I've just lost my coursework - help

[Young Un]

I went to save my coursework onto my memory stick and it came up with an error and just closed the document. I have all the changes I made since I last saved it(in a rescued document), but that is only about 100 words of the 1000 words that were in there. Should I start from scratch now? - it has to be in on monday. Any ideas?

 

[LLB]

start typing now whilst it is still fresh in your head

 

[Dayvo]

Copy it off the net - or use pen and paper (if they still exist!).

 

[gratts]

What was the coursework?
Maybe I did it!

 

[another_dave_b]

Microsoft's website has several suggestions for how to recover a lost Word document, if you were using MS Word, perhaps one of them will work for you?

 

[Young Un]

Sorted it now - put memory stick into the laptop and it was there as a temp fiel(well the last but one version was) so combined with the text out of the rescued document I am back where I was

 

[palinurus]

Phew!

 

[palinurus]

Now you won't need to claim the dog ate your memory stick.

 

[Young Un]

I wouldn't have been able to give any excuses - if we miss the draft deadline then we have to hand in what we have as the final and hope that we did well enough.

 

[beanzontoast]

Watch out for backing up to USB memory sticks - I've had several instances when trying to save to a stick from Word where Windows first reports the drive has become unavailable, then if I proceed trying to save anyway, I find the document gets completely deleted from the stick. Have tried fully formatting the stick, but it still happens - and has happened with more than one brand of stick too.

I always save to the computer's hard disc as I'm going along as first preference nowadays, then to USB later. The moment Windows tells me the USB drive is unavailable, I remove the stick. This sometimes does seem to leave at least a recent version of the document available on it.

 

[Funtboy]

I went to save my coursework onto my memory stick and it came up with an error and just closed the document. I have all the changes I made since I last saved it(in a rescued document), but that is only about 100 words of the 1000 words that were in there. Should I start from scratch now? - it has to be in on monday. Any ideas?

You should only use USB sticks as a means of transfer, not primary storage.

 

[ufkacbln]

He who laughs last - had a backup!

Always have three copies of any assignment - one working copy on the main system, one copy (udated at the end of each session or at critical incremental points) on a separate computer or hard disk and one on the Educational establishment's server (same rules as above!)

My University will not accept hardware / software problems as a mitigating circumstance - unless it is their server that has failed.

 

[beanzontoast]

He who laughs last - had a backup!

Always have three copies of any assignment - one working copy on the main system, one copy (udated at the end of each session or at critical incremental points) on a separate computer or hard disk and one on the Educational establishment's server (same rules as above!)

And then there's the other rule of backups - never leave all your backups in the same geographical location. (Yes, I know - but it really happens!).

 

[Night Train]

I always back up and back up the back up.

Also have the auto save to 30 seconds sometimes when I am on a roll so I can never lose more then the last couple of lines of work.

 

[barq]

I started getting paranoid serious about backups when my best friend lost half her PhD. Much of it was recovered but she nearly had a nervous breakdown in the process.

One free and not too geeky approach to office document backup is Google Docs. I believe their internal method of data storage means that three copies of your data exist in different data centres around the world. And you can install Google Gears so even if you get knocked offline for a while there is at least a local copy to work on.

My principle is that all hard drives fail eventually so you have to plan for data loss rather than treating it as an unlucky or exceptional event. These days I use RAID so there are two physical copies of my entire hard drive and have independent local and off-site backups.