Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Back That Thing Up

That might've been a rap song I danced to in high school, but that's not why I'm using that title today.

My son dropped my laptop yesterday. 

I repeat, MY SON DROPPED MY LAPTOP YESTERDAY. The laptop containing all 50,000 words of a little thing I like to call MY FIRST BOOK.

For any Sex and the City fans, I felt a little bit like Carrie in the episode where her computer crashed (although, mine LITERALLY crashed, like onto the floor). It's a funny little clip if you have a couple minutes (don't worry it's totally G-rated).

My poor little guy, all he wanted to do was play his favorite computer game, but the laptop was sitting on top of the fireplace, you know, so little hands couldn't reach it. Apparently, those little hands could reach it after all.

I was upstairs in my bathroom doing my hair when I heard a giant crash, followed by a, "I didn't mean to! I didn't mean to! It was an accident, Mommy!" Of course, my Mommy reflexes kicked into high gear and all I could ask him was, "Are you hurt? Are you bleeding anywhere? Are there any severed appendages lying around here?" Hug, hug, kiss, kiss, "It's okay, sweetie. I know it was an accident. Now go play in your room for a bit, mkay?" 

Then I turned to look at the wreckage. As I picked up my computer to survey the damage, all I could see were dents in the top and a blank white screen, and all I could hear was rattling, which meant loose parts inside. Yikes.  

When was the last time I saved my manuscript? What about my outline? What about the ten pages of cuts I had just made and put into a separate document? Did I save it to my external hard drive? DON'T PANIC - DO. NOT. PANIC. 

And that's when I started to panic. I didn't stop panicking until...oh wait, I haven't stopped yet.

Fortunately, I had emailed the entire document to myself the two days ago, so the majority of my novel was recovered (all but about 5 pages that I had worked on yesterday). Unfortunately, those ten pages of cuts and that outline were not saved on my zip drive or emailed to myself, so they could be lost forever. 

Lucky for me, my  husband is sort of a tech genius, so he knows a guy who can fix it. That's sounds so mafia-esque, doesn't it? "My husband knows a guy." But this guy isn't someone who can off someone, he's a tech nerd who can possibly salvage my precious pages...even better in my book.

So today's lesson: BACK UP YOUR WORK. EVERYTHING. Save it to an external hard drive, flip drive, zip drive, email it to yourself, save it to your wireless network, whatever you have to do. You would think I would've done that, but I got a little lazy. Don't make my mistake!

Have you ever lost your work? How much? How did you handle it?


8 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh...how scary! Forget blood. A lost manuscript! ;)

    I'm going to back mine up today. You crack me up about that song!

    ~ Wendy

    ReplyDelete
  2. The most work I ever lost was about fifty pages. My son closed my doc without saving it. But, I think I'll go back up my work now. I haven't done it in a while. Thanks for the reminder. Sorry about your laptop.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ack! I've never (thankfully) lost my work. Remember to always back it up!

    ReplyDelete
  4. My son erased 5000 words last fall. And MY computer ALSO crashed (literally) onto the floor. I lost 1000 words of my book, but had backed it up recently. I also spent $99 on Geek Squad to get my hard drive recovered.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I meant to say-I feel your pain. Thanks for the song references.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oh, no!!! I "usually" remember to back things up every other day. Since I've never lost anything before, I've become a little bit of a slacker with it. Thanks for the reminder!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Robocopy, dear, robocopy.

    See here: Robocopy

    I update my work to a flash key and also to an external hard drive. I used to print it all out and keep it there, too.

    You are right! BACK IT UP!

    Emailing it to yourself is a GREAT way to keep it safe.

    Robocopying right now... I use the mirror copy command to give an exact copy:

    robocopy C:\foo \\backupserver\bar /MIR /Z

    Ask your husband. He'll know what I'm talking about.

    - Eric

    ReplyDelete
  8. My heart stopped when I read "My son dropped my laptop." ACK! Seriously, that could be the most scariest horror movie ever, in all of 2 seconds.

    Glad you had most of it saved.

    ReplyDelete