Close call

Y'all, I was wrapping up for the night (see prev. post) and I went to save my spreadsheet to my data stick. The save gommed up. No problem, I redid it, closed the file, and reopened. It worked. Cool.

The problem reminded me I haven't backed up in about a week. So I went to do that. I tried to open my data stick ("Drive E") and the computer found nothing there. I tried to "stop device" and the computer informed me the device had malfunctioned.

My entire book is on that data stick.

Color me panicked.

Now, I do back up regularly and to various locations: my laptop, our family desktop, and my computer at work, mainly. And I have been e-mailing each chapter to my crit partner as soon as I finish them. So the majority of the stuff could have been saved.

But.

The breakthrough I made tonight on chapter 7 would have been lost, as would about 1200 words of chapter 8, neither of them being finished. And a few other random snips/scenes that I've been jotting down, and a few brainstorming files. Not the kind of thing you want to lose just when you've regained forward momentum.

So I did the universal fix: turn off the computer. Finally the light on the data stick went off. I removed it and rebooted. Waited for everything to finish loading. Reinserted the data stick. It worked.

Color me relieved.

I backed it up pronto, and found a way to upload quite a few of my files to Google for safekeeping (I'll do them all eventually, but it takes time so not tonight). It's going on the desktop as soon as I post this. But lesson learned.

If any of you haven't backed up your data lately, consider this your public service announcement.