Saturday, September 13, 2008

Computer Scare

So, I was typing away, testing out a new version of Chapter 1 with the Great Gatsby theme. I save regularly, and at one point reached up to click save. A little window popped up, telling me in Computerese that I had some error saving. I frowned, and clicked okay. A second window, this time with a serious looking logo, telling me that the document had more problems. Okay. Third window, saying that Word needed to close. At this point I was concerned, but mainly just confused.

Then I reopened Word and the new version was GONE. I searched in every file, in every way I knew how, but the whole thing had suddenly ceased to exist. As you can imagine, I went into freak out mode.

Luckily, I remembered enough to rewrite the whole thing, though it took me over an hour. The whole experience has freaked me out now. What if that had been my novel??? I mean, I save almost every time on a flash drive, but what if it still had problems? What if???

So, now I am all worried about how to save my work. I've heard of internet storage sights, but never looked into it. What do you do? Any tips?

5 comments:

Terri Tiffany said...

Someone in my writers group said they email their work to their email address and save it there too. But to just save it in word should work--that would worry me as you know I am ignorant on a lot of that stuff!
Did you try shutting down your computer and see if it comes up saved then? That works for me at times.

Natalie Whipple said...

Oh scary, very scary. I acutally have an external hard drive and I back up my whole comp every night. I also hve my most important documents in email.

Joanne said...

I had a hard drive crash once, and every single file was lost. Anything not backed up outside the computer was permanently gone. I always save important files on Word and 2 times externally. I've also at times saved on an email that can be accessed anywhere.

Kiersten White said...

That's awful, Renee! How disheartening!

Anytime I make changes, I email my documents to myself. Then they're saved in my email, and I can access them anywhere.

Renee Collins said...

Ah, email it to myself. That's brilliant.

Right now, I have it saved on two flash drives, and in Word, but it still worries me. I'd feel better knowing it was away from my crappy, virusy Word.

Thanks all! :)