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I guess you are wondering what that scream was about. Or maybe why you haven't heard from me for a while.
I am really good about doing backups. Honest, I am. I realized at the beginning of this summer that I had to reinstall my various OSes in the computers in the humble abode lest the odd virus crash a computer that was needed by family for school or for work. Maintenance, Maintenance, Maintenance!
Given the quantity of computers, I decided to use a large off the shelf USB device from a locale office store connected to a central computer server to back up a ton of stuff before I redid things. I backed things up first.
Then I went to work. After all the computers were reformatted and had a fresh install with all the glorious updates, security fixes, and needed repairs, I started to restore the documents, media, and other files I had backed up.
It was then that I started to have input/output errors galore. These were at first on large files. Mostly movies and videos, etc. Not to worry, I had other backups too of them. Found those other backups and reinstalled them. Everything was back where it should be after about a month. Even the documents which had been backed up incrementally.
When I went to investigate why, I found the file system the WD USB device used was FAT32. WHAT!? Who the hell uses that anymore?
After a few minutes of banging my head against the wall, I realized that I should have reformatted it NTFS or Ext4 prior to using it. Somehow, the USB drive on board couldn't software couldn't handle large files bigger than 2GB and corrupted other files on the system.
Regardless, the damage was done. However, I didn't fully realize the damage until I looked at a zip file made of a secret directory on my personal computer where I store all my writings, past, present, and future. You see, that one directory isn't backed up incrementally. It is hidden for a reason. But, it was corrupted. NOOOOOOO!!! And, it was too late to run to my personal computer and see if I could restore it from the drive. I had done a full wipe and reinstall of a newer version of the OS.
I have now lost three or four years worth of writing. I have tried my best over the last two months to restore what was lost, but, alas, I have lost all my story files, story ideas, future chapters, etc. Their only remnant is what is what I have published here on BC.
So, if I disappear for up to a year, please understand. I have to reconstruct the stories I wrote from memory. That includes about 18 chapters of Take Me Out of The Ballgame.
And, in part, it was my own damn fault. I just assumed a large USB backup device would be formatted NTFS like the other ones I had purchased before from a well known computer store. It never occurred to me that someone would use a file system that dates back to the early 90s that had a problem with large files or that their device controller was officially crap.
Oh well, my muse will have to get over her anger at me sometime and the creative juices will flow again. Its just right now, I am not in the mood yet.
When I get back to work letting my work rise from the ashes and let it fly again, I may just change my user name from AuPreviner to AuPhoenix.
That's my update.
AuP ( or should that now be OoPs? )
Comments
win 32
well duh everybody! Who is gonna use win64?
Giggle. Couldnt resist. Still if you use win64 it should not have problems accessing win 32 files. I had no problems. Not sure what system you use but there was a way to select a file and set compatibility in windows.
I can feel the pain
BTDT - automatic backup, main disk fails, let's reinstall the system, there is a backup, after all (yes, on WD drives, too - with ext4).
And then I realized that I had forgotten to include one filesystem in the backup and thus had lost quite a bit of data. I can remember the pain I felt upon realizing that some years of meticulously collected data from sensors around my house was lost. :-(
Funny coincidence: last night I was thinking about some stories that I was wondering if and when they would be continued, and "Take Me Out Of The Ballgame" was one of them. I hope that you will be able to let those stories rise again from the ashes of corrupted file storage.
ouch!
I hope you can remember where you were going with your stories. Hugs!
Tragedy
Years ago, I would get upset when I lost a few hours work through some act of unwanted erasing.
Then I realized that my second pass at writing a paragraph, a chapter, a novel -- was always much better than the first.
A lot of writers warn against too much editing. That's probably great advice for the savants who don't have to toil. The rest of us have to slog through the process. Our second draft is better than the first. Our third draft better than the second. And so forth.
I understand your pain. However, the rewards for most of us on BC is the process iitself.
Maybe you were meant to have the fun involved in rewriting your work.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
I can sympathise
A number of years ago, I was working on a story that was just flowing out of my fingertips. It was really no effort. In my mind it was one of my better stories. I went off on a weeks vacation. When I came back and opened my word processor and the file came up and read through it to pick up the feel of the story to continue writing it. I added about a thousand words or so. I shut the computer down and when I next opened the computer, the was no trace of the file anywhere. Gone, zip, as though it had never existed. Since Windows, I'm not the computer whiz I was in the DOS days. Back then, recovering lost files was made easy with a couple of floppies that had tools on them to examine track zero. I have no such tools for Windows.
So I was left to try recreating the story from memory. Well, as I said, it was a number of years ago. I still have the stub of that story on my computer. Every time I open it and try to add to it, my muse just sits and looks at it. I can't make it go anywhere.
I can't imagine what it would be like to have everything lost and try to recreate multiple stories and other documents. Especially large ones.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Re-writes
Every time I re-write something it mutates. Sometimes a lot. Even trying to put down on paper what I have thought through and out I get significantly different versions. (And the longer the time between thought and write the greater the variance.) I know this isn’t helping, but what I end with is as good or better. Even if it is totally different. Good luck and keep us posted on your progress. (Venting may help.)
BAK 0.25tspgirl
Fat32
Whilst positively ancient it can be read on Windows, Linux and MacOS without issue. That's why it is use for USB drives.
A very long time ago I hit this very same issue and from then on with large files or directories, I zip them up with the switch that creates multiple files of a user defined size. I never go above 1GB. Problem solved.
Naturally, this needs a proper ZIP application on Windows but WinZip is there for you.
Samantha
PS,
The lack of a proper user/system backup process OOTB on Windows is a real PITA. MacOS/OSX has had Time Machine for years and years. This makes restoring whole systems a doddle. I moved my friends data from a 2010 Mac Mini to a brand spanking new on today. 2.5 hours from opening the box, all the user data and applications and everything was on the new machine thanks to Time Machine. It really is about time that Microsoft got their finger out from you know where and thought of the millions and millions of non professional users.
sorry, rant over.