Losing what you've written

[bisexualsmoker]

Has anybody here ever lost something they've written.
It's very frustrating. I had just written 2000 words of my
last chapter(a lot of words for my stories), and
then my computer crashed with the blue screen of death, never
to recover.
I have a new computer now, but those 2000 words are gone forever.
It almost acts as an anti-inspirational tool now,
this whole dilemma.
I really put a lot of time into those 2000 words. Time I shouldn't
really have wasted.
Obviously this has happened to a lot of Literotica writers.

 

[Stella_Omega]

yeppers. I have a dead hard drive on my shelf with many thousands of un-retrievable words on it, as of two months ago.

 

[Guest]

My laptop gave me the blue screen of death a month ago.

Lost more than a few things.

Bastid.

 

[driphoney]

So sorry for your loss. This truly is one of my worst nightmares and why I send copies to my email pretty frequently.

[races off to send latest copy to self!]

Seriously, while I haven't done it yet, I can only imagine your pain . . .

 

[Stella_Omega]

I highly recommend Googledocs. For one thing, you can add writers and two or more people can work on one doc in real time which is just omigod awesome

I'm using a writing software called scrivener, and its fucking fantastic, but it is only on my hard drive.

 

[Guest]

I highly recommend Googledocs.

I'm using a writing software called scrivener, and its fucking fantastic, but it is only on my hard drive.

I use googledocs - got my kids involved, too.

I've lost a few pics I hadn't uploaded to photobucket or flickr. And a few files for work. That may be all.

 

[sr71plt]

Funny you should post that. I know I pared down a 6,000-word story to make a contest 3,500-word limit, and I've been searching for it for four days in three computers and can't find it. Arghh.

The saving grace is that in this search I found a story I'd done for that contest last year and didn't send, because the contest had opened and closed while I was on a foreign trip.

 

[bisexualsmoker]

So sorry for your loss. This truly is one of my worst nightmares and why I send copies to my email pretty frequently.

That is what is so frustrating. The very next step was for me to at least save what I had written to Google, but I thought, I'm tired now and I'll go to sleep, and do that tomorrow.
Tommorrow turned out to be a permanent blue screen of death.

 

[Darkniciad]

Mine are backed up on a usb drive with a fair amount of frequency. A lot of them nowadays have first drafts up on my webserver, as an easy way for first-readers to get to them without dealing with formatting/character limits/platform issues that come up with email and PMs.

Didn't lose any stories, but we did lose a load of pictures that can't be replaced a few years ago to a virus. Some were backed up, and other people had collections of others, but way too may weren't. Nearly every picture of my babydoll and I together went bye-bye ( naughty and not ). All but 1 of her girl/girl pictures vanished forever.

Going to have to look into Googledocs for LST3Ks where I'm working with other riffers. That sounds like a sweet way to work on those.

 

[driphoney]

Going to have to look into Googledocs for LST3Ks where I'm working with other riffers. That sounds like a sweet way to work on those.

I played around with this once with someone and it really is VERY cool. I tried it with someone else and they just couldn't get a clue. (And in this case, I was supposedly NOT the computer-smart one! ) In conjunction with google chat ... awesome!!

Check it out. Way cool. How Stella and others are using it as a saving device, I don't understand. I'm gonna have to figure that out!

 

[TE999]

I put all my stories both completed and in progress on flash stix. Saves a lot of grief.

I did lose about 2,700 words I had just written a few months back because of a power surge. M$Worst ate them and wouldn't puke them up.

 

[sr71plt]

I'll admit to having started posting my stories on the Internet in the first place precisely to be my backup--so I could erase them from my computer and computer storage system and not lose them.

 

[Carnevil9]

Very sorry for your loss, but here is a silver lining: those 2000 words are SOMEWHERE in your brain. Sit down at your new computer and re-write the story from memory. It won't be the same, of course, but odds are it will be BETTER than the original. It can be a blessing in disguise.

And, as usual, I have to agree with Stella: Google Docs is your friend! Not only are your docs safe, but you can work on your stories from anywhere you happen to be......Carney

 

[TxRad]

There are several automatic backup systems that work well with either flashdrives or usb drives. Toshiba has one loaded into their laptops. I back up my pictures ans stuff to a usb drive. My stories go to both a flashdrive and the usb harddrive. better safe than sorry.

SSS and I wrote a story in googledocs with google chat open. We each picked a color to write in with black being finished and red being something we had a question about or were not satisfied with. It works great. Really easy and a lot of fun. rum not included.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

I lost all the dick pics the losers from Lit Personnals sent me

 

[TheeGoatPig]

I have most of my writing on at least three hard drives right now (there are a few that are specific to one drive or another until I get around to emailing them to the other drives). It's not getting lost any time soon.

Not that I write all that much since I joined the forums...

 

[PrincessErin]

.....

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

I can relate. I have gone through 3 hard drives in the last year or so. Each time losing at least 1 or 2 stories. This last time was tragic as I had a great 4000 word summer lovin story that was lost. No matter what I did, I couldn't write it again. Oh well.

Erin... keep a hard copy filed and burn them to a disk. It works for me.

I can see 1000 years from now an archeologist will find all my stuff on disk and in folders...excitedly read them and say, "What the fuck?"

 

[Teloz]

Erin... keep a hard copy filed and burn them to a disk. It works for me.

I can see 1000 years from now an archeologist will find all my stuff on disk and in folders...excitedly read them and say, "What the fuck?"

Excellent advice Jenny, but could we miss out the hard copy and save a few trees? How about external HD and disk backups?

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Excellent advice Jenny, but could we miss out the hard copy and save a few trees? How about external HD and disk backups?

Actually, I use a 4 Gb Smart Card

 

[sxwriter42]

Online Backups

I am SO sorry, I really feel your pain.

I personally advocate an online backup service. I use sosonlinebackup, but there are several out there now. Mozy.com is certainly the most heavily advertised, but there are others.

The cool thing about these is you can just set a daily backup. After that, you don't have to worry about remembering to backup to a flash drive, or IF your software worked, or if your flash drive might crash. Most services even give you a daily report via email about what they've backed up.

Further, I also frequenly use Google Docs and do the old email thing to myself.

Of course, none of this helps if you've just been in the zone and have been typing non-stop in MS Word and one of those anomalies happens that somehow short circuits Word's automatic backup feature.

 

[sr71plt]

Erin... keep a hard copy filed and burn them to a disk. It works for me.

I can see 1000 years from now an archeologist will find all my stuff on disk and in folders...excitedly read them and say, "What the fuck?"

A 1,000 years from now nothing will exist to read disks. (Ever heard of microfilm and microfiche? They were once the cat's pajamas of "permanent" data storage).

 

[TxRad]

A 1,000 years from now nothing will exist to read disks. (Ever heard of microfilm and microfiche? They were once the cat's pajamas of "permanent" data storage).

So were 9 inch floppy disks that held a whopping 720 K of data.


Uh, maybe this should be on the remember when thread.

 

[sr71plt]

So were 9 inch floppy disks that held a whopping 720 K of data.


Uh, maybe this should be on the remember when thread.

It should at least be a reminder that "permanet storage" is a misnomer.

I've been irritated in buying new computers and finding the computer companies have decided that floppy disks are no longer used--when nearly all of my clients are still using them.

 

[DeeZire]

I have a five year-old Mac, with a seven year-old external USB floppy drive that still works.

The USB memory sticks are so cheap these days, and text docs are so small, it's a no brainer.