I am a complete idiot...

Yes, I hear what you are saying, 'we know that already.' Ha ha. Very funny.

I did something really, really, REALLY stupid today and I would love to kick my own ass. If it was possible I would do it.

I accidentally erased some very important files on my computer this morning and of course, have NO BACKUP.

I am such an idiot.

I was looking for a picture on my computer and I noticed a folder in my documents folder. It turns out this folder was empty so I trashed it. Here's where I messed up. I accidentally had put the WHOLE, ENTIRE documents folder in the trash and then proceeded to empty it.

What should have taken just a second to delete a little empty folder all of a sudden caused a rapidly moving progress bar to open up saying that thousands of files were being deleted ...

'What the?? .. OH SHHITTTT!!!'

I canceled the trash before it completed being emptied so I did not lose the whole documents folder, but I lost a lot of pretty important files.

My only consolation is that I thankfully did not lose our pictures folder. We have been using nothing but the digital camera for years now and if we were to lose those photos, years of family pictures, kids growing up, vacation photos and other priceless, irreplaceable images would be gone.

Making me feel even more foolish, I've had a firewire drive sitting in my desk drawer, just waiting to be used for backups, and I've never done it. Needless to say, I immediately plugged in the drive and did a quick and dirty backup of all my files by simply copying them over. A 10 minute job that could have saved me a lot of problems and frustration. Too little too late.

Take this as a warning my friends, don't let this happen to you. Back your stuff up!! Even if it involves manually copying your files over to a backup drive, if you are not doing this regularly, this is something you need to get on the ball and start doing.

I had heard this advice many times myself and always was like, 'yup, I need to do that,' but I never did. Like I said, I even had a firewire drive in my desk just waiting to be used. Now I am sorry.

Don't be an idiot like me you guys. Back up your stuff now. Don't wait till it is too late like I did.

Comments

[beth]

don't beat yourself up too much. this kind of thing happens to a lot of people--and hey, at least you *have* the firewire drive. i haven't even gotten around to getting one of those yet.

[Me]

Thanks Beth. Hope you can get something setup soon!

[Cullen]

Ernie, do you have Norton Utilities? Have you tried an Unerase?

[Me]

Hi Cullen, thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately no I don't have / use that software.

After I did this, I tried just shutting off the computer without allowing it to shut down, basically pulling the plug, but it was too late.

I tried using a program that checks the unallocated blocks on the disk to see if anything could be saved, but the files were already gone by then...

Like I said, if I had just done a basic copy to another drive I would not be in this situation. It's my own fault for being lazy and dumb. At least it was not a total loss...