A Hard Lesson Learned

[Bigmallly]

Last night my laptop wanted to do some windows updates. After installing them, it said it was unsuccessful & was going to undo the operation, fair enough thought I but it permanently hung whilst undoing. Luckily, I created a recovery disk & was able to get into the Bios to try & sort the problem out. After several attempts at System Restore, trying to refresh & repair it - no joy............that left me with only 1 option, to do a complete reset..........this left me with only the O/S so not only did I lose all my pics on the vine, I've also lost them on my PC...............any future files are now going to be saved on an external SD Card...............

[Bigmallly]

Would a mod be kind enough to edit the title please............it should read Learned not Leared...thanks.

[Scarlet]

Your wish is my command

[Madasafish]

I have an external disk drive which runs 24/7 and I backup all files to it automatically...

[Lardman]

It's rare to need to do a re-install just for some duff updates, if you'd had another working machine you could have transferred the files before killing the drive a corrupt windows install doesn't automatically mean your files are toast too. (probably not what you wanted to hear ... )

You could try a data recovery application it should be able to recover the files if the space they were in hasn't bee overwritten. Give recuva a try https://www.piriform.com/recuva

And yes always back documents up - application can be sourced again, data can't. There are some physically very small usb drives with reasonable capacity but I still prefer a real drive for long term storage.

[Baldy]

Linux - dropbox - google docs - MS free cloud thingy - veracrypted
cronjob to back it all up

but I don't just in case the polis...
its all on a filofax buried in the next door (but one) neighbours back garden

[JanieB]

I don't do Windows. Interesting when scammer tried to con me.

[SusieG]

....... are you all chattin' Martian ........?????

I have not a clue what you're on about ........ give me my iPad and phone, anything more techy than that, and it's goodnight sweetheart...!!!!

[JanieB]

....... are you all chattin' Martian ........?????

I have not a clue what you're on about ........ give me my iPad and phone, anything more techy than that, and it's goodnight sweetheart...!!!!

Wish I could do just emojis here we go

[Bigmallly]

Lardman - Thanks for the advice, recuva came up blank..........
Balders - I have a dropbox account but forgot all about it..............

[Penellype]

I feel for you BM

I set my dropbox to start up when the computer starts and I save all my documents and photos straight into dropbox folders so that I can access them on either of my computers and they are always the same on both. I also have a backup on a USB stick which I update from time to time in case of problems with dropbox. I started doing this after one of my computers developed a hard disk fault and nothing could be salvaged. Luckily it was not the main one with the important stuff on it, but it was a very sharp lesson.

[Cadalot]

Tis always the way - I have a primary back up disk and secondary back up disk, then there is the Archive disk, then there is the back up of the archive disk, plus memory sticks that were used when I transferred stuff from home to work and back again. And some stuff made it onto DVD's

[Bigmallly]

No hard copies Al?...........................

[Cadalot]

No hard copies Al?...........................

Actually I'm in the process of reducing all the hard copies of stuff I have, and I'm creating a huge amount or shredded paper that is currently building up in buckets with lids http://cadalot-allotment.blogspot.co...ded-paper.html and now I'm also bagging it up and taking down to the allotment as I have acquired a large wheelie bin for it's storage ready for mixing with greens once I start cutting grass etc.