How Do You Deal With Disaster

[Azu]

So, fun past few weeks I've been having! My laptop with everything on it, from my old stories to the new ones and all my art for my novels and generally everything, decided to die. But not just die. I mean die like the sun and take the galaxy out with it kind of die.
Now, luckily I saved backups on other hard drives. Except! everything attached to that laptop died with it, including, lo and behold, the hard drive I had plugged in to save some items. The stories I'm not so much upset about since I always write my stories in a notebook before putting them on my computer, but everything else! Just when I was starting a new series! I finally got a new laptop, but times have been hard.

So yeah. Just a bit peeved at myself and technology.

How do you guys handle things?

[Jenny-Toons]

Well, depending on if I can in the moment, I usually like to let those emotions right out. Like, if I know I'm about to cry, I find there's no sense in trying to bottle it up. I let it out, have that emotional moment. Though, even if the feelings aren't as serious as crying, I often walk away in the moment, allowing myself mental relief.

Afterwards, I immediately come back to try and access the situation.

I know a lot of people feel it's better to access the situation in the moment and I understand that. After all, if you feel waiting for any amount of time could interfere with a good solution, it's best not to wait. But at the same time, I feel it's also important to pull back (given if the situation allows you to do so). Because you can't really find a solution if you're also focusing on how you've been affected.

So I usually take a moment to catch my breath or let it out before proceeding onwards.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Things like that have happened to me a few times in my life...it's why I'm now so paranoid about knowing where all my stuff is, digital or otherwise. But, occasionally losing things is inevitable.

In my case, I usually get really furious with myself for "allowing" such things to happen. So I try to just let the anger pass. I spend a few days mentally kicking myself and buying myself "treats", and playing too many games, but I don't try to fight it. I just let myself feel the feelings until they start to fade.

After that, I dust myself off and get back on the horse. I go through the things I lost and figure out which ones I can just go without and which ones were actually serious losses, and I set up a game plan to recover, if I can. The show must go on, after all.

Um, BTW, my paranoia and I would like to know if anything seemed wrong with your laptop before it supernova'd or if it just randomly up and died? Because, even though we just backed up all our files last week, we'd readily do it again to help ourselves feel secure. ^^;

[skicoak]

I try my best to adapt the philosophy that Marcel Duchamp and some of the other Dada artists had about Fate as an editor/critic. That a set of circumstances that forces one to redo/adjust a piece is often a destined part of the process. It's hard to always emotional live up to that but I try to remember it as a goal to live up to.

Famously, Duchamp actually considered some damage to one of his glass pieces, while in the care of a museum, as an IMPROVEMENT over the original form.

[Shanny8]

Was it an internal or external HD? If external that has REALLY gotta suck...

I originally started out with getting myself a 500GB external hard drive- which has worked pretty good for about a decade now. I dont have a lotta space on it, so in 2014, I bought a 3TB hard drive and put some stuff on that. Ended up moving a few times & put that HD away(cant find it right now), & invested in a 4TB external HD. I also keep working copies of my stuff on flash/USB drives as well.

I'd probably have an epic fit & shut down for a while; just the thought of having to re-do a lot of that stuff would be pretty painful...but after an undetermined amount of time of letting that pain and frustration process/pass, I'd get off my ass and start trying work on stuff again- probably with the intent to try to see if I could do better than I had done.

[c0ldw1nter]

Only ever had two minor data losses, and I still haven't made peace with that. Although they were only minor because I knew what to do to salvage most of the data back. If the storage hasn't fried or exploded or anything like that, there may still be a chance!

[Azu]

My computer was already acting up, but it was the only one I had so that's why I kept backing stuff up whenever I did anything. Then one day, I plugged it in to charge while I was transferring over some large files, heard a POP and flicker, looked over and black screen. I think the cord just fried and fried everything with it.

[darkone4587]

Planning for the big disasters and having multiple back ups to everything.

[raekitano]

Firstly, in my tired state I read this as "How do you deal with dishes" and I immediately thought - I don't. I hate dishes. They make me cry (literately). But then I realised who would want to know about dishes, them reread the title.

Having experienced one big disaster I now have everything backed up to the Cloud, as well an external hard drive I keep at work for safe keeping.

[OttoGruenwald]

Jeeze man. Isn't disaster a little strong of a word for that? I came into this thread about to share the story about how my old english professor dealt with cancer by reading King Lear thinking someone you knew died or you lost your job.

A hardrive wipe sucks. Always upload your stuff when you can and always have an external disconnected from your computer.

[Kann]

Stories like this one are too familiar for me... XD But I'm pretty bad with dealing with it. I need few days to cool down an accept that the thing is broken.

Good thing you had backups. Also hard drive dying doesn't always mean data on it is lost forever. A service specified with data recovery might still be able to save at least some of your stuff.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

I dunno, man. Having years of hard work instantly blink out of existence WHILE you were trying to save it sounds like a legitimate disaster to me. Tragedy is subjective anyway...