What do I do - all my work is gone!

I've just discovered that all of my personal writing work, including my fanfiction (which I greatly enjoyed writing) is gone! It's not on my computer, and my Search function isn't working... I hadn't backed it up in a while (though I do have some of it backed up, but not the most recent stuff, for a few months)...

I'm extremely frustrated, because I know I can't rewrite it all. I have a good memory, but not that good! I...can rewrite parts, but...

What do I do...? Please, help... (I'm rather upset by this, even though I know it's not the end of the world, but...Atomic F-Bomb)

Do you have the basic idea?

If you have the basic idea, you can build from there. You might not end up with a carbon copy of the work you lost, but you might end up with something close.

edited 26th Mar '11 8:51:49 AM by Belial

Try going to "Run", type regedit and perform a search from there. Maybe that'll work?

(What do you mean "my Search function isn't working"? That it doesn't work for some reason or that it just didn't find anything?)

If your search function isn't working, check your directories manually. That is the obvious thing to do.

Though it's tedious, it may be a good idea to write out your work. I always make sure to have two copies of everything I write: one on paper done by hand, one on the computer, and sometimes another printed off the computer.

I keep a copy emailed to myself. Copy+paste is easier than writing.

Although I don't specifically use it to backup writing, I use dropbox for similar stuff. It even keeps track of file revisions, which is potentially useful.

edited 26th Mar '11 12:20:05 PM by Yej

Well if you're truly desperate and you think it hasn't been overwritten yet, just deleted, you could pay for an info recovery service/program to retrieve deleted, but not overwritten data. What do I mean by this?

Basically that the computer doesn't erase data on the drive, merely stops reading it and allocates the space for new stuff to overwrite it. So if it hasn't been overwritten yet, it's still there.

Also, in the future? Computer, backups in some sort of online service (I like google docs, personally, since it's really convenient), backups on a thumb drive. Every time you finish writing for the day. This also has the added bonus of making your writing available to you from any computer with internet.

I did the manual check, and it wasn't there. I also tried the Regedit command, and searched there with no luck. When I checked where I thought I'd backed most of it up, I found nothing.

I have most of my important notes, however, and a few chapter drafts that I've emailed to people. With those, I've decided to rewrite, and rebuild the work, since I still have the basic idea and the characters. Far from being discouraged, I'm actually rather excited at the prospect. I've backed up everything I have to Google Docs, so that I have it wherever I am.

Thank you all for your advice and help.

Wish me luck!