AAAARRRRGHGHGHGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jhb171achill]

Alarm set this morning for 8, and off to "Joint Author"'s house to do the lions share of collaborative book 4; his photos, my writings.

As customary, he has projector and screen set up, computer on, and tea on the go; and away we go.

First thing is to add to some of the captions (some 84 of them) we had already done. By the time we had that done (insertion of dates, background info researched by both of us for other captions to expand them), it's lunch time. So far, so good. Computer's on autosave, so out with the sandwiches.

Round two. During the afternoon, we get a good fifty further captions done, with research in place to fill out about 20 more. We're getting on well; we're thinking one more session and we're off to the publisher with this one. Which will leave him free to deal with other matters, and me to complete next "sole" book.

Suddenly, it's 18:30; the day has flown - but look at what we've got done.

Then the computer makes a noise like a musical note, and all but what we had saved at lunchtime just vanishes.

If you are that laptop and you're reading this, here's a thing: I know a man with semtex and sledgehammers and you're THIS close....

Meanwhile we have rostered a relative who is under 30 to investigate that nasty laptop.....

Whole day wasted!

[popeye]

Always backup, which I don't always do, but most of my pictures are saved on a separate drive.

You can retrieve lost data but do it soon or it will get corrupted.

[jhb171achill]

8 minutes ago, popeye said:

Always backup, which I don't always do, but most of my pictures are saved on a separate drive.

You can retrieve lost data but do it soon or it will get corrupted.

We had the thing auto-saving; when it crashed it was dinner time, so the twenty-something-in-residence was unavailable; as soon as he appears this evening he will be enlisted.........

[airfixfan]

Been working on a book myself most of the day 2! Always use memory sticks as an insurance policy.

[airfixfan]

Hope that all your hard work can be retrieved JHB!

[jhb171achill]

5 hours ago, airfixfan said:

Hope that all your hard work can be retrieved JHB!

So do I, but I think we’re resigned to the soul-destroying work of doing it all over again. At least it didn’t delete what we had ALREADY done prior to that day!

Had THAT happened, we’d both have dropped that project….!

 

[jhb171achill]

Yes, it's gone. So - we have reconvened, having got over the shock. Onwards & Sideways!

[Sean]

I would recommend taking a look at google docs, its a fully fledged word processor that lives in the cloud and autosaves, even if the computer ye are writing one spontaneously combusts the work will be in the "cloud" and retrieve-able from anywhere.

 

theres also the advantage of ye both being able to log into the document at once from seperate computers anywhere on the planet and make edits. 

its literally all i used through 4 years of college and super helpful considering i was a long distance commuter, and then lockdowns happened so it became even more heavily used.

[jhb171achill]

Unfortunately it wasn’t even plugged into the internet!

[WRENNEIRE]

Press button B JB, get your money back

[Niles]

On 4/5/2022 at 12:53 AM, Sean said:

I would recommend taking a look at google docs, its a fully fledged word processor that lives in the cloud and autosaves, even if the computer ye are writing one spontaneously combusts the work will be in the "cloud" and retrieve-able from anywhere.

 

theres also the advantage of ye both being able to log into the document at once from seperate computers anywhere on the planet and make edits. 

its literally all i used through 4 years of college and super helpful considering i was a long distance commuter, and then lockdowns happened so it became even more heavily used.

Great for colab work too... I do a bit of content writing work and it's ideal for multi-person edits, comments etc.

[DoctorPan]

+1 for Google Docs, saved my sanity and final year thesis write up and results when my laptop decided to melt its screen and kill itself 8 days before the submission date.

[skinner75]

I've been working in IT support for 25 years - and have had many dealings with people who have lost work due to having no backups made. 

One guy lost his thesis as he had no backup copies made, and didn't even have a copy of it on his network drive space, as he was the paranoid sort. No pity felt for him!

[Blaine]

32 minutes ago, skinner75 said:

I've been working in IT support for 25 years - and have had many dealings with people who have lost work due to having no backups made. 

One guy lost his thesis as he had no backup copies made, and didn't even have a copy of it on his network drive space, as he was the paranoid sort. No pity felt for him!

Likewise in the same career for a similar amount of time - they think we can press a button and it magically re-appears. Never been easier to save data these days