Computer shuts down- your day's work is lost.

I've had computers shut down, but luckily I have MSWord do autosaves and it saves a checkpoint version when the puter crashes. So though I've been inconvenienced by the happening, I can't remember the last time I lost any real data.

I always save everything to my flash drive after I'm done.

Well, except last night and now I'm at work with my flash drive and old data!

But the autosave you can set up to save it however often you want.

And if Word crashes, when you reopen, it'll open a crash file of what you were working on.

At least that's the theory. It's worked for me, can't say it'll work for you.

Cripes, that happens at work all the time. The server crashes and if you haven't saved your full page ad with sixty gabillion words in it, you're toast and have to start again.

I remember in the early days, a coworker had a big sign over his computer: SAVE, SAVE, SAVE!!!

My Mac at home hasn't shut down yet, and my Word autosaves, too. So far, so good.

Darzian said:

How would you react? It has happened to me twice and I all but screamed. Then first time, I lost about 5 pages. The second time, I lost a few sentences. Both instances were a terrible ordeal because I take time to phrase each and every sentence (as I assume the majority of us do).

I can't bear this anymore. I'm going to hit Ctrl+S every minute now.

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I would also look into external hard drives. Save it to the external, just in case your system crashes. Great model: SmartDisk 500 GB by Verbatum.

I never work on my desktop when there's a storm either now, just for that exact reason...

Save early, save often. Ctrl+S is your friend.

I hate, hate, hate it when that happens.

So I made it so my word processor autosaves every 2 minutes, haha!

Before I installed that, and it'd crash, I'd usually wallow in self-pity then go distract myself with something else.

Auto save. If that doesn't help, refer to my handwritten notes. Yes, I use a combination of technologies when I write.

GLAZE_by_KyrstinMc said:

ISo I made it so my word processor autosaves every 2 minutes, haha!

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Every 2 minutes? Wow. I'd just find that so annoying because my computer usually stops all processes during that time, which means I'll have typed an entire paragraph before I realize the computer is just sitting there waiting.

Like Shadow Ferret, I use MS Word, so there's almost zero chance of losing even one day's work. The product has improved a lot since the old days.

Now, sometimes it has required a little tech know-how to get a file back after a hardware crash. Like, disc-checking occasionally put the file in the FOUND.000 directory or whatever. But it's easy enough to just rename that whatever.doc and Word will recover it as normal.

SF, two words. Extra RAM.

Which reminds me. I have extra RAM to install...

Buy a mac.

What?

Oh come on, you knew SOMEONE was gonna say that.

External passport drive.

It's DA BOMB. When I got a new laptop, all I had to do was plug in the drive, with all my old laptop stuff on it, and hit Transfer. Done.

And now I back up the new one all the time. Of course, I also send a copy of my files to my gmail account, so there's an extra copy that's stored off site.

TheIT said:

Save early, save often. Ctrl+S is your friend.

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This. Ctrl+S is such a habit for me, I do it often while typing in reply boxes like these, or out of habit when I finish a paragraph. >_>

Grab a new machine, saving in word only takes about .3 seconds on a modern computer. I just tested again with my 400 page novel

Modern computer (6 months old) with 3GB of ram, runs extremely well. Since using Windows Vista I've never had a crash either, but one time my power went out and I hadn't saved for 5 mins or so.

Word 2003 had a copy of my file waiting, and I was missing the last 2 words I'd typed.

New machine! And grab a UPS if you want a cheap one will run your machine for 3-4 minutes after the power goes down. Let's you finish your thought AND not lose your work

Shadow_Ferret said:

Every 2 minutes? Wow. I'd just find that so annoying because my computer usually stops all processes during that time, which means I'll have typed an entire paragraph before I realize the computer is just sitting there waiting.

Click to expand...

The program I use doesn't have me stop for the saving... it's nice.

Darzian said:

I can't bear this anymore. I'm going to hit Ctrl+S every minute now.

Click to expand...

When I worked as an editor for a video company a few years ago, the computer was NOTORIOUS for crashing. I swear, sometimes you just had to move the mouse wrong and it crashed. Nothing like carefully fixing ten minutes of audio, then SPLAT. Gone. I got so paranoid that I really did start hitting CTRL+S every minute.

Now, almost 10 years later, I habitually hit Ctrl+S everytime I pause to think or reread a paragraph. I also back my writing up to two separate thumb drives every night.

And yet, last night, I STILL discovered that a chapter -- one I KNOW I wrote -- is missing. We can't win, can we?

Word Perfect (Corel) autosaves and also has that feature where if you crash it saves a version of whatever you were working on and will open it as soon as the program is up again.

Once a week I save everything to my flash drive and once a month I back up everything to a CD. But I'm not paranoid, really! Just because I sit with my back to the wall, facing both the door and the window . . .

A friend of my never backed up and when she had a system crash she lost her entire novel and a book of original poetry.

The key with the AutoRecover is OPEN WORD FIRST. It will have your document waiting for you, at least as much as it can recover. Sometimes if you open a doc first, the AutoRecover won't be there (it's Microsoft, what can I say?) Usually you'll only loose a handful of words. Crtl+S-- it'll become habit. I sometimes hit it even when I haven't typed anything (new) just because I'm afraid of loosing something. ANd I also have my autosave set on OCD, I mean, every couple of minutes.

Of course, in normal computing, your machine shouldn't be crashing anyway. Something else is going on. Just like a car shouldn't stall while you're driving down the e-way.

Condolences for your loss.

I save every few minutes and back up every night.
I've lost content... twice. Never, ever, again.

I save after every paragraph. This computer can play up once in a while so I get paranoid.

Yep, train those fingers. Ctrl+S... paragraph... Ctrl+S paragraph... Ctrl+S

I once had such a cranky computer I used a keylogger so I wouldn't have to re-write e-mails.

I have a little secret for you that you people won't like.

Operating systems don't actually write files to the disk immediately. They might, but they might also postpone it for minutes or even hours. The reasoning for this is too complicated to explain to laymen, but let's just say that hitting ctrl+S all the time won't necessarily save you--though I suppose it can't hurt.

That's why, on many operating systems, you have to explicitly unmount all writable drives before disconnecting them. Yes, even flash drives. And those of you who yank out your flash drives without explicitly stopping them are taking a very serious risk with your data.

Um, okay. So what should we do about it? Or is it just something we should all fear?

Given that Ctrl-S and yanking my flash drive from Plug&Play systems has not lost me any data in over three years, I'm taking my chances. I also drive the eway every day even though people die and crash cars and stuff on it.