"Lost" Is A Four-Letter Word To Computer Users

Contributed by Elaine Landau

You have just finished working on one of your most in-depth articles. You researched, edited, quoted experts and presented original ideas in a professional presentation. Just as you are about to print a hard copy, you lose the article. The file is gone. It’s just gone. It’s not on your desktop. It is not listed under “My Documents” or in any ancillary files. You do not have a handwritten copy of your work because you typed it directly into your computer. You search every corner of your computer frantically. For some unknown and unforeseen reason, your work has been sucked into the dreaded data abyss, never to be seen again. You know that the only way lost data can be recovered is by recreating and restoring it from a backup. But you didn’t do a backup. You felt it was a waste of time, or it broke your creative flow, or you just never thought about it in the first place.

What can you do when you know your information is gone forever?
Tear out your hair by the follicles? Scream? Yell? Blame the family dog? Sit on the floor and rock back and forth blaming the Universe for all of your problems?

Or, you can suck it up, realize that you have a catastrophe on your hands and immediately start typing. If that data is fresh, you might be surprised how much you can recreate. If you remember any of the web sites you visited for research, you can return to them to glean the information you need. It will be a lot of work. And, after it is all done, and you have recreated the document, save it. Be sure you will never relive that nightmare. Prevention is the key.

Do you have a system to prevent data loss?
With basic computer education, you were probably advised to store your documents on the same drive as your operating system. If you have basic Internet training, or have taken a free Internet course or tutorial, you plan to log on to the Internet for research and a variety of reasons. If you are learning at home or working at home, and logging on to the Internet, your data is in danger of being lost. Like so many, if you have saved your files in the “My Documents” folder of your word processor, and your computer is infected with a virus, you may have to reformat your drive and reinstall a new operating system. In that case, everything on your drive will be lost, including all of your important data. Installing a second internal hard drive is a low cost solution. However, if you are skeptical of installing a second internal drive, you may want to opt for an external hard drive.

Floppy disks.
If you want to back up files without worrying about your hard drive being infected with viruses, you should have a box of floppy disks on hand at all times. By backing up your information onto disks you have the piece of mind that your data is completely separate from your computer operating system and not subject to any software failures or computer crashes. But this is not a sure-fire solution. Floppy disks can be erased. Computer manufacturers are electing not to include floppy drives in their newer models. Eventually, a floppy disk back-up system will be deemed antiquated and impractical. Your new computer will then have problems retrieving data from your floppies.

E-mail users beware.
Did you know that certain e-mail attachments could cause data loss? If you receive and save a document with the same name as a document you have already saved, you can overwrite the file. You may avoid this by saving e-mail attachments in a unique location so there is no way you can overwrite a document saved on your hard drive.

Edit with common sense.
Before editing your work, save your original document in its entirety under a different name than the information that you will be editing. That way, if you choose to delete sections, but then want to put them back, you have all your original work intact.

The last resort.
If you want to be sure an original document is not lost to computer crashes, erased disks, or the delete button, it may be wise to save a hard copy. If your computer crashes or malfunctions, at least you can reinput the information. Sure there may be a lot of retyping, but it is a more attractive alternative to a completely lost document.

About the Author:
Elaine Landau is a freelance writer, publicist, web site editor, and television writer with more than 15 years of experience in marketing, advertising, and publicity.

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