Aaaaaaaccck!

[madeleone]

I think my laptop has died, I am seriously freaking out. Online right now using my netbook which my big fat fingers are having a hard time not getting tangled up with each other on the tiny keyboard. The thing that has me most upset is I have not backed up anything in several months. (I know, I know... stupid, stupid, stupid. And I'm the one who always bitches to my kids, back up your work!!!). 

I won't be able to take it in anywhere til Tuesday so don't know if it is fixable or not, or if I can even get back what is on there.  I am going to call future son-in-law a bit later (he is an IT guy) to get his opinion. Right now I am tempted to impulsively just take advantage of the cyber Monday sales and order a new laptop. If the old one is fixable then I could always keep it for a backup for me or for one of my kids.

I was working on something for the celebrate_sshg fest but now I'm not sure about that. I have a rough copy of the first part but I had written quite a bit this weekend that is just gone (or at least inaccessible to me for right now).:(


ETA: Have just talked to techie future S-I-L, he has talked me through running the Windows disk and having it attempt a repair. At this point it appears to have worked, good thing to as he said other than that the only thing he could see would be to reinstall which would have wiped all my files. Am currently running a back up to my passport external HD before I do anything else.

Must call back the boy and offer profuse thanks and free meal in the near future. It is great to have a techie guy and/or girl in the family. I highly recommend that everyone rush out and get one as soon as possible!

Comments

[aurette.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have been there. I hate hate hate that feeling of not knowing how much you have lost. Soooo sorry.

I'm also a complete idiot about backing things up so I found a really good solution. I installed Dropbox. Any file I place in the Dropbox folder is automatically uploaded to online storage everytime I hit save. They have the first 2GB free and I haven't come near it yet myself. This way, if you comp dies again, you can download Dropbox onto a different computer and snatch your stuff back off the web. No muss, no fuss, and insurance for us less than diligent folk.

http://www.dropbox.com/#

[kribu.livejournal.com]

Ohh, that sucks. I really hope the laptop can be fixed, or at least that the hard drive can be salvaged - if it's a hardware problem, with anything apart from the hard drive, it should be reasonably simple to get things off it.

Backing up is a concept that makes so much sense in theory, and is so simple to remind other people about, but so much harder to remember to do yourself, especially often enough. I was extremely careful about backing my SSHG Exchange fic up online every time I worked on it, but with most other things, I find it much harder to remember.

[madeleone]

Thanks for the link Aurette, I will keep it in mind for future reference. At least for saving my fics and such. I had a lot of fave fanfic and stuff I had saved as well as quite a few e-books, and pics.

Oooh just talked to future S-I-L. I think he may have saved me! Yay!

[madeleone]

I know what you mean! So easy to tell others but not to do yourself. You sound like me, when I was writing my ss/hg fic I was backing it up every time I wrote but I have become lax in the meantime. This has been a scary lesson for me.

It appears to be fixed, no more black screen, thank god for techie folks!

[willowfaerie2.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you got your laptop working. It's horrible to have your computer go down.

[madeleone]

I know, I totally freaked out, as you can tell by my back up plan to to immediately replace it. Have done back up and am exploring Aurette's suggestion of dropbox for online storage.

[aurette.livejournal.com]

Excellent! I love techies in the family!

I do miss having a plumber in the family, but he was a sh*t, so his loss is only felt monetarily upon occasion.

[dreamy-dragon73.livejournal.com]

I'm glad future s-i-l was able to help and you could recover your files!
~hugs~

[madeleone]

Yes, and I'm so glad what he suggested worked. He said if the repair function didn't work, I'd probably have to re-install windows and would lose whatever was on the hard drive.(eeep! I guess I would have tried to get the info off first, but if it was real expensive I'm not sure what I would have done.) I have since signed up for dropbox and uploaded my fics and some of my pictures. Thanks for that link, by the way, it is an awesome site.

[madeleone]

Thanks and me too! I was really worried for a bit there.

[aurette.livejournal.com]

Thank gawd for teh cheap fixes. Enjoy Dropbox. I am seriously tech-impaired, and I found it is pretty idiot-proof.

[clairvoyant12.livejournal.com]

Whew! That's scary, especially when you're in the midst of archiving a story. Reminds me I should update my files stored on my thumb drive. *looks sheepish* Glad to hear it's been cleared up.

[madeleone]

Yup, that's my new mantra: back up, back up, back up, back up, back up, back up. :D