The unthinkable has happened

We've had loads of threads about backing up your work. I want to reinforce this and encourage everyone who has a disaster or a near miss to talk about it here, because the reminders just saved my sanity. Recently someone had lost some writing and a thread played out here and I backed up everything I've got after reading that thread.

Today, through some stupid error on my part and ridiculously lax security logic on my digital camera, I erased my entire 'My Documents' folder. As it wasn't done through Windows, it bypassed the recycle bin altogether and wiped it clean.

Everything in my 'My Documents' folder was unrecoverable to me without losing my machine for a week and incurring a hefty expense. Even then, the guy said that a full recovery was a bit much to hope for.

Because of the reminders posted here, I only lost a few photos and the most recent updates on my WIP, which I think I can recreate without much fuss.

AW saved my butt by putting me on a schedule of safeguarding my work.

Do it. Do it now. And do it often.

(And keep the back-ups organized. I didn't do a great job of that, so the restoring was more of a hassle than it needed to be. You just don't need that on top of the rattling you take when you realize you can't unpush that button.)

You're very kind, Poet sir. I'm kinda sad 'cause I lost my original profile picture for AW. My daughter had taken it and I always liked that picture. Lots of fun memories about starting up here.

I tell you what - live and learn. I've gotten everything reorganized, so tomorrow, all I have to do is go back and rewrite what I did today. It wasn't much. Thank god for too busy weeks!

A couple of people have asked how this could happen with a camera, so I'll try to explain it. I have an old Fuji FinePix. To get the photos off my camera, I plug it into my laptop with a USB. Then I edit the photos in the Fuji software. Once I'm satisfied with the file, I drag and drop it into 'My Documents', from there I usually upload it to my online photo warehouse for hardcopies and whatnot.

This old Fuji software has a quirk that doesn't actually move a file when you drag and drop, only copies it. So, at the end of everything, I go back to the Fuji software and hit File-Delete which clears the camera and the redundant file in the Fuji program.

Apparently, I had not clicked back into the Fuji software yesterday and when I pressed File, then Delete. There was no warning or anything that would lead me to think that things were out of the ordinary. The whole 'My Documents' (including the folder itself) was ripped right out of the Windows operating system.

Since I didn't delete the contents in Windows (which is smart enough not to allow me to delete the entire folder) it was unrecoverable through the trash/recycle bin. It just disappeared entirely.

I made a second mistake - according to the computer specialist who held my hand through this ordeal. Because the whole folder was gone, I tried doing a System Restore to a saved point earlier in the day. It brought the folder back, but not any of the files. The guy told me that if you ever have a huge data loss, you need to shut the machine down immediately and take it to an expert, as anything you try to do is possibly overwriting the lost data.

brokenfingers said:

Let me ask you: Weren't you asking about online backups recently? Or was that someone else? I started using an online backup for my writing a few weeks ago and so I'm just curious what you're using for a backup.

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Ha! That was me and I'm going to look into the online auto-back ups right away.

Luckily, the backups I had were sufficient. It's just weird that this could happen. The expert I spoke with said that there are still some devices on there that can allow a stunt like this. Obviously. Ouch.

Be careful - it's a jungle out there.

robeiae said:

True. Sledgehammers and hard drives don't mix well.

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Yeah, that would have been me, sans backup. Then I would have applied said device to my head.