Unless you have a back-up, I mean.

But let me explain.

I write all my stories on the computer in my living room. Since I live at home with five brothers, one sister, one mother, and five adult foster...um, adults, it's kind of hard for me to get any privacy. That includes the computer; it's not mine. It never was. Which means I have to share it with any and all persons who want to use it, whether for games or...games. So why am I rambling? you ask? So why do you care? Well, see, the thing is, with so many people in the house, I have no idea who BROKE my computer!! It's gone! I have NOTHING! All my stories! All my time! All those creative juices, flowing for naught!

It's! All! Gone!!

*sob*

So, the moral to this raging rambling of mine is to BACK-UP your stories, because I don't (that is to say, didn't, 'cuz now I'm going to back up EVERY word) and now, every single word I've written in the past year or so is gone. Kaput. Adios, amigo, sorry, but no reciept, no return. Come back next week and talk to my manager.

Eternally pissed off (but now a little bit wiser),
Cryin' Chris.

PS: If you see a guy on the highway one day, dirty, oily, with a shaggy beard and messed-up, torn clothes, and holding a WILL WORK FOR TIME MACHINE sign, written in bad marker on dirty cardboard, just stop and wave, won'cha? Cuz it just might be me.
 

A suggestion to everyone, I email my draft to my work once a week. At work, I move the draft to a network drive that is backed up every 24 hours. This way I never risk losing more than a week's work, and if I have a great idea at work, my draft is there to edit.

Brian
 

I'm also impressed with your account of your loss. I don't mean this like rubbing salt in a wound, but I enjoyed reading it. (The possibly inadvertent rhyme at the beginning reminded me of Gollum from LOTR.) It was entertaining. The account, not the loss! Make a hard copy for yourself and work it into a writing anecdote for a short somewhere. It may very well sell.

I would be cautious about taking your work to work, though. Some businesses might frown on that and some have policies that any work done on site belongs to them. I heard of a case years ago like that, even though the work was wholly unrelated to the business itself.

For my part, although I keep my work on discs, I found out recently that even they aren't fullproof. I didn't lose writing projects but, among other things, my husband's resume. For some reason, the disc went defective. Now I back up important things with two discs.

(I've never used CDs for my work because from what I've gathered, those that can be are not as convenient to constantly update as discs, and there's a limit as to how many times you can update them. Granted, I'm taking info I've gleaned from several people, so I'd like to hear from some computer pros here.)

[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited January 04, 2003).]

[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited January 04, 2003).]
 

I am sorry for your loss.

Shawn
 

There is a way you may be able to turn this to some good, though.

One of the ways writers use to revitalize a story that has been edited to death is to write the story down from memory--without looking at the already-written version.

Granted, you lose all the great phrases and so forth, but as long as you remember the personalities of the characters and the events of the story, you can recreate what you did before.

Your subconscious still has the story in there somewhere. And there is always the chance that it will give the story back to you in a little better form for having been percolated in the deep dark reaches of your mind (as opposed to having been "set" in the relative "concrete" of the computer screen).

So when you're finished beating yourself over the head for this, sit down and see if you can wheedle those stories out of your brain again.

It can't hurt to try.
 

Hey, man tha fact that you can still talk and especially type after this tramutizing events is more than I'd be able to do. I just be rocking back and forth, sobbing uncontrolably, clutching the remains of the computer to my chest.

JOHN!

[This message has been edited by JOHN (edited January 04, 2003).]
 

I did it all again, using Kathleen's human memory method, but I learned (like you) the hard way) to always have a backup -- disk, secondary computer, jaz drive, hard copy--all of the above.

I think it was very good of you to share this with everyone as a cautionary tale...you may have just saved other folks from the pain you are unfortunately suffering.

On the bright side, I may yet get back on my horse and begin typing anew (though my computer's still broken, I'm pretty sure I can dust of an old electronic typewriter and use it). On the not-so-bright side, I've been irreversably traumatized. Chances are, I'll never write again. But hey, at least I can still play the piano, right? (Insert fake smile here).

Hildy: yeah, i guess it was. I was mostly just venting (my brothers would probably have laughed if I'd told them...and that's as sad as losing the stories) but if someone could learn from my mistake...I guess it was worth it...sort of.

Kind of.

Maybe.

Still pissed off (but feelin' a little better),

Cryin' Chris.
 

I am sorry for your loss.

I keep hard copy of everything as the final backup - it can get costy is terms of paper and ink but I feel safer that way.

Hang in there -
 

However, all is not necessarily lost - I imagine your PC is repairable, but even if it isn't, and the PC is going to trash, I highly recommend you have the Hard Drive removed. You can reinstall it as a slave disk on a new machine, and recover your work.

Assuming it's not the hard drive that went.

Ask for more info - too tired to go into detail.

 

There is very little I can say except to offer my deepest condolences.

Now I'm going to burn everything I have onto CD since you've scared the buhjeeses outta me.
 

Hope is right about there still being...hope. If no one was bone headed enough to reformat (or physically damage) the hard drive, the files are highly likely to be recoverable by a knowledgable hand (in fact, even in the event that the hard drive has been reformatted and/or physically damaged, some data can be recovered, but this is pricey and dicey--they'll charge you several thousand dollars and recover...what can be recovered, which may not be much).
 

You may be able to access the directories from DOS, via the C:/ prompt. I won't go into specifics here, but my hubby, the computer geek, successfully retrieved all our important documents from our laptop yesterday via this method. This was after it committed hara-kiri and not even Windows would function. He recovered the data and stuck it on floppies, and we were then able to reopen and resave the docs on our desktop, safe and sound.

If you think this may possibly work for you, send me an email at hildy9595@aol.com and I'll have the hubby write out specific directions to talk you through the recovery process. With any luck, you will still have your docs and won't need to spend money to save them.

[This message has been edited by Hildy9595 (edited January 07, 2003).]
 

Me: Okay hun.

A few minutes later, guts of machine exposed.

Me: Did you back up?

Dear Hubby: No need to. Just turn off, change CPUs and turn on. Not doing much.

Me: Okay hun.

Few minutes later.

Dear Hubby: Hmmm, this is not working, your computer will not boot up. I think I'll backup now.

5 hours later: Your hardrive is fried, dear. It probably happened when I turned all power off to your computer, before I even opened it.

This wasn't totally his fault, it was only a 1 year old IBM hardrive that had a 5 year warrenty on it. It was good equipment. What seems to have happened is that when he shut all power down (even if your computer is 'off' there is a wee bit of power being used) some surge or something caused the head to jump. It was a total hardware failure. IBM has replaced the hardrive with a much better hardrive.

If my husband had thought to backup first, the first thing he would have done was turn of the power and remove the drive to use his CD burner to backup, with the very same result.

The whole upshot of this was: I lost a lot of work. A lot. What was most important did get saved (one thing was only hardcopy though) since I'd sent it to him to be printed on a good printer to send out to the magazines. And we got ME a CD burner in which I backup my important stuff periodically and which will be used for a complete backup the next time we fiddle with my computer.
 

I've never done a processor upgrade in my life (I seriously considered it once, but the moment passed--and scratch building a system doesn't count either). As far as I'm concerned, if you expect to realize a substantial performance gain from the upgrade, then you should upgrade the motherboard and memory as well, as well as the video card at least, and at that point you might as well put them in a separate case and have two computers rather than one...

Hobbyists, Humbug! Give me a working system that can amuse me with actual games any day over a multi-dimensional puzzle box that costs hundreds of dollars to play with!
 

Our computers aren't static machines. We can hardly say we build from scratch, because any new computer we build has parts from the computer it is replacing. I guess we consider getting a new motherboard the qualification for 'new computer'. But it never feels like a new computer for me unless it ALSO has a new case, but that is usually what happens because often the old power supply isn't enough for the new motherboard.

I told my husband I would rather have had more memory. I knew that would boost my performance better. But he didn't get more memory from work. He got a CPU. They always test prototype CPUs because they create leading edge network clusters.

But I got a bigger hardrive as a result of losing all my writing. And a CD burner too. Thats a good thing. I think.

Back to the point: Actually, it all turns out well in the end. The novel I lost will be much better because of it. And the story I had to rewrite is already much better because of it. I figure the rest of it, if I don't remember it, wasn't interesting enough anyway. The only exception to this is some writing my children did on the computer, especially my daughter who is showing herself to be a very talented and witty poet. (My other daughter is talented too, but she did all her recreational writing on another computer) THAT may very well be the worst loss of all.
 

Not to be unkind but I wonder how people can not back up. There are so many places out there that tell you to back up your work, heck most programs when you install them tell you to back up your work.

I can only say---back up your work, even if it is printing it out, back up your work. Often, once a day even. At least then you only lose one days work.

It can be something as simple and scary as a virus as well, it doesn't have to be a computer break down.

Shawn
 

Oh, you actually say...it was the laptop without the hd option. Did it have a backlit screen that was all in shades of blue? I'm just waxing nostalgic, pay no attention to me.

And back up your work, all youse!
 

I also had a desktop that took up the whole desktop zenith 286. 5 inch floppy. Think it had a 250 mg hard drive and took like 10 minutes to boot, no mouse. Used Corel WP 4 if I remember right the blue screen with yellow text--the kind that burned into your monitor--and DOS shell.

Sheesh--- I now have a 17 inch viewable monitor, external hard drive 40 gig for backups, internal 40 gig hard drive, and 512 of RAM. LOL and am looking at a new computer come march.

We've come a long way baby--but I do so miss the blue screen and yellow letters.

Shawn
 

Shawn
 

TTFN & lol

Cosmi
 

That old zenith 286 had 8 mg of memory. I don't remember what the laptop had, but it wasn't a laptop, it was a portable computer.

We still have a 486. LOL My son uses it like a word processor.

Shawn
 

Shawn
 

Brian
 

I have no idea what you people are talking about.

....

....

Chris

[This message has been edited by cvgurau (edited January 15, 2003).]
 

The first computer I used was a TRS-80 (affectionately known as a Trash 80) and I played text based games way too much. Never got to the cow game...sorry! I can't remember the names of all of them, but I was really good at Mission Impossible. There was also some sort of space travel one where you collected artifacts from different planets and another where you were trapped in a house with a vampire. Ah, good times!
 

I remember the Vision too, I think...wasn't that the triagular one with each side having a controller intended for a different type of game? I loved the game with the stickman bouncing around the screen that you then shot with that impressive lightgun (I don't know how impressive the lightgun actually was, since I was very young back then).

I never got into text games, they seemed like a total waste of time to me...guess I'm not a left brained person.
 

If anyone want's to know what the heck we're talking about now, try http://oldcomputers.net . They have a lot of the classics listed and described.