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Sunday, March 18, 2012

Near Disaster


A few months ago, the unthinkable happened. My computer shut off. That part wasn’t surprising. It had been on the fritz for a while. In fact, the power cord (Power Cord the Second) sometimes didn’t work and the battery had the lifespan of a fruit fly . . . in a jar . . . being shaken by a five year old.
So the power cord would be the slightest bit finicky and the battery would falter and little pink netbook would go black-screened. Fixing it was a matter of aligning the power cord with exact precision and turning the computer back on (hoping that nothing would jostle the cord that had been so carefully placed).
This time it didn’t work.
It turned on, but a screen came on saying there was a problem and inviting me to restart a different way.  I did.
Nothing was working.
Everything I tried led me back to the screen announcing there was a problem.
Now, I knew that little pink netbook was on its last leg, so I’d already planned to get a new computer. But I didn’t plan for such a quick crash. I hadn’t backed up my file for two weeks!
I have a friend who either likes computers or likes taking things apart (I can’t remember which), so moment later, little pink netbook is in pieces scattered across the living room. After two days of fretting, the files were finally retrieved. Thank goodness for friends who like computers or taking things apart!
Moral of the story: Backup! Backup! Backup! When was the last time you saved your novel on a source that wasn’t your computer?

6 comments:

  1. I always email myself the file after I've been working on it. And I save it at work and on my laptop. So I have it on three comps and in the ethernet. I'm too old to try and remember enough to re-create scenes.

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  2. Oh, that sounds very stressful. I hate losing data. Glad you were able to recover your files.

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  3. Yup!

    http://authorsincognito.blogspot.com/2012/02/back-up-your-work.html

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  4. Yes, this is an important reminder. Glad you got your files back! Whenever my little pink netbook gives me a scare, I send everything new to my email account, and then save to a thumbdrive.

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  5. Nice blog. As someone interested in words, I thought you might like to look into the word play in cryptic crosswords (if you aren't already into them). I have been doing a series of posts about cryptic clues and how to solve them. This is the first one in the series:
    http://caroleschatter.blogspot.co.nz/2012/01/cryptic-crosswords-solving-hints-1.html
    Enjoy.

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  6. Glad you had a happy ending. It can be so frustrating just to lose one day. I try to save on my flashdrive.

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