Jane wasn’t feeling well, think she picked up a bug. And…she went to close down her 50% complete novel file (as I think: I hesitate to ask) and the program simply showed asterisks as a file name. Three months of delicate edits…and gone. Whole file, blank. And saved down. No backup, as it is supposed to make. The program had flat glitched. And it had been way too long, too many delicate edits ago, since the last completely external backup. One of the problems writer folk have, and I have it too, —is the two brain problem. When the right brain is in charge and creation is going on, the leftside brain which is the side that remembers to back up, is not in charge. Is not in the building. The right brain, happy as can be, is not on this planet. It happens to us just way too often. And having the left side take over for a moment is creatively disruptive, to the point where you can’t remember your own character’s name, so it is not often invited to take over at all. This is how we discuss who is driving the car today. WHo is ‘in a scene’ and what kind of scene is it. The one who can safely summon the left brain—drives. The other sits and stares into, well, some other universe. No, there WAS no backup of the delicate part. But thank goodness, computers, like elephants, never forget, even if traumatized.
Well, so, back to yesterday, when Jane arrived at my door with a face gone white and said the computer had lost her file…and the routine backup was lost along with it.
Well, we start to do what used to be a simple file recovery, 1) don’t write to the affected disc any more than necessary 2) get a text-file recovery software, usually Norton 3) find the affected mess 4) give it a new name 5) fix whatever was corrupted, if anything.
Unfortunately, that ability now rests in software-for-pay that is specialty stuff, some of it available to law enforcement only, some of it—well, after several ‘free’ downloads of what turns out either to look ONLY for corrupt Word files (which seems a cottage industry) or to ONLY recover erased files (any boy scout can figure how to restore the first letter of a file name, which is the typical computer erasure..) Oh, no, Norton doesn’t do what Norton used to do, which is to give you access right down to the sectors…and we have reassembled novels out of that schizophrenic chaos….No. We have to find other ways.
Well, Abbey does this sort of thing now and again, helping somebody fish a file out of the digital lake, and she had a program, which FINALLY—after a very upsetting evening—got the file back.
Both of us are frazzled and didn’t get much sleep, after THAT adrenalized day…but we have it.
Win 10 does NOT play nicely with WordPerfect X4. It does have versions that do.
it’s too bad that the software companies are going more and more to “You want to do what you used to be able to do? Pay up!”…..I have an issue with Adobe Acrobat. I wanted to purchase the Acrobat XI application, but it’s no longer “available”, and Adobe is pushing their “Acrobat DC”, which is cloud-based storage. That’s very nice, for a corporation that never loses its internet access, or for someone who’s got a ginormous data plan that allows them to stay connected forever. I don’t, and I won’t get one. There are certain cost factors that enter into my reasoning, and despite the relative “security” and “convenience” of cloud-based storage, when I am out and about with my tablet, or even my laptop, I don’t have wireless 4G or 3G access to a network. I don’t have a data plan, I don’t have a smart phone, and my tablet is wi-fi only. I want to be able to use the stuff that I need, but I also want to be able to store it at MY fingertips, not have to wait until I have access to the cloud.
I’ve run across this “we don’t do that any longer” stuff, not just in software. It’s frustrating, especially when you’ve purchased the software license, and the next upgrade removes the very features you need. Not all of us are supercalifragilistic whiz-bang programmers, so we are pretty much at the mercy of the developers, who don’t seem to understand (and really don’t care from a business standpoint) that the features that made their package attractive in the first place are still attractive.
I’ve got a hard drive that’s flaky…it was undetected for over a year, and a couple of days ago, I had to restart the computer, and wham! There’s that hard drive…..amazing….I don’t know how long it’s going to stay working, though. Most of the stuff on it is outdated, anyway.
Amazon has these lovely little cheap USB storage thingies that hold 8 gig each. Cheap. If you have anything you want a backup for, these things are portable and quick no-fuss safety.https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DI1XO4G/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I keep some in my desk drawer. In case. They’re not quite use-and-toss. Rewritable.
16 and 32GB flash drives are relatively cheap now, and the larger ones aren’t so expensive either. Good for backups and transfers.
I have 2 2TB and one 1TB external drive – one of the larger drives has the genealogy files on it, and the other is the backup from the WinXP drive that had a connector socket guard go, so the cable wasn’t staying in place. I dump stuff from the rest of the C drive onto the 1TB every so often to clear space (photos, recipes, things that catch my attention, like this: http://dduane.tumblr.com/image/148994616601.
and this is one reason why I’m becoming more and more anti-Microsoft…..
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2016/08/18/microsoft-windows-7-and-windows-8-given-windows-10-upgrades/#52aaf5847c27
Joe, I understand you need to support your HAM work, but did you know Linux has (“always” had) AX.25 drivers?
I have GWX Control Panel, which helps with that update problem.
But MS should know better than to force updates like that.
(Can’t see the Forbes story with AdBlock enabled, and don’t want to see the ads that undoubtedly infest their pages.)
Yes, Paul, but I don’t use much in the way of computerized communications applications right now. There are a couple, but I don’t use them very often. I’ve not seen if they’re supported by Linux, as the developer of one of the applications no longer supports it.
I thought you had Carbonite?
I have. Jane’s fouled up a year ago (not saving the deeper parts of her file structure—apparently it doesn’t ‘look’ too deep) and she hadn’t reconstituted it. I think she is now resolved to get it fixed.
You have to customise it to pick up what you want. The default misses anything that’s not pretty standard.
I kind of had that idea. I think it’s just a case of missing a toggle, and of course when that computer went down and all the folders ended up being just nothing with many precious pictures lost, that sort of put her off the service. I think she feels differently after this squeaker.
Left brain doesn’t have to remember to save with it running. However, large files that keep the same name over an extended period of time may only get backed up once every 24 hours. It behooves you to have a simple DOS script copy really important work to an external drive once an hour. This covers all bases. Or have the autosave always add the date & time. In this case the files are new and will get backed up.
I’ve used Win10 on my sister’s computer. I. Am. Not. Impressed.
Not a fan, either. I don’t like the look. I don’t care for graphics: that’s not the world I live in. I read text blindingly fast. I don’t like to sort what looks like sales adverts on a carnival midway, all different colors and print. Just give me a list. In b&w. I don’t do photos. I don’t listen to music. I don’t go to movies and can’t tell Kate Blanchett from Gwen Paltrow: they’re both blond, right? I don’t stream on my computer. I write and I game, I do genealogy, I occasionally do mahjong, look up a Wiki, or ask for (today’s adventure on the fish forum) for the ingredient list for Palmolive soap…don’t ask. I didn’t. In a marine fish forum it can’t be good.
But 10 with its half-brained bot and way too many whistles and bells makes me crazy. And even stripping them ALL out still leaves Win 10 performing like molasses in January on my older, more comfy-light computer. What’s to love, in that?
AAAaaahhhhhhh. 8)
Too bad I couldn’t’ve double spaced this to make it easier to read between the lines.
My needs are relatively few as well. I moved “out of Dodge” in 2004. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) I brought some stuff with me, made what I need out here in the “wilderness” that fits out here. 😉 Now I just head back to town once a year because I need to be there to do my taxes. I suppose that will close in a year or two and I’ll need to find another. 🙁 It’d be nice if they wouldn’t keep closing up shop. Thing is, there are outfitters that can bring people out here. People were out here before they were there. It’s really nice and peaceful out here. 😉
$#*&%!
I hope you never have to go through that again.
See if you can find some good incremental backup program that will save the file on a regular basis (hourly is good) to an external drive,. One that will keep versions going back in time.
I’m a Mac user and Time Machine has saved me several times from my own stupidity. There is likely a similar program for Windows.
That’s what Carbonite does. It’s a good program and has good online help, live people, who speak clear English and are used to calming down people who are having a Really Bad Day and aren’t clear on the instructions. The other bennie is, when my hard drive went down, just unexpectedly became a brick in mid-operation, I installed my new drive (Dell streamed on Win 7) and got programs onto it sufficient to get to the internet: at that point I went into my Carbonite account, went into the Restore option, told it go (I could have selected one specific file or directory to restore) restore everything, and there have been few problems, mostly with mail, which is now running well. Every place where 2 and 3 accounts have to shake hands and agree you’re you, you can have a little trouble.
I will make one other recommendation for such instances: Last Pass or some other password storage. And for gosh sakes, have a master password that you can remember and that is not dead obvious like mypassword. Write it down and put it somewhere you will never, ever lose it, not if a meteor wipes out your house, because even Last Pass doesn’t ‘know’ what it is. They can’t tell you. They can let you ‘roll back’ your password to a previous one, via your computer and email, but you’d better know what that one is, too. It’s pretty good protection against foolery. International terrorism specifically targeting your collection of Victorian naughties, well, not so much, but outside of that, you’re going to be ok unless you give away your master password or store it on your hard drive in a folder marked ‘passwords’.
Dashlane is another password program. Sync to my phone as well.