Angela Scott
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Do you use a STICK? You'd better.

6/13/2011

18 Comments

 
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It was a quiet afternoon in the Scott household. The husband was busy doing his thing. The kids were busy doing theirs. And I had plans to do some writing (I know, I know. We're not a very unified family, are we--off on our own). 

But as I settled into the writing mode, laptop burning the flesh of my lap, and proceeded to check email and twitter (that's my warming up to write ritual), my computer flickered, froze, and then went blank. Dark screen.
 
What the heck? What happened? This couldn't be right?  

I began to panic. My laptop and I are like this *crosses fingers*

I shut down the computer and quickly rebooted (adverbs suck, so use them sparingly). All kinds of mayhem ensued. First, a list of computer code ran down the screen--stuff I'd never seen, yet knew couldn't be good. Second, it asked me if I should do a recovery scan. Yes, yes, of course! Do a recovery scan. Fix it! For the love of all things good in the world, FIX IT!

A half hour into the recovery scan, I received a disheartening message, "recovery not possible."

Not possible? What did that mean? What did that mean? Oh, no, no, NOOOO!!

Recover, recover, recover. So I did what any sane person would do, I powered off the laptop once more and tried again. And again, "recovery not possible."

Don't say that! It's possible. It is. It HAS to be. 

I decided to try something different. I decided to say no to the recovery scan. Saying yes sure wasn't working. So I said no, just bring up the laptop in safe mode. I clicked my mouse. I waited.

Nothing. Black screen.

I repeated the process. Blank screen.Saying yes didn't help. Saying no didn't help. That's not fair. I took out the battery. Rebooted. Again, blank screen.

At this point all sorts of profanities raced through my brain. (I have children in the house and we have a swear jar and I have no change). I did my best to hold it together.

Then I yelled for my husband. He's a computer guy. I needed good news, something to give me hope. Because, I had just spent the past several days working and reshaping my WIP, editing and revising. AND, I didn't back it up on my memory stick. I only saved it to the hard drive. I reworked whole passages, changing the POV from one MC to a another MC--that was painfuly hard work.  

My husband ran it through some diagnostic tests (that's what computer guys do). It came up with another scary message, "memory integrity failed."

Crap, oh, crap, oh crap!

I love my laptop. Did I mention how we're like best friends?
 
It's possible my laptop only needs some new memory. So my husband tells me. That's the hope. Fingers crossed. But to order new memory will take time (do you recall how I'm not a very patient person?).

At the moment, I'm using my husbands laptop. I hate it. The keys are all weird. It feels unnatural. Wrong. But, I can blog

But you know what I can't do? Write or edit my zombie western romance novel. 

BECAUSE I SCREWED UP! Yes, folks, I screwed up.

I didn't use a stick. Not lately anyway. What I do have backed up is old, weeks old. I never saved the new edits to the memory stick. *I'm smacking my head against a wall right now*

I'm so hoping the increased memory will do the trick, or otherwise I will have to rely on my own memory to recall ALL the changes I made to my manuscript. (I think my heart just skipped a beat--and not in a good way). 

Oh, mighty computer gods in the sky, please oh, please, oh, please, let my laptop live! Give it life, if only for a moment so I can use a stick to back up my work. I promise, if you grant me this wish, I will ALWAYS backup my work. I will remember this awful feeling. I will repent of my nonbacking up ways. I will be better. I will be a promoter of using the stick. I will blog about it. I will encourage others to stop reading this blog post, this very instant, and pull out their stick and back up their important files (that sounded kinda nasty).

So, if you have a memory stick, use it. Use it now. Don't risk it. It only takes a seond. Hardly any time at all. I sure wish I had backed up my files. I really, really, do. I may not even know if I will be able to retrieve my work until the end of the week (ordering memory takes time). And until it comes, or until we figure out the problem, I can't write or edit. 

I did this to myself. It could have been avoided. Don't make my same mistake.  

Do you own a stick? How often do you back up your files? How often should we? Leave a comment (because I love them) and tell me you backed up your files. If you do back up and leave a comment--someone's gonna recieve a prize (a drawing).   

18 Comments
Michele Shaw link
6/13/2011 12:24:26 am

I do have a stick, and forget to use it all the time. I started using dropbox at the suggestion of a techie friend. My biggest fear is exactly what you described! Good luck! I hope you get it back. Ohhhh *pacing and feeling pain for you*

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Ashley link
6/13/2011 12:42:14 am

Ohhh Angela!! This post scared the crap out of me. I have literally been saying to myself all last week that I need to find my external hard drive and start backing up my book. Or at least emailing it to myself. I'm doing that tonight. This post has sufficiently scared me straight.

I hope you recover everything!!! **Fingers crossed**

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Becka (stickynotestory) link
6/13/2011 01:37:42 am

Oh no! I've lost two whole books that way (one I wasn't so sad about, but the other? Oh man, that broke my heart). Now I back everything up to a stick AND put it on my work computer AND put it in Google Docs (or at the very least email it to myself). That might be a little overboard, but I don't care. Better safe than sorry.

Good luck retrieving your edits!

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Kacey Mark
6/13/2011 01:37:45 am

This is a great lesson for all of us, and thank you for the reminder. I'm going to back up right now. And get a back up of my back up!

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Faith Boughan link
6/13/2011 01:38:42 am

DROPBOX!!! Use it now!!! And that way you can access your novel from any computer, anywhere, anytime, and it can't disappear. Yikes. Here's hoping you're able to get those edits back... *cross fingers*

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Phoebe link
6/13/2011 01:44:35 am

I don't use a stick--not after I plugged mine into my husband's computer only to find it bricked ("Oh, sorry--I forgot to tell you that my USB slots short out USB sticks"--ARGH!). Lost three chapters to that disaster.

Now I use dropbox. And I'd recommend it to EVERYONE. It's like a USB stick, but you can access it from everywhere and you don't even need to remember to save things to it.

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Marc link
6/13/2011 01:49:04 am

Great blog! I'm going to back up my WIP on my SD card as soon as I get home. I've been doing it every so often, but I will be keeping my SD card near by at all times so I have a suitable backup. Changing POVs is definitely hard work, I know I've done it a time or two, however what's even more annoying than that?

Looking back to a seemingly random chapter, changing oh about 3 words to make the ending have a completely different impact, not saving and backing up and realizing...crud...which 3 words out of 200k+ did I need to change again? ;-)

Also, I know it's not exactly the same way to feel your pain, but I'm a huge video gamer. I love games like Final Fantasy on Playstation that you can put 80+, 90+, 100+ hours into. I've played games where I easily bulldozed across the 50 or 60+ hour mark, got to the very last final battle and couldn't beat the bad guy...so I had to start...all...over...from the damn beginning! Granted, a 50-100 game isn't quite the same as writing something over the course of a few months, but still, the main idea is the same...

SAVE, SAVE, SAVE, SAVE, SAVE YOUR WORK! :-D

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Jason McKinney link
6/13/2011 02:03:54 am

As I read this I began to panic and my anxiety reached levels that could induce a stroke. And I just quit smoking. Mentally I was going through the reasons it was crashing and the whole time I’m thinking, “Why now? God, I need a cigarette.” My heart is still pounding.
The memory failure has to be the issue. It has to be.
I use a stick and as a back up to my back up I also save to other PC’s in the house. I write, write, write and then when done for the day it’s to the stick and then saving the work to another PC hard drive on our home network. Who says redundancy is a bad thing?

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Kendra
6/13/2011 04:44:11 am

A trick I use (because I'm always missplacing my flash drive) is to email yourself a copy. If you have web-based email, the draft lives on in the sent email folder even when everything else crashes. I, too, learned this through harsh circumstances--I lost days worth of edits once. Angela--I hope everything works out okay!

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Violeta link
6/13/2011 05:03:05 am

Hell I back them up. You poor thing... see this is why people should go back to Nature and forget about computers (says the social media addict).

So yeah, I definitely back up now because two years ago I had a terrible fright. All of my notes, my books, my stories, my artciels, my poems, MY LIFE were on the verge of disappearing. Then it was all right, but I still remember the feeling.

Basically, I didn't get as upset as I lost all of my documents in a club last year. So I wish your outcome is also favorable. ;) Good luck!

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Julia link
6/13/2011 05:05:26 am

Terrifying! I hope that the memory did the trick --and if not, you were still able to recover files off the hard drive! I've experienced the loss of files before so when I started to have some problems with my macbook a while ago, I started using Apple's Time Machine. I have a small external hard drive and every night my laptop backs up onto it. It's nice because all I need to do is remember to plug in the USB cable. I hope that you can recover your files!

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margaret Y. link
6/13/2011 05:07:34 am

I wear my memory stick around my neck so I remember to back up. Whatever it takes, right?

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Angela Scott link
6/13/2011 05:54:07 am

My husband decided to take off the back of my computer and pull parts out. I freaked! "You're killing my laptop!" (I did mention he's an IT type of guy, right?) But at the moment, it didn't matter.

To me, it looked liked he was gutting my computer--removing its brain. And I didn't like that.

Then he took that brain piece and put it in some weird square thing he hooked up to his laptop (I'm not an IT person so I have NO idea what the square thing is).

Guess what? My files were there. He brought them up, he transferred them to my stick, and now my WIP is saved!!

It's SAVED!!! Happy dance time.

I have tears of joy rolling down my face--literally. This is no joke.

I still feel sad though. My poor laptop--gutted like a fish. Even if I never get that laptop working again, I'm keeping it. We've been through a lot, me and my pink dell.

Now, I need my husband to pull off all my iPOD/iPhone stuff. Because that's important too :)

I still have zombie!!

Thanks everyone for the comments. You're all awesome. I need to look into that dropbox thing. I've never heard of it. But I used to email myself my backups, but then I got all cocky and stopped backing up all together--what a doofus. I'm going to be so much better now. That's a promise.

Angela Scott

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Juliana link
6/13/2011 09:05:54 am

Oh geeze, I would have been crying too! Yay for it being there.

Yeah, this happened to me not once but TWICE!

Now, I religiously save EVERYTHING to the internet. That way I can access it anywhere, no matter how unpredictable technology is :)

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Kathy Reinhart
6/13/2011 12:55:41 pm

Oh Angela, I've had that happen and it's not a pretty place to be. I agree with Faith... Dropbox! It's fantastic. Now, I use a 1.5 TB Western Digital My Book Elite. Much too big for what I do, but, it runs in the background and saves everything continuously. No need to remember to back up.

I hope the memory works for you, if not, I hope you're memory is good :(

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Diana link
6/13/2011 02:29:22 pm

I think you got a virus. I just read a blog from someone who said they got a blogger virus or something. Their stats went crazy high and by some particular site and then the got zapped. My computer isn't right either.

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Nancy Lauzon link
6/14/2011 09:51:52 am

That's a scary story, poor you. I'm bad, I don't use a stick, even though I have one. I also I have a 'ghost writer', some type of backup software, but I don't use that either (slapping myself on the hand). Thanks for the reminder, and it's a good thing your hubby is an IT guy!

Nancy
http://nancylauzon.blogspot.com/
The Chick Dick Blog

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J.L.Campbell link
6/14/2011 12:37:48 pm

Angela, sorry, I feel your pain, but I gotta tell you, I laughed out loud when you started praying to the computer gods. Forgive me. I've been down that road quite a few times.

I have more bad news. Those darn memory sticks can be a writer's worst nightmare. I can't tell you how many of them I've gone through and how much stuff I've lost over the years. They just go blazing hot and have what must be a meltdown. Sometimes, stuff just plain disappears and I never see them again.

I've been lucky a few times to have some computer techie retrieve the files, but the last few times, I've had a nervous breakdown and then backtracked to where I last saved stuff on my hard drive and started plodding again.

I still own half dozen of the little gizmos, but I don't use them often. I have some stuff backed up on Flipdrive (it's time to back up my files to there again) and most often I use Dropbox. It's free and my files are always hanging out somewhere in cyberspace waiting for me to play with them. Some people email their files back and forth to themselves, but see, I'm easily confused, so that's not a good option for me.

You're definitely not alone. Take heart and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that you get your stuff back safe and sound.

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