Monday, March 1, 2010

Rescusitation and Resurrection - Digital Style


My computer crashed on Saturday, sending me in to a major panic. This is the computer I work on and where I do all of my school work.

But more importantly, my novels and screenplay are on that computer. GASP. Thankfully I had saved novel one to a flash drive and I had send the newest version of act I of the screenplay to my mentor so I could retrieve it from sent mail (it's now on the flash drive, too). However, even though I had saved novel two to the flashdrive, the last save was 14000 words ago. This made my heart drop, I nearly started weeping, and my breathing came in ragged wheezing gulps.

I've taken the computer to the local computer repair dude and hopefully he can resurrect it, at which point I will greedily save everything to my flash drive (Lesson learned? One would hope, but I have doubts). If he can't resurrect it I'm in deep doo-doo. Not only do I not want to have to face recreating 14000 words of my novel, but there are various and sundry other important documents on there not recently saved, as well as the fact that it's my work computer and therefore I would have no computer on which to earn a living. Actually, that's not entirely true - I'd have to download all my work software onto the family computer (on which I am writing right now) and use it for work. That will be a most unpopular move on my part. But I just can't afford another computer right now.

So everyone cross your fingers and offer up a prayer to the gods of digital equipment and the patron saint of computer repair guys that my computer can be saved. I can use all the help I can get right now.

Thanks!!!

2 comments:

Tiffany Neal said...

Oh gosh! This is too much like my laptop being stolen! And pindrive! It was like the jerk who stole it from me, ripped my heart out of my chest and stomped on it.

I hope it's revived!

Al said...

This sort of disaster is so hard to deal with and very scary.
I have had my share in the past.

Don't just rely on a flash drive. They are pretty good, but they are not 100% reliable.

I have a tech friend that says that data doesn't exist unless it is in three places.
I burn copies of all my important stuff to CD or DVD. With my manuscript I also email copies to friends so it is offsite.

Al

Publish or Perish