seven hours of work gone...

[slaydemons]

I want to ask you people this because this just happened to me. Have anyone ever done like a good 7 hours of work on something forget to save because your on a roll, and all your work is gone because your computer crashed? This happened to me while I was homebrewing, I wanted to cry just a bit. also if its a rather angry rant about when this happened to you please try to keep it calm.

[Solaris]

Dude, I've had it happen even when I did save. My computer is very lucky it costs money.

[slaydemons]

you have a similar problem but imagine if you didn't save for seven hours thats what just happened to me

[Janus]

Ugh, that's gotta suck.
My advice? Make "ctrl + S" (if you're on a PC) a habit. I save a ridiculous amount of times while working on anything. It's a good habit to have.

[slaydemons]

yeah Might make it more then a habit as I am saving after every step is completed

[MickJay]

To cheer you up - when you'll be redoing the work, it will both go much quicker, and in all likelihood, will be better than the original. :smallwink:

[slaydemons]

To cheer you up - when you'll be redoing the work, it will both go much quicker, and in all likelihood, will be better than the original. :smallwink:

I am unsure so. Unsure response I am not quite sure thats how it goes maybe the information is in my head but I still have to right it down. saddened reply I wish I had saved after I finished writing down the spell names.

[Toofey]

Make sure you check for autosaves.

[Solaris]

you have a similar problem but imagine if you didn't save for seven hours thats what just happened to me

I saved it. The computer did not. It was less than entertaining to open up a document and realize that the thing I'd been working on all night was gone. CTRL + S is a habit of mine at the end of every paragraph, but after Windows updated it apparently decided to dump everything I'd done in the past day or so.

[slaydemons]

I saved it. The computer did not. It was less than entertaining to open up a document and realize that the thing I'd been working on all night was gone. CTRL + S is a habit of mine at the end of every paragraph, but after Windows updated it apparently decided to dump everything I'd done in the past day or so.

this also sucks to be you as well as I

[Greylond]

I recommend you save to a Flash Drive. About once per hour, plug in the drive, save it and then unplug it. Yes, it is a pain, but the first time it saves your work, you'll love it. All it takes is getting into the habit.

[slaydemons]

I recommend you save to a Flash Drive. About once per hour, plug in the drive, save it and then unplug it. Yes, it is a pain, but the first time it saves your work, you'll love it. All it takes is getting into the habit.

when I am done I plan to submit it here for further balance analysis as I am not the best judge of my own creation

[Tyndmyr]

Ugh, that's gotta suck.
My advice? Make "ctrl + S" (if you're on a PC) a habit. I save a ridiculous amount of times while working on anything. It's a good habit to have.

Yeah, this is what I do. I save all the time.

Also, note that some apps have auto-save or recovery features that are quite handy. Office or openoffice, for instance. I've been very pleased to have that on occasion.

[randomhero00]

That sucks. But no. I've never lost that much work. I think the most I've lost is about 30 minutes. I always save my work.

[dps]

If you go 7 hours without saving, you deserve to lose your work. No sympathy from me.

[slaydemons]

If you go 7 hours without saving, you deserve to lose your work. No sympathy from me.

well then I assume you have a rather bad computer that always fails every hour or so but this was the first time in a month that its had the slightest issue

[Greylond]

It's simply one of Murphy's Laws of Computing. The computer will fail only when you have done a bunch of work that you can't lose and haven't saved...

[Knaight]

well then I assume you have a rather bad computer that always fails every hour or so but this was the first time in a month that its had the slightest issue

I have never used a computer outside of school (where one saves all the time due to short classes anyways) that had a crash more than once every year or two, yet I still save routinely. Its just a habit that you should be in, and developing it is a good idea. Backing up your computer is another such habit- as I learned the hard way.

[DukeofDellot]

I think the most I've ever lost was... eight months of work.

Eight or nine years ago, I was just getting started with my game designing, and was working with an old DOS based JRPG game maker. My game wasn't very original, though I like to think the setting was. It followed a very simple format, had a decent story, a party member disposition system (not unlike several bioware games that either hadn't come out... or I hadn't played yet), and the ability to customize your characters pretty thoroughly. The main character Creole had something like 28 different sprite sets, each with it's own stats and abilities.

My computer was not connected to the internet, and my only method of saving outside of my harddisk was to resort to floppies... yeah... 3-1/2 inch, plastic shielded, floppy disks. The few I was using, all failed around the same time...

And that wasn't all of my work, I had other things, countless other projects and items that I really wish I still had access to... to explore a segment of my life that I've been trying to get back to in the mentality of...

...

It still hurts.

Edit: I guess I got wrapped up in emotions... the point I was trying to make was to bolster what was already stated: have external backups.

[KillianHawkeye]

Well, I've had both of my hard drives crash within a week of each other, causing me to lose EVERYTHING EVER. Now I keep my important stuff on an external and backup stuff on flash drives.

[Erom]

I lost about 4 hours of work on a school project when I was in grade school. Not that much in the grand scheme of things but to child me it felt like an eternity of wasted effort. It taught me the value of saving early and often.

Years later, at university, a power surge took out both my primary hard drive and my external backup. Lost months of work from that. Along with every photo from my entire college career. That taught me the value of a networked backup solution.

Seriously, if you are old enough to be doing any real work at all without a redundant, networked backup solution, you're asking for trouble. I would actually call a robust backup suite an important part of adulthood at this point, similar to paying your bills on time or being able to change your own oil in your car.

[Tyndmyr]

Well, I've had both of my hard drives crash within a week of each other, causing me to lose EVERYTHING EVER. Now I keep my important stuff on an external and backup stuff on flash drives.

Raid 5 + an automated backup system + good saving habits = win.

I've lost many a hard drive in my time, but I don't actually lose data. Hell, some of the stuff I have is from my teens, and is probably of very low value, but it's still there.

[Kurald Galain]

My advice? Make "ctrl + S" (if you're on a PC) a habit. I save a ridiculous amount of times while working on anything. It's a good habit to have.

This.

Also, make backups.

[Yukitsu]

I lost 497 pages of system home brew when my external holding it died, so I can't really empathize with 7 hours any more.

[valadil]

Raid 5 + an automated backup system + good saving habits = win.

I've lost many a hard drive in my time, but I don't actually lose data. Hell, some of the stuff I have is from my teens, and is probably of very low value, but it's still there.

Raid Z is the one you want. Unfortunately you pretty much need Solaris for it right now.

The problem with raid 5 is that it doesn't really account for errors that aren't detected. It expects to know about errors then be able to reconstruct data around those. But if you have a bad sector reporting all 0s, the other drives are going essentially mirror the bad data. And on a drive larger than 400gb or so, you're all but guaranteed some bad sectors.

I had a raid 5 of 400gb drives for about 5 years. I had full raid failure twice and actually stopped counting how many drives I lost. Yay for offsite backup though. Most of my current projects live in Dropbox. Longer term things end up copied to my Dreamhost account. I still lost all my music and movies, but they were back again within a month.

Anyway I bring you this tangent to once again pimp Dropbox. Even if you never switch computers, it's really awesome to have a 2gb folder that gets copied automatically to a server somewhere else. That server does receive proper backup, so you'll easily be able to get your files back. Doesn't solve the problem of forgetting ctrl-s (or :w for some of us) but that's a user error rather than a technological one. I'm convinced that most people have to lose at least 4 hours of a paper before they learn to save between every paragraph.

[DontEatRawHagis]

yeah Might make it more then a habit as I am saving after every step is completed

Google Docs saves everytime you change something. Thats what I use.

[potatocubed]

Google Docs saves everytime you change something. Thats what I use.

All my important stuff lives on dropbox, for much the same reason.

[nedz]

I'm not sure what tools you are using but if its a PC: have a poke around in your temp folders, you might be lucky.
BTW it will only take you half as long to recreate it, at least that has always been my experience.:smallfrown:
Not that I've lost anything in a long time, but then I do have backups.

[Erom]

If you don't have a server somewhere you can rsync stuff too (and maybe even if you do just to have another copy) a free account with Dropbox, Mozy, Spideroak, or similar services is a great idea. All of them can be used to back stuff up and sync across multiple machines. Dropbox additionally makes it easy to share with other people. Mozy is probably the least feature-rich but is probably the easiest to use. Spideroak encrypts your files on the server, not just encrypted transmission, so your data is even secure from the company unless they have your password, so it's a little more secure for the paranoid out there, plus it supported Linux back before Mozy/Dropbox did.

They are other equivalent services, those are just the three that I've tried and liked. I use both Dropbox (for personal files, including sharing RPG materials with my players in my 4e campaign and video game save files) and Spideroak (for serious backup of both work and personal "real work" projects).

[slaydemons]

I lost 497 pages of system home brew when my external holding it died, so I can't really empathize with 7 hours any more.

I would of just been like..... SCREW THIS. then just leave to eat icecream

[Tyrmatt]

When I'm working on homebrew, I save it to my Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) and make it a habit of every time I put a period, I hit Ctrl-S at the same time. Know it's been mentioned but if you want to sign up, let me know. I'll throw you an invite which bags us both bonus storage.

[Yukitsu]

I would of just been like..... SCREW THIS. then just leave to eat icecream

It's not that bad. The notes were all hand written, and most of it was saved in a bunch of word docs scattered around my hotmail box. Reassembling it took ages though, especially as I change things constantly.

[Tvtyrant]

I save everything as a series of drafts on Google. I figure if Google goes down the internet is collapsing anyways.

[Tyndmyr]

I save everything as a series of drafts on Google. I figure if Google goes down the internet is collapsing anyways.

They've lost customer data before you know.

I don't anticipate the company going out of business any time soon, but you can only expect so much out of a free service. Use a backup.

[randomhero00]

OP: try coming up with an entire campaign and then finding out your players cant play. :(

[slaydemons]

OP: try coming up with an entire campaign and then finding out your players cant play. :(

try making a campaign and finding out your players don't want to play at all D: we had a seven month hiatus

[Kuma Kode]

Dropbox

dropbox

Dropbox (www.dropbox.com)

Dropbox is an excellent idea, and I use it myself for sharing my own homebrew. Completed or milestone PDFs are placed on my personal server, but the newest work-in-progress is always in Dropbox or Ubuntu One (A free file sync program available to all Ubuntu users).

Otherwise, pretty much what everyone else has said. Make CTRL + S a reflexive action. Unfortunately, even if you do save, Windows has what is called a write cache. Changes made to files are stored in the cache, and then all written at once at a later point rather than each individual change triggering a write action. It saves your hard drive's lifespan and increases the effective read/write speed while simultaneously endangering your work. Even if you saved, if your computer crashes before the changes are written, they're lost.

[Gralamin]

Let's see, I currently keep all of my work in:

A git-repo, stored online on my webserver, and checked out on my laptop and desktop.
The discs themselves (Desktop in (hardware) RAID 5, no errors yet (like valadil's mention) and it's been running for 4 or 5 years. Then again, my chip might have the NVRAM required to get around the problem.)
Dropbox.
Google Docs.
Ubuntu One.
Flash Drives.

Too cautious? Perhaps. Prepared? Yes.

[slaydemons]

Well I have indeed learned my lesson though this wasn't really to ask help itwas more like "damn bad stuff just happened has this happened to any of you? did you feel angry."

[Solaris]

If you go 7 hours without saving, you deserve to lose your work. No sympathy from me.

Give the kid a break, guy. You were stupid and inexperienced once, too.

[Kuma Kode]

Give the kid a break, guy. You were stupid and inexperienced once, too.

The operative word is once. That's the number of times you have to lose seven or more hours of work before you start saving obsessively.

[slaydemons]

The operative word is once. That's the number of times you have to lose seven or more hours of work before you start saving obsessively.

This is agreed, also I doubt I am a kid 19 turning 20 is hardly that age. I just never had my computer break down on me before, so saving after every little bit is done is good.