Tag: backup

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The Story of a Faulty Laptop

About 2½ weeks ago, my laptop developed a fault. It had been tucked inside a protective sleeve, which was itself inside a rucksack, when I was caught in an exceptional downpour on the way to a pal’s place.

Although the machine wasn’t especially damp, I suspect the rain was the culprit. It initially switched on and worked as normal, then a blue-screen error was displayed. Fortunately, after being left to dry out for an hour, it gradually returned to normal.

And it kept working as normal until Tuesday night of last week, when the problems suddenly reappeared. This time, there was no blue-screen warning and no resolution even after drying it out for hours. It simply would not load Windows from the local hard disc.

Knowing I would need a PC for the weekend’s activities, I immediately looked for a replacement, settling on a second-hand Acer from CEX.

That said, I wasn’t worried about my actual files going missing. They were synchronised with OneDrive, and I have an external hard drive where I diligently back them up at the start of each month.

Well, all except one file.

On my desktop, I had a shortcut to Microsoft Word document where I’m writing a current story. I’d most recently updated it between the first and second failures of the former laptop. I thought this pointed to a location in OneDrive. To my surprise, it was on the local disc, the same one that became unreadable, and it didn’t appear to be backed up anywhere on the external drive.

I thought about the problem for a few days. While I don’t have a great deal of knowledge about the inner workings of a computer, I do know many systems are modular, so individual components can be swapped if you’re prepared to dive inside the cover.

I also discovered it was possible to buy an inexpensive piece of kit to turn a bare hard disc drive into a makeshift USB thumb drive. This allowed me to verify the disc itself was still working – and that document was intact. While the case was open, I also took the opportunity to swipe one of the RAM units from the old computer and double the memory of the new one.

At the time of writing, the new computer is almost entirely set up. By coincidence, this week’s entry was supposed to cover five or so items I rely upon as a writer. In light of current events, that’ll be pushed to next week or a future entry.

Meanwhile, here’s a timely reminder to back up your work.

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Not Lost, But Hard to Find

A couple of weeks ago, I made an entry about keeping an archive of pieces and how I found one particular poem that wasn’t stored in OneDrive with the rest of them. A few days after writing that entry, my backup system was put to the test.

On Sunday 2 June, the town of Leven was finally reconnected by railway after 55 years. Along with a couple of pals, I was one of the first passengers on the revived service, and we decided to head for a coffee. One minute, I was using my phone to tell people about my day; the next, it went completely black and wouldn’t react to any button pushes nor attempts to charge it.

Fortunately, there were a lot of services I could still access, such as the aforementioned archive. However, some relied on two-factor authentication, which requires using a phone as verification, like I used to secure WordPress.

The short version of the story is that my old phone was beyond recovery, but I now have a new one, and I have full access to all my services again.

In all that excitement, I didn’t have much of a chance to think of a writing-related entry. But I do wish to reiterate the advice of backing up all your work, both locally and online, so you don’t fall victim to an unexpected loss.

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When You Find the Words

I’m pernickety about keeping backups of my stories and poems, even if I ultimately don’t end up doing anything further with them. Each is given its own folder, and the different versions appear in date order. The oldest files go back more than a decade.

As such, I was most surprised that I couldn’t find a certain light verse I’d written in 2018. I tried searching by title: Too Chicken. I then tried searching by first line: I’m in love with the woman from Nando’s. I tried searching again with other words I recalled from the text, but no results appeared.

I thought I would have to reconstruct the piece from memory. I knew a reasonable chunk of the text, and it was written in a triolet form, so some lines would be repeated at predictable points.

The other day, however, I was looking at Snapchat. The app has a Timehop-style section where you can look back at pictures you sent in years gone by. I don’t often use that feature, but I’m glad I did, because I’d taken a picture of the original handwritten draft.

A lot of my pieces are first jotted down in pencil, and are then typed up and edited to create a second draft. That critter had somehow escaped the net, but it’s now safely on my computer and can be easily found.

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BusyBusyBusy

Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much time to construct a full entry this week. I’ve therefore rounded up two main points, ahead of a full entry next week.

  1. Don’t forget to save your work as you write it, and back it up once you’ve finished. I was reminded of this point when I lost last week’s entry by accidentally hitting the Move to Trash button in WordPress. The entry should still be recoverable, like your computer’s Recycle Bin, but it was missing.

    Fortunately, I’d handwritten the first draft, so I was able to reconstruct it. I later reported the incident to WordPress and it was found to be a bug when using the Block Editor.
  2. As alluded to in previous entries, we’ve had trouble finding an open-mike venue after our last one closed. However, we had a successful meeting yesterevening, and we now have the same stopgap venue again for August. A few of us are meeting on Friday to discuss the long-term future, plus a potential collaboration with an Edinburgh-based group.