The Freelance Writer's Worst Nightmare

[adderslj]

The one thing I'd always dreaded happened last night. I came home, switched on the iMac and prepared to open a freelance file I've been working on for months.

It was gone.

Just gone.

I'd been storing current document in the local cache of my iDisk, but the files in question had disappeared from both my iBook and my iMac. My stomach dropped. I didn't want to have to rewrite the best part of 12k from scratch. I started to panic. My copy of Norton couldn't help.

And then, I spotted OfficeRestore, a just released product from SubRosaSoft. I downloaded it, and ran the restricted demo version. It found some older versions of the missing file. Crossing my fingers, I paid for the license and ran it again. Bingo. The file was recovered.

I lost an evening's working time, but that beats losing several months of work.

Comments

[wtimmins.livejournal.com]

Holy crap!! Thank goodness... that sort of thing sucks sooo much...

[rickj.livejournal.com]

Good news. After a minor disaster a few years ago, I've become a total freak about backups.

[acestatic.livejournal.com]

I didn't expect a happy ending to this post. Cool. Thanks for the link.

[andrewducker]

Backups!

[adders.livejournal.com]

Technically speaking, it was backed up, with copies in three places. The problem that caused the first file to disappear was in the back-up mechanism, which also took all the back-ups with it.

[doctorcaligari.livejournal.com]

Dude. Dodged a bullet there. Whew!

(And thanks for the probably unintentional reminder to us other writers to KEEP BACKING UP...)

[adders.livejournal.com]

Ironically, it was my automated backing-up mechanism that caused the accidental deletion.

[doctorcaligari.livejournal.com]

Ouch. That hurts the soul, it does.