Massive computer failure

[Revoltingest]

I basically caught up with all the lost work last night. Because I had done it all before, I was able to replace a week's worth of work in two days. I have about two hours worth of work and I should be done.

Whew!

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Whew!

Yep. I'm exhausted.

I'm assuming that the other data that I recovered is intact. I've only actually spent time in two documents.

 

[YmirGF]

Yep. I'm exhausted.

I'm assuming that the other data that I recovered is intact. I've only actually spent time in two documents.

Now that you are somewhat back up to speed, it is incumbent on you to follow my advice. Even if you backup to DVD or CD once or twice a week... you won't be caught with your pants down again.

When it comes to protecting important data, can one really be too paranoid?

 

[Revoltingest]

Now that you are somewhat back up to speed, it is incumbent on you to follow my advice. Even if you backup to DVD or CD once or twice a week... you won't be caught with your pants down again.

Yeah....if he gets caught with pants down again, we'll both be there.

 

[Dirty Penguin]

Yesterday I had a massive computer crash that wiped out almost all of my dissertation.

I have some backup on an external hard-drive. I backed-up everything chapters 1-5 and my awesome, beautiful 731 entry bibliography on Sunday evening. But somehow the back-up is dated in late August, so all my work since then is gone.

Notes, bibliographies, everything. I have a fairly good draft of chapters 1-3 in my email outbox, but the loss of my notes and chapters 4-5 is absolutely devastating.

I worked on trying to restore it for about 12 hours yesterday, and I'm going to spend some $$ today on a data recovery program. It looks pretty ******* bleak right now.

Needless to say I went to bed quite drunk last night. And I intend on doing the same thing asap.

I AM FORTUNE'S FOE!!!!!!

Sorry.. I'm also sorry I don't live near you to fix it. If your hard drive died then I know how you feel. If your operating system crash and the hard drive is fine then It's possible to setup a hard drive setup as a (slave) and boot the PC with a Linux CD and copy the files from the crashed drive to the blank (slave) drive.

Rebuilding the PC can be easy. You may have CDs that came with your computer (a restore/re-installation CD). If the original hard drive is fine then the restore CD can boot up and restore back the MFG. settings.

Regardless of how you get it fixed..consider putting your files on a USB thumb drive (because they have no no moving parts in them)...but periodically back that thumb drive up onto a secondary thumb drive you keep in your drawer. If you do save it like this and it's something as important as a dissertation then consider getting a fire proof safe to store the drive as well as other important items in. Also, depending the word processor program you're using, you can set it to periodically save. I set mine to save every 5 minutes.

DP
IT Guru.....

 

[TurkeyOnRye]

Still lucky

I think, my case is worse. We have a "GROUP" (3 members in a group) thesis last sem. My group's topic is about Acute Pancreatitis, it's common cause and why only Asians (majority of cases) die of that illness. I really hate my group because I was the only one who's doing the research, interview and its arrangement. My 2 other groupmates didn't contribute that much.They just pass the draft I created to the proff for corrections. During our final exam, I was the only one who's finalizing our paper, while these two have a long time reviewing.

This is a dissertation AE is referring to. I doubt whatever you're working on is as long or intensive as.


After plenty of hangups, I now understand that it just isn't practical to depend on my computer's internal drive to save data. The fact that it houses the operating system's critical data means that corruption in one form or another is likely. I can't even count how many times I've formatted this computer and reinstalled the OS, meanwhile losing valuable data over and over. I have now invested in a 1.5tb external drive to put all OS-independent information on it, so if Windows decides to be a jerk, my information is still safe.

Aside from all this, another common way in which I lose data is by simply clicking the wrong button in the File menu. Needless to say, it's easy to make a couple of wrong clicks and wipe out an entire day's worth of information in literally less than a second or two wrong mouse clicks, so beware. For example, in WordPerfect 11, "Close" is right between "Save" and "Open". *SIGH... Doesn't matter what media you save your stuff to, if it gets deleted even before you save it.

 

[Quagmire]

That sucks major explicative, Nate. Glad things turned out at least partially OK though.

In the future, remember, when it comes to computer files: Jesus saves and so should you.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Well, after hours and hours and hours of work, the dissertation is now perfect.

What a pain!

My stats are back up:
Bibliographic Sources – 64
Art Sources- 42
Ancient Sources – 94
Modern Sources – 559

Total Bibliographic Entries: 759

Total Pages = 167

Total footnotes = 533

 

[angellous_evangellous]

That looks pretty good next to the original:

Bibliographic Resources and Sourcebooks - 40
Artwork - 31
Ancient sources [all in Latin or Greek] - 84
Fragments and Papyri [all in Latin or Greek] - 22
Modern Sources [English, German, and French] - 551
Total = 728 for the first three chapters

Ch 1 – 68 pg and 179 footnotes
Ch 2 – 38 pgs and 129 footnotes
Ch 3 – 54 pgs and 161 footnotes