickN

ACEnders

Self-Banned

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman

dreamsofnever