My Huge Computer Freak-Out
Sep. 9th, 2009 09:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmarleyJust had a huge computer scare, :( which I will now inflict upon my friends' list in excruciating detail because I'm still freaked out.
I spent the last couple of days shuffling stories around my Torchwood folder, figuring out which stories I'd already tagged, and which ones I still needed to go through. The whole folder has nearly 3,000 stories in it, and one way I organize them is to assign them color labels for their genre/quality (Liked, Hurt/Comfort, Humor, etc.). Unfortunately, the labels don't transition to Windows, which meant that I couldn't find stories as efficiently from my netbook. So I came up with the brilliant (at the time, anyway) idea of making a duplicate folder for my PC backup, one that used folders instead of labels. I copied all the sorted files over and organized them into tidy little folders. So far, so good.
Then I tried copying another batch of stories over, and realized at the last minute that I'd forgotten to use the option key, and I was moving, not copying. I canceled the transfer...and that was when it all began to go wrong.
First, I noticed that everything after "Pa" was in the new folder and not in the old. No problem. I selected them, and tried to move them back en masse. Error. Couldn't copy. So, I went through and matched up the stories and copied them over in smaller batches, trying to figure out which file was causing the problem. Got everything back into the original folder, and decided to just delete the copies in the new folder and start over. I hit the delete option, and the trash was suddenly empty without my emptying it. Oookay. I remembered that I wanted to do something to one of the new folders, opened it...and it was empty.
Now I was starting to freak out. I checked another new folder (the Jack/Ianto one, which has, not surprisingly, most of the stories)...empty. I checked the old folder, still there, thank goodness.
I decided that restarting was in order ASAP, but first I decided that right now would be a good time for a backup. I had a backup copy of the files, but I really, really didn't want to have to sort them all over again. So I popped in my flash drive. Files wouldn't copy. And the folder I tried to copy to, which was my OMG-my-other-two-backups-have-failed backup? Suddenly empty. I took the drive out, tried it on another computer, and the files were there. I started breathing again, but by now I was in a cold sweat because I couldn't back anything up on an external drive. Right, I thought. Zip the folder, and upload it to Megaupload or attach it to an e-mail.
No list of files available for the archive. I was really freaking out by now. Fine, I thought. I can sort it all again if I have to, I just need to save the stuff I created in the last few days. The files wouldn't archive, but I was betting that their little plain text butts would copy-paste into Gmail just fine, even if I couldn't attach them individually.
Which proved to be the case. I had about ten text files that I needed to save, so I attached them to an e-mail and sent it to another account. I discovered in the process that the attachment browse window showed all the disappeared files as existing, so I was hoping it was just a Finder freak-out over the aborted file transfer, and not the end of everything. I was also relieved to find that my backup process is apparently more ingrained than I thought, because I didn't even remember making the last backup, which included everything except the aforementioned ten or so files (and the small heap of fanfiction I'd downloaded, but I wasn't so worried about that because I bookmark everything I want to save, and I knew that, barring sudden deletions, I could just download it all again).
The anti-climactic conclusion: Computer restarted, everything's fine, I do not have to re-sort 3,000 files from the unsorted back-up. I'm currently testing the existence of the disappeared files by backing them the fuck up. Again. Then I'm having a beer. Possibly two.
I'm also taking this as a sign that it might be time to start saving for a new Mac laptop.
I spent the last couple of days shuffling stories around my Torchwood folder, figuring out which stories I'd already tagged, and which ones I still needed to go through. The whole folder has nearly 3,000 stories in it, and one way I organize them is to assign them color labels for their genre/quality (Liked, Hurt/Comfort, Humor, etc.). Unfortunately, the labels don't transition to Windows, which meant that I couldn't find stories as efficiently from my netbook. So I came up with the brilliant (at the time, anyway) idea of making a duplicate folder for my PC backup, one that used folders instead of labels. I copied all the sorted files over and organized them into tidy little folders. So far, so good.
Then I tried copying another batch of stories over, and realized at the last minute that I'd forgotten to use the option key, and I was moving, not copying. I canceled the transfer...and that was when it all began to go wrong.
First, I noticed that everything after "Pa" was in the new folder and not in the old. No problem. I selected them, and tried to move them back en masse. Error. Couldn't copy. So, I went through and matched up the stories and copied them over in smaller batches, trying to figure out which file was causing the problem. Got everything back into the original folder, and decided to just delete the copies in the new folder and start over. I hit the delete option, and the trash was suddenly empty without my emptying it. Oookay. I remembered that I wanted to do something to one of the new folders, opened it...and it was empty.
Now I was starting to freak out. I checked another new folder (the Jack/Ianto one, which has, not surprisingly, most of the stories)...empty. I checked the old folder, still there, thank goodness.
I decided that restarting was in order ASAP, but first I decided that right now would be a good time for a backup. I had a backup copy of the files, but I really, really didn't want to have to sort them all over again. So I popped in my flash drive. Files wouldn't copy. And the folder I tried to copy to, which was my OMG-my-other-two-backups-have-failed backup? Suddenly empty. I took the drive out, tried it on another computer, and the files were there. I started breathing again, but by now I was in a cold sweat because I couldn't back anything up on an external drive. Right, I thought. Zip the folder, and upload it to Megaupload or attach it to an e-mail.
No list of files available for the archive. I was really freaking out by now. Fine, I thought. I can sort it all again if I have to, I just need to save the stuff I created in the last few days. The files wouldn't archive, but I was betting that their little plain text butts would copy-paste into Gmail just fine, even if I couldn't attach them individually.
Which proved to be the case. I had about ten text files that I needed to save, so I attached them to an e-mail and sent it to another account. I discovered in the process that the attachment browse window showed all the disappeared files as existing, so I was hoping it was just a Finder freak-out over the aborted file transfer, and not the end of everything. I was also relieved to find that my backup process is apparently more ingrained than I thought, because I didn't even remember making the last backup, which included everything except the aforementioned ten or so files (and the small heap of fanfiction I'd downloaded, but I wasn't so worried about that because I bookmark everything I want to save, and I knew that, barring sudden deletions, I could just download it all again).
The anti-climactic conclusion: Computer restarted, everything's fine, I do not have to re-sort 3,000 files from the unsorted back-up. I'm currently testing the existence of the disappeared files by backing them the fuck up. Again. Then I'm having a beer. Possibly two.
I'm also taking this as a sign that it might be time to start saving for a new Mac laptop.