Mourning the Loss of Your Written Work

[Boy In Doubt]

I think it's quite obvious what this topic is about so I'm just going to cut to the chase.

 

I recently lost a part of a chapter I was working on and I have no idea how to get it back. Most recommend backing up your files and since I failed to do that (and only kept one copy of that particular unfinished chapter), it's probably too late to do anything about it now. It's gone. I accept that. It was my responsibility and I should have seen this coming. However, what's really getting to me is the fact that the loss wasn't due to a failing hard drive.

 

All my chapters, character lists and pretty much anything related to my fiction writing are on a flash drive. I was doing some writing a while ago but couldn't get anything out of me so I decided to open another piece I was working on. It's a Wordpad file (they all are). And what do I see? My worst nightmare in the form of a blank white page.

 

I tried highlighting (wondering if it might have changed color by itself), tried copy/pasting to another word processor, tried restarting...and nothing. The entire page was blank. Or I suppose you could say that the text became invisible (since I was able to highlight it but not read anything).

 

I tried Googling and usually, when I'm determined to fix something, I find a way. But I don't think this can be solved. I just needed to vent. And to make matters worse, this situation certainly isn't helping me overcome writer's block. I'm now afraid to write. I can't rely on anything anymore.

[Trebs]

I know this won't help get it back, but for the future - you should open a free email account, and email from your regular email to your other new email... Even if it fails on one side, you'll still have it in either your inbox or sent folder...

 

<HUG>

 

As to the lost chapter - there have been times where Dan lost something, just bit the bullet and started over - and felt it was a better product. It can happen...

[Krista]

copy/paste to online document sources like Google docs.. only you have access to it (if you choose to keep it restricted) and its pretty much always accessible.

[JamesSavik]

Another cheap backup option is to add a USB drive to your system and copy your work there.

 

A really BIG one (~1 terabyte) can be had for around $100-120 US.

[Boy In Doubt]

Thanks everyone, I really should have done that in the first place. I may start writing again but I have a feeling it's going to be hard not to worry about it disappearing on me.

 

I saved all my writing on a flash drive. The problem is, I didn't have multiple copies.

[colinian]

Assuming that you've not written ANYTHING to your flash drive since you lost the file, your file may still be on the drive. Even if you have written to the flash drive, it's worth a bit of time to see if anything can be recovered.

 

First, BEFORE you do anything else, make a copy of the entire flash drive to your hard drive.

 

Second, go to www.jufsoft.com/badcopy/flash_drive_recovery.asp and download the trial version of BadCopy Pro. It can recover any files that it can find on a USB flash drive or a memory card. Follow the brief instructions and see if it can find your file or an earlier version of it that can be recovered. Note that there are two options; try them both.

 

Third, if the BadCopy Pro trial reports that your file can be restored, buy the product ($39.50) to recover and save your file.

 

I would strongly recommend that you stop using a flash drive as your primary data drive; they're just not designed for sustained write operations. I've helped out users on campus who've had the same problem you encountered, and these are the steps we've used to sometimes be able to recover critical assignment and project files.

 

So what can you use instead of a flash drive? The no additional cost approach is to use the hard drive in your computer as your primary data drive, and use your flash drive ONLY for backup. If you can afford it, buy a portable USB hard drive (LaCie and others make them) and use it as your primary data drive and back up to the hard drive in your computer; this is the most reliable approach but will cost $75.00 and up for the portable USB hard drive.

 

Colin

[Boy In Doubt]

Assuming that you've not written ANYTHING to your flash drive since you lost the file, your file may still be on the drive. Even if you have written to the flash drive, it's worth a bit of time to see if anything can be recovered.

 

First, BEFORE you do anything else, make a copy of the entire flash drive to your hard drive.

 

Second, go to www.jufsoft.com/badcopy/flash_drive_recovery.asp and download the trial version of BadCopy Pro. It can recover any files that it can find on a USB flash drive or a memory card. Follow the brief instructions and see if it can find your file or an earlier version of it that can be recovered. Note that there are two options; try them both.

 

Third, if the BadCopy Pro trial reports that your file can be restored, buy the product ($39.50) to recover and save your file.

 

I would strongly recommend that you stop using a flash drive as your primary data drive; they're just not designed for sustained write operations. I've helped out users on campus who've had the same problem you encountered, and these are the steps we've used to sometimes be able to recover critical assignment and project files.

 

So what can you use instead of a flash drive? The no additional cost approach is to use the hard drive in your computer as your primary data drive, and use your flash drive ONLY for backup. If you can afford it, buy a portable USB hard drive (LaCie and others make them) and use it as your primary data drive and back up to the hard drive in your computer; this is the most reliable approach but will cost $75.00 and up for the portable USB hard drive.

 

Colin

 

Thanks, Colin.

 

I'll check out the link but the problem isn't that the file is gone, it's that the text is invisible. I still have the Wordpad file on my flash drive and whenever I open it, all I see is a blank page. I can highlight the area where the text used to be (and it's probably still there), but changing the font/color seems to have no effect. I even tried opening it with Microsoft Word and got the same result.

 

Maybe the program you suggested could restore an older version of the file (since I did open it a few times this week). I'll keep my fingers crossed. Kinda sucks that I'd have to pay to recover, though...lol.

[darkfoxprime]

Try copying the text into a Notepad window - not Wordpad, but Notepad (which doesn't do formatting or anything else). That may show the actual text.

[Boy In Doubt]

Try copying the text into a Notepad window - not Wordpad, but Notepad (which doesn't do formatting or anything else). That may show the actual text.

 

I tried but nothing showed up when I clicked 'Paste'. I should probably just accept that it's gone. At least it wasn't an entire chapter, just a scene (which meant a lot to me but there's nothing I can do about it now).

[Gregoire]

It's always hard to try to go back and recapture something after you've poured your heart and soul into it. I completely understand. I have this unfortunate habit of giving up on my stories and other things when this happens, but I hope that you don't. It's an unfortunate setback to be sure, but think of it as a fresh start. Even though you can't just get back your dialog or your descriptions, you have a chance to re-envision the scene and make is stronger, better. Ya know? Not that it won't be intensely frustrating, or easy to do, but something about going back to your work and getting the bugs out gets you back into your story, and suddenly it's as if there was never a hiccup at all.

[Boy In Doubt]

It's always hard to try to go back and recapture something after you've poured your heart and soul into it. I completely understand. I have this unfortunate habit of giving up on my stories and other things when this happens, but I hope that you don't. It's an unfortunate setback to be sure, but think of it as a fresh start. Even though you can't just get back your dialog or your descriptions, you have a chance to re-envision the scene and make is stronger, better. Ya know? Not that it won't be intensely frustrating, or easy to do, but something about going back to your work and getting the bugs out gets you back into your story, and suddenly it's as if there was never a hiccup at all.

 

I like the way you think, Greg. I wish I could look on the bright side more often.

 

A while after it happened I was like, "What's the point?" and it really killed my writing mood. It felt as though anything I wrote could just disappear on me at the drop of a hat. But you're right, it's not the end of the world and I certainly shouldn't stop just because of some minor setback. Perhaps I could come up with a better version of the same piece. I actually tried writing today (on Google Docs, like Krista suggested) and I'm starting to feel better about it now. That also means goodbye, Wordpad. You won't be missed...lol.

 

Thanks again, everyone. I will definitely try to be more careful next time.

[hh5]

Hey I take my initial writings as just a template\alpha write to a story I be writing.

 

Sure if I lost an unpublished chapter I be in a funk about it.

 

But if I'm still in the alpha stage i just eventually go back and rewrite it or get the essence down and then start getting back to what it meant when its ready to come out of me. If not I don't force it. If you do have a beta reader it would be find to bounce things off them if they had read your alpha works. It might help the writers block.

 

Now that I have been doing a beta write ... I find that things are beginning to hash out details by themselves.

 

You must be a beta writer without doing the alpha write ... so it becomes to be hitting that you wrote once and don't want to write it again. That really kills the spirit of why you wrote the story. For me the story constantly is living in me. So if I had to write a missing portion ... I do it because the spirit is still there and its not gone. Only the original effort it took. But if you rejoin with its spirit ... it comes out better again. Its a matter to get re-in touch with it again.

[Hoskins]

I like the way you think, Greg. I wish I could look on the bright side more often.

 

A while after it happened I was like, "What's the point?" and it really killed my writing mood. It felt as though anything I wrote could just disappear on me at the drop of a hat. But you're right, it's not the end of the world and I certainly shouldn't stop just because of some minor setback. Perhaps I could come up with a better version of the same piece. I actually tried writing today (on Google Docs, like Krista suggested) and I'm starting to feel better about it now. That also means goodbye, Wordpad. You won't be missed...lol.

 

Thanks again, everyone. I will definitely try to be more careful next time.

 

Hey if you PM me the bad file, I'll see if I can do anything with it.

[Boy In Doubt]

Hey I take my initial writings as just a template\alpha write to a story I be writing.

 

Sure if I lost an unpublished chapter I be in a funk about it.

 

But if I'm still in the alpha stage i just eventually go back and rewrite it or get the essence down and then start getting back to what it meant when its ready to come out of me. If not I don't force it. If you do have a beta reader it would be find to bounce things off them if they had read your alpha works. It might help the writers block.

 

Now that I have been doing a beta write ... I find that things are beginning to hash out details by themselves.

 

You must be a beta writer without doing the alpha write ... so it becomes to be hitting that you wrote once and don't want to write it again. That really kills the spirit of why you wrote the story. For me the story constantly is living in me. So if I had to write a missing portion ... I do it because the spirit is still there and its not gone. Only the original effort it took. But if you rejoin with its spirit ... it comes out better again. Its a matter to get re-in touch with it again.

 

I get what you mean. That's one of the benefits of having a beta reader. Someone else gets a copy. Unforutnately, I don't have one at the moment and the only copy of the file I have left is messed up. I guess I'll just have to channel those feelings again and rewrite the scene, which is quite short, so it might turn out alright.

 

Hey if you PM me the bad file, I'll see if I can do anything with it.

 

Thanks, I'll send it as soon as I'm done typing this message.

[Parchment_Of_Love]

Sadly, I know how you feel. I lost much of my work because my flash drive just exploded one day. I lost part of my life.

[Rilbur]

I would strongly recommend that you stop using a flash drive as your primary data drive; they're just not designed for sustained write operations. I've helped out users on campus who've had the same problem you encountered, and these are the steps we've used to sometimes be able to recover critical assignment and project files.

 

Personally, I wouldn't call word editing a 'sustained write operation', or sustained read. There are intermittent writes -- depending on the software used, you generally get a five minute 'autosave' function that helps recover from crashes and other failures -- but nothing sustained.

 

A bigger problem would be that flash drives have a finite lifespan; they're only designed to be read/written from a finite, though large, number of times. Eventually, the bits stop flipping right and you wind up with... well, I don't think you can even call it a paper weight, not heavy enough. For that reason, I personally wouldn't recommend staying on the same drive 'too long'; depending on usage patterns that could be anywhere from a month (if you're doing sustained read/write operations, which is a Really Bad Idea; go ahead and pay for a hard drive of some kind!) to years. Personally, I use a program that provides automatic backup, so I'll just keep going until the drive fails, but I used to maintain a two year rule. (Old drives can still be useful; I kept my old one for use as a 'quarantine drive' when I need to interact with a suspect system, which is to say transfer files to it.)

[Boy In Doubt]

Sadly, I know how you feel. I lost much of my work because my flash drive just exploded one day. I lost part of my life.

 

I'm sorry, that is terrible. I guess that ought to teach us not to rely on just one drive for storage.

[colinian]

Personally, I wouldn't call word editing a 'sustained write operation', or sustained read. There are intermittent writes -- depending on the software used, you generally get a five minute 'autosave' function that helps recover from crashes and other failures -- but nothing sustained.

 

A bigger problem would be that flash drives have a finite lifespan; they're only designed to be read/written from a finite, though large, number of times. Eventually, the bits stop flipping right and you wind up with... well, I don't think you can even call it a paper weight, not heavy enough. For that reason, I personally wouldn't recommend staying on the same drive 'too long'; depending on usage patterns that could be anywhere from a month (if you're doing sustained read/write operations, which is a Really Bad Idea; go ahead and pay for a hard drive of some kind!) to years. Personally, I use a program that provides automatic backup, so I'll just keep going until the drive fails, but I used to maintain a two year rule. (Old drives can still be useful; I kept my old one for use as a 'quarantine drive' when I need to interact with a suspect system, which is to say transfer files to it.)

 

What you say is correct when you begin writing a story file to a clean, newly formatted flash drive. As the story get longer the story file gets bigger and it's saved to the flash drive both with manual save commands and with autosave. Each of these saves is done with multiple intermittent writes. Then another story is written and rewritten to the flash drive, also with multiple intermittent writes. The way a FAT formatted flash (or hard disk) drive works is that each one of the manual saves writes the complete file to disk, and the old file is marked as deleted and the sectors it used are returned to the file allocation table which is written to the flash drive. Eventually the flash drive become fragmented; large files written the flash drive will be fragmented across many sectors. Each sector is written as a series of writes; as a file is written the links for the sectors being used are updated to the file allocation table on the flash drive. For a large MS Word doc file write (say, 10,000 words and about 112KB) there will be sustained writes as the file is written across multiple sectors and the links are updated to the file allocation table, plus the old file is marked for deletion and it's links are written to the file allocation table; i.e., this generates a series of sustained writes to the flash drive, the same as a hard disk drive formatted as FAT32. A hard disk drive is designed for sustained writes; a flash drive is not.

 

Your point about a flash drive having a finite lifespan is valid. There's another consideration: an inexpensive flash drive may be a poorly manufactured flash drive that ends up having early-life reliability problems and a higher incidence of data loss.

 

If your work is important, store it on the most reliable media. Today that media is a hard disk drive.

 

Colin

[Zeoanne]

While I read this the day it was posted I told myself... *self, you NEED to back up everything today * well, guess what? I didn't and today I'm suffering the consequences. Last night I was doing a Google search for a story title that was posted here on GA and came across a PDF document that sounded interesting so I opened it and when I closed it it was like all hell broke loose. I work with Firefox and had a few tabs opened. when I closed the PDF it bought me back to my Yahoo mail and a narrow screen with all kinds of codes. I could see Yahoo reference on it so I X'ed it out then another one popped up for a total of about 8. At this point I stopped X'ing the pages and hit the 'off' button on the computer. When I clicked it again it would not start again, just the initial screen telling me what my computer is and blah blah blah. I decided to do a System Recovery. I read the screens and it said that all my files would be safe so I continued... Lo and Behold!!! I've lost everything!!!!!!! All my stories (20 of them, most in progress), all my eBooks (I had TONS of them! :-( ) Everyone's edited chapters and stories. Well, everything in My Docs... Anyone knows how to do an 'Undo'?

 

I just sat here and cried!

[Hoskins]

Edit:

 

Have you searched that drive for your files, are you sure they're not in a different directory?

 

If your username before the recovery was "Rush" and you ran the recovery, and now the username is "administrator", the "Rush" folder should still be there. This would explain why you can't find your stuff.

 

Otherwise:

 

You need to have your data recovered, and the simplest way to do that is to take it somewhere trustworthy. This is not cheap. Or you can try to do it yourself using some data recovery software. Either way, you're looking at some cost in time and money to recover the data.

 

I am presuming you are using Windows XP, Vista, or 7.

 

The process is:

 

1. Stop using that computer. Turn it off. The more you use it, the less your chances of success are.

2. Take the hard drive out of it, and install that hard drive in an external hard drive enclosure. While you are at the store, buy a new hard drive of the same type as the old one, but don't worry about the size.

3. Install the new hard drive in the computer. Run a system recovery to restore the system.

4. Install this software on the computer: http://store.krollon...html?REF=709324 - it's called Ontrack Easy Recovery standard, it costs $200.

5. After installing the software, run the recovery process on the drive in the enclosure.

6. When you restore the data, restore only the folders you need, usually the stuff in the "documents and settings\username" folders, don't worry about any Windows stuff.

7. After the data is recovered, reformat that drive and use it to run regular backups on your system.

 

For future reference, it's not a "System recovery" that you want to perform, it's a "system restore" and the process doesn't involve any CD's or DVD's, it restores the system to the last "restore point", usually these are taken daily or when you install software.

Edited June 6, 2010 by Hoskins

[Zeoanne]

I found the folder but it is empty. I click on it and it says it's not accessible... access denied. BTW, I'm running XP.

 

Funny thing is that out of all the things in My Docs, that's the only folder which contents disappeared. Everything else is in there. So frustrating!

Edited June 6, 2010 by Rush

[John Doe]

I def feel your pain. I lost all my work from my entire life when my computer decided to die about a year ago. Then about five months ago with my new laptop, there was a oversurge and it fried my motherboard and internal harddrive, two external hardrives, and I was back at level 0. Two weeks ago my computer just died, well the video card did and since it's connected to my motherboard, everyone recommends just getting a new computer. I still have to figure out a way to extract my stuff from the hard drive. So now, I am saving it onto a USB flash/thumb drive, an external portable harddrive, and using an online backup service (of course onto the computer itself, when I get a new one... currently my roommate is gracious and letting me hog his laptop for the time being as he only uses it mainly for facebook during the summer).

 

Rush, it seems my computer messes are being transferred to you. >.< I know how you feel.

 

Are you running as administrator and before your computer crashed (no porn for you!) was your "Rush" account set to private or the documents set to private in that program user?

[Hoskins]

I found the folder but it is empty. I click on it and it says it's not accessible... access denied. BTW, I'm running XP.

 

Funny thing is that out of all the things in My Docs, that's the only folder which contents disappeared. Everything else is in there. So frustrating!

 

Okay, GOOD. It may be there! That folder may not be empty. You may be being denied permission to see it because you don't "own" the folder. You need to take ownership of the folder and its contents. (John Doe is talking about the same fix, it's just different terminology).

 

So do this. It may involve rebooting your computer into safe mode. Read that article and you'll see that it's not difficult, but there's a bit of a process to it.

 

If you are running Windows XP Professional, then you don't need to go into safe mode to do this.

 

If you are running Windows XP Home, then you do need to restart windows, press the F8 key and hold it down when the computer boots to a black screen (until you get a menu that lists boot options). Select Safe Mode from that screen. Then follow the instructions in the Microsoft article about taking ownership of the folder.

 

If this looks too intimidating, PM me and I'll see if I can walk you through it.

Edited June 7, 2010 by Hoskins

[Zeoanne]

Sorry, guess I didn't make myself clear, my bad. I meant to say that everything else is in My Docs. but the "Novelas" folder says it's empty, that's where I stored ALL my ebooks and stuff from GA. Found another folder with all the Icon Shortcuts to a lot of the items but upon clicking it does a search and can't find them. What I've been doing all day long is going through the websites where I purchased the eBooks and re-downloading them, to a different folder then I'll just Google those items I can't find. I think I've lost about 7 of my own stories but eh, I guess I'll just re-write them, not too hard to do since I remember what they were about. I did store a few of my stories on Google Docs before this happened. I only wish I would've done all of them at the time. I've been stressed all day long and last night slept less than 4 hrs because of all this crap,,, time to put it to rest and bite the bullet. What's done is done, enough crying.

I'll start the computer on safe mode and see what I can dig up. I'll let you know. Thank you so much for your great help!!!

[KJames]

You could also use Windows Explorer to do an advanced search on the entire drive for files using the following wildcard searches to find all document files: *.doc *.docx

 

You can use other wildcards to search for those missing e-books, too. Also, check your recycle bin--if there's anything there, they might be 'buried' in there.

 

These wildcards will find all MS-Word backward compatible files, and all 'recent' version 'non-backward compatible' files. Make sure you search on the "C:\" drive, and check the box to allow searching unindexed/hidden/system folders--that rogue program may have created a hidden directory and put them there. This will allow you to find them and move them back en-masse.

 

Good luck.