Comments on: A Modern Writing Horror Story

By: 4 Tips For Those Stormy Writing Days: More Epiphanies From the World of Triathlon - Miffie Seideman

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 18:14:16 +0000

[…] down around us, trying to keep us from our goal? Like the stormy moment when author and blogger Eldred Bird’s backup crashed, taking his manuscripts (and years of work) with it (yikes!). Or when life’s […]

By: Karen McFarland

Karen McFarland — Sun, 20 Mar 2022 00:43:17 +0000

This fellow Zoni writer fell into the hands of a dead Motherboard. I was in full crises mode until Jenny Hansen's dear hubby saved my files from distinction. It was a nightmare that I do not ever want to experience again. Thus, everything is backed up on multiple sources. Glad you had a good outcome as well. And thank you for the Desert Data Recovery referral. I will definitely keep them in mind. 🙂

By: jrfinley

jrfinley — Sat, 19 Mar 2022 22:06:30 +0000

After a drive crash years ago that cost me some irreplaceable family photos, including some of people who were no longer around, I have probably gone overboard with backups. I run a backup any time I have made any significant changes or additions to the contents of my hard drives (separate drives for docs, pictures, music, and videos because I'm a digital pack rat, but at least it's all well organized.) I have one internal backup drive in my tower PC and two external backups; each backup goes to the internal drive and I alternate between the two externals. I keep a 12 TB mass storage device as well, and two or three times a month I save another generation of backup files on that, since it's big enough to hold between five and ten generations of backups. The one not in use goes into the fire-resistant document safe. Also, although I do most of my work on the desktop I'm at right now, I have a laptop and the most important stuff is on that as well, in a different room. So to wipe my files out, my house would have to be hit by a meteorite or something.

By: dholcomb1

dholcomb1 — Sat, 19 Mar 2022 04:42:37 +0000

Last Friday, my hard drive died. Suddenly, and almost unexpectedly. I had something weird happen the night before, but it fixed itself after rebooting, so I thought it was just an update. I wish I had known 24-hours later it would just die. I actually cried. I'm writing this from my husband's computer. His friend is trying to recover all of my data from the hard drive. He put a new one in my computer and that laptop's running and good to go. I, too, did not have everything backed up. My husband's friend is sure he's recovering data and thinks it may need one or m ore two days on the system he's using. He's a great IT guy and I'm getting the friend rate. This has not been a fun experience. Listen to Eldred. denise

By: Karen DeBonis

Karen DeBonis — Sat, 19 Mar 2022 00:44:51 +0000

In reply to Jenny Hansen. Yes, I did, now that you mention it, I did. Thanks for reminding, me, Jenny. lol. We (meaning hubs) were able to handle it in-house. Phew!

By: deleyna

deleyna — Sat, 19 Mar 2022 00:39:25 +0000

Thank you so much for this! As someone who did once lose a manuscript, I've been a fanatic for backups and cloud storage ever since. Your writing made this a beautiful read even though I don't like horror stories! (grin) I'm glad there was a happy ending. My favorite piece of advice was to remain calm. I had a situation a few years back where I had a data crash. My initial response was to restore from backup. Good idea, right? Except what I *should* have done in that situation was to make a new backup before doing the restore. When the restore went badly, I'd not only lost the data I'd already lost... but I'd also lost another week's worth. I'm slower to react these days, and frequently face any new challenge with, "Don't panic. Breathe. Think calmly." This has saved me from several nightmare scenarios recently. (I work with a LOT of tech...)

By: Eldred Bird

Eldred Bird — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 21:38:59 +0000

In reply to Ellen Buikema. Secondary storage is always a goo thein. You can never backup too much, only too little...

By: Eldred Bird

Eldred Bird — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 21:37:22 +0000

In reply to Christina Anne Hawthorne. Wow! Sounds like you have your own horror story. Glad you dug your wat out!

By: Jenny Hansen

Jenny Hansen — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 21:31:17 +0000

In reply to Karen DeBonis. If I'm remembering correctly, Karen, you just went through something similar.

By: Jenny Hansen

Jenny Hansen — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 21:30:00 +0000

In reply to Virginia. I'm right there with you on this one, Virginia. I back up almost everything to OneDrive. It's way better than the systems I used to us.