One day this past week, I went to work on the next Stardrifter novel, "All He Surveys: Book 01", just like normal, and...wait. Where's the folder?
Where's the folder!?
At some point (likely the day before, but I'm not sure), I accidentally deleted the directory with all of my AHS work in it. Don't ask how. I use Linux, and it's soul-crushingly easy to do such a thing on the command line. In the GUI, I have a trash can, of course, but not on the CLI. Yes, yes, I know there are "best-practice" ways to prevent it, and that there's even a trash can application for the CLI, appropriately named Trashy, created by my friend Klaatu, just for this express reason.
I didn't follow best practice. I didn't have Trashy installed. I'm a sucky computer user.
In my own defense, since I started using Linux about fifteen years ago, I've almost never permanently deleted something I really, really needed — that is, something I either couldn't replace without a ton of effort, or something I couldn't replace at all. In fact, I can only think of one other instance, off the top of my head, and I was able to get that back with some effort. Even people with trash cans lose stuff occasionally, so I've never felt all that badly about my bad habits.
Except, of course, that the data was gone.
Without a backup, it would have been unrecoverable. I do have a hard drive for this purpose attached my main writing machine (I basically have two computers, one roughly dedicated to Writing and media consumption, the other to Audio Production). In addition, I have an offline backup solution, managed by my pal, Deepgeek. And I also have a hand-me-down tablet, used in lieu of paper, from which I read the audio scripts for my podcast, Voice From The Void, and other audio projects.
It took all three of these solutions to successfully restore the contents of the AHS folder. It shouldn't have. It should have been dead easy to restore with just a couple of mouse clicks, or a single typed command, but it took about an hour to get everything back. Not too difficult, I must confess, but the save was bumbling, janky, and more-or-less luck-based.
Kids, don't let this happen to you!
Every operating system has robust ways to back-up your data. Look into one that works. Make your back-up. Test it so you know it works, and that it actually contains everything you want to keep. Then do it again, and do it often.
-David
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash