I usually don't make my life's frustrations public, but sometimes it just feels like the world is working against you. To add to my growing depression and frustration at my inablility to do any writing lately (I have at least 5 projects in various stages of being written, but last night my computer's main hard drive had a catastrophic failure. I had just cleared the secondary drive to move stuff there to free up space, but it was late and "I could do it tomorrow." The loss is immeasurable and among the causalties were the "source" files of several stories. I'm not even sure which ones, but from the past year or so and probably includes my Barsoom and Gor-game stories.
I don't post this for sympathy, but to say why I most likely won't be posting anything soon. I know there are worse things that could happen, but after a while you just have to think that maybe somebody's telling you something...
Melanie
Comments
Mechanical?
It is a Mechanical Failure? If not, you might be able to retrieve the data using PC Rescue or Data Rescue (Mac). I have used both and they work great. I think you can even see if they will recover your files before you buy. Otherwise, if it's a mechanical failure, sorry. That can be very expensive.
People say, "You don't know what you had until it's gone." Very true, but also equally true is, "You don't know what you've been missing until is arrives."
There are also services
that will recover the contents for a reasonable fee. One such that I'm about to ship a drive to, charges ~$300 or zero. They recover anything, it's $300, otherwise it's free. Other services charge by the amount they recobver and the size of the source drive.
Be aware that in most cases, the drive is destroyed in the recovery process, but if everything else has been tried, then ...
Janice
Data Recovery
I may be asking you for that company's name and address if some of the things I try don't work.
Melanie
Melanie, do you have
a current anti-virus program? Contact them to see if they can retrieve your lost data.
May Your Light Forever Shine
Interesting....
...that so many people are having computer problems. Thursday was "World Backup Day". Looks like too many of us missed it.
Not directed at you but to all computer users
... it does not take long to back up something. For the few small story files a person has, most of the time a small flash drive would suffice. PLEASE take a moment (2 minutes!) to back up the important stuff onto a cheap (10 dollars will do it!) flash drive or any other storage medium, even a blank CD. Windows 7, if you are using it, has the ability to burn CDs.
Kim
Backups
There are services out there which offer off-site backup with absolutely no special effort required, as long as one has a constant Internet connection.
Dropbox and Box are just two of them and are (or were, last I looked) both gratis (free) for up to five Gigabytes, which is a *lot* of stories. Your Dropbox or Box folder looks just like a normal folder on your disk, but maintains a constant link to the external site, so you can edit directly to external storage transparently.
https://www.dropbox.com
https://www.box.com
Google offers a free trial for their own "cloud storage" solution but then charges less than ten cents (US) per Terabyte per month, which is a *huge* bunch of stories.
https://cloud.google.com
There are a bunch more on offer, and easy to find using "cloud storage."
All of them are much cheaper than restoring a disc, even if it happens only once in a blue moon, and most are (or can be) transparent, so you don't have to actually remember to *do* anything...
Here's a list of the "Top Ten" cloud sites with their pricing and current popularity "trends":
http://www.cloudstoragefinder.com
An alternative is to get a spare hard drive *just* for backups and set it up to back up your entire disc automatically. Many of them connect to a USB or network port and can be had for less than a hundred bucks per Terabyte. There's a Seagate 4TB external drive for a hundred and sixty bucks on Amazon, for example.
I personally use the "belt and braces" approach, so use both Dropbox *and* an external network drive. Nothing is foolproof –– disasters do happen –– but guarding against them is a fairly low-cost item on one's list of habits.
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
With the Google storage it's
With the Google storage it's GB per month not TB. I had to look it up because that looked like a crazy good deal. (back up my 4TB of files for .40$ a month?! I was going to be all over that! but instead it would end up being around 400.00 a month)
I just got a second external hard drive to back up the back up of my stuff since I just had a hard drive crash
Backup Services
Don't forget Mozy.com and Carbonite.com. I use Mozy.com myself. You pay based on how much storage you need. It happens in the background and also keeps all versions of a file from the last 30 days.
Lori
Another option: CrashPlan
I've good luck with another service Crash Plan+. One nice option is that the basic, non+ version of the software tool is free, and can be used for once a day backup to an external HD or to another machine, such as one owned by a friend, also with this software installed. The fees for the cloud service are generally less than Mozy or carbonite and the tool is dual platform.
Good luck, I know how frustrating data loss is...
AuroraLynne