When I was organizing my Bedouin Nights downloads one or two weeks ago, I was suposed to be using shift+del in the zip files I already opened, but I came up deletting ALL my DigitalScrapbook.com files o.O I don´t know how it happens till now, but I panicked at first! Months of dowloads, limited time mini kits (including one for beta testers)...
I looked for something to help me in the internet, and installed a software called "Pandora recover". It could recover some of the files, but others were corrupted, and a lot of them had their names changed, were recovered multiple times, or weren´t in this sub-folders: In such a big mess, it was almost like re-starting again. So I left them all in a "recovered" sub-folder and only put them in the regular folder if I am sure they are with the right name and are working well...
The lesson I took from it: Forget old times with a very small HD: Shift+Del nevermore. Its better to create a routine of empty recycle bin every morning than let it happen again.
And you? Have you ever deleted your precious digiscrap downloads by mistake?
@Lórien: I accidentally deleted almost every layout in psd I ever created in the first two years. It was so so so sad!!! I didn't even have a jpg of them left on my computer. A lot I hadn't even printed yet. My DH is a very smart computer guy. He ran three major file recovery programs he uses for his clients and was able to recover only about a third of them. I went to ever forum/gallery I had ever visited to try to find at least the 600x600 jpg and download it from the site, but 1/2 of the galleries I use to visit had closed down... So, I will never see the layouts I spent hours and days doing sometimes.
In the end I was able to get about 1/2 of my layouts. I could only print the ones I found small jpgs on the galleries still open in a 6in x 6in layout in a small scrapbook album. You can barely read the journaling with a magnifier. LoL
A couple months later, my computer did some weird thing, where I lost my profile when I started to get on my pc one day... and then it said "dumping" blah, blah, blah. I screamed for my hubby in the other room... by the time he got there I panicked and turned the computer off while it was doing this "dumping" So my hubby never saw the error. Anyway, when he turned the computer back on in SAFE mode. I had lost A LOT of scrapping stuff and important documents genealogy work and other stuff. It was horrible... so we went through the whole recovery process all over again. I got about a 15GB folder FULL of stuff like you are talking about, weird names, corrupt files, pictures with streaks in them, etc... I finally just gave up and deleted anything I couldn't tell exactly who it belonged to. I lost about 20GB between family photos, digi scrap, genealogy, documents, etc
I was so mad for months I didn't want to even scrap digital anymore ever again. My poor hubby had to deal with my craziness for a little while.
The really sad thing is: he kept telling me you need to back up all that "stuff" you do... I learned a very hard and sad lesson. Now I have a back up for everything in my house between our laptops, programs, home stuff, documents, photos, music and my scrapbooking we have (5) 1 TB's of HD's info. The really important stuff, the back-up stays at his work and once a month he brings them home and backs up all the new and takes it to work the next day. That is just in case the house burns down or a flood or tornado. Every one of those things has happen to me, so now I'm paranoid to lose anything. I go overboard. LoL
When I lose something in which I am working at I usually don´t restart ever, so I really know how do you feel. I still can´t however, really backup everything I own, I don´t have resources to get a so huge storage media... So I try to backup at least some things, and little by little. And, sometimes, I take backups of my backups too, mainly of those ones that are on CDs/DVDs.
I use backup on all my files
An external harddrive is the cheapest and most effectful i think 
I gave 699:- SEK for 2 tirabyte and that is about 100 dollars or about 70 euros 
It's a lifesaver for pictures and other stuff you never want to loose too
It took only once to lose some things I was working on. The funny thing was I was in the middle of backing up files to an external drive when the drive on my computer went dead. It would not start again.
I did loose months of research. Now I always use an external drive that contains everything that is on my computer. Drives being what they are I also brurn DVDs just in case. I have found having at least one to two backup is very important.
Everyone is breaking my heart with these sad tales of losing things!
Please everyone, find a way to back up!
Oh yes, this is a sad tale. I've done it too
Now I delete to my recycle bin and double check that before I empty it.
I still have the HD hoping someday I will be able to retrieve those lost memories. I also lost all of my own design tools that took me so long to learn to create. Now I back up to a cloud and a bigger external HD and DVD. Better safe than sorry.
I also backed up on external HD's. I put all my pictures from my camera's SD card onto my external HD and also burned them onto a CD (I didn't have a DVD burner back then). Well the HD no longer wanted to communicate with my computer, or any other computer for that matter. It would power on but I could not access it. I didn't get too upset because I had backed up on CD too....or so I thought. When I needed to grab a picture from my son's 9th birthday party, I put the CD in and nothing! It woudn't open. I tried using other computers but it just would not work. I later found out that the entire pack of CD's that I had purchased were bad
@Tina: here, here... AMEN!!!
Reading all of these stories, I have to say that I have been lucky with my photos and digiscrap files so far...knock on wood. However, when I was in law school, my HD crashed. I lost all of my class notes and had to retype from a friend's notes. The ironic part is that I was in the middle of backing up all of my files to a flash drive. Luckily I started with my law review article, so I didn't have to redo months worth of legal research!
I have a digiscrapper friend of my hometown that used to save everything in her external HD... and the HD stopped answer, exactly as Tina one.
Marisa is right: Those are sad, hearthbreaker stories.
It's so true - It's sad. But let's face it.... the saddest thing is, we can only blame ourselves
And before you lynch me for saying that: It has happened to me too! And as they say "A mistake is not a mistake until you make it for the second time". Well, I made a mistake! (= it happened twice). Second time I did have a back up, but only of the original zips. It took me WEEKS unzipping and it would probably still have been going on if it wasn't for a kind soul who recommended me the wonderful, free little piece of software called "Unziplify" that unzips a full folder in stead of single files
- you can find it here if you want it: http://unziplify.softwareandgames.com/
But when we are done blaming ourselves, let's use a lot of time cursing the manufacturers of hard drives, external as well as internal, cause let's face it; nothing bad would have happened it it wasn't for them, right?
Maybe we should just do what we can and then keep our fingers crossed every time we turn on the computer.
XOXO
@Trine: I agree in part that it is mostly the manufacturers faults. My husband says the larger the hard drive the harder it is for them to make them stable... so if they just keep making them larger and larger in size then all the more hard drive failures there will be until they perfect each size in stability.
So, I just stick with nothing larger than a 1TB... That is why I have a HD for each major part of the computer process for me: One for pictures & completed layouts; One for SB Kits, Brushes, etc.; & One for Documents, Taxes, Personal files, etc. Then we just use our laptops for all the internet stuff like Facebook, Pinterest, Photo Sharing, Programs, etc. Everything is in it's own place and if any one drive ever does crash. I only have to "restore" that particular HD and I haven't lost other important stuff from the other categories... plus the only one at the highest risk for the most part is the SB kits because it's the one accessed the most consistently. The more you use it, the more likely you are to lose it.
That's why I started putting my layouts and photos on a different one from the kits & stuff. Also, by using the laptop and keeping those HDs separated from it (I only plug&play each drive as needed), I don't have to worry if God forbid I got a virus and it spreading to any really important information. I have the virus protections, etc, so not likely but it's still NOT totally impossible to get one. There are many mean spirited people who make those things to try to get around protections to cause trouble. 
It may all seem like overkill and in some peoples eyes cost more, but that is a great advantage of being married to a computer guy, I guess. You save money in that area when he can do stuff by building it himself as far as extra HD's and Back-Up systems. So, I am lucky in that sense.
Now, I know it was worth the money spent to protect, but I just wish I would have listened to him 4 years ago before I went through my two bad experiences of losing things even after his recoveries. 
One time I was organizing all of my photo files (I have over 30k of pics) and somehow lost all of my pics from the Millenium cruise that Mom took all of her kids (six) and their spouses. It was very sad but luckily I had given them to my brother and he was able to give me them. Only thing was that I usually rename my photos with the event and date and time so that they are always in the order they were taken and I know when they were taken by doing this. He transferred them by labeling them with what event was happening at the time on the ship. Now I have to go back to the ships log to try and figure out what day of the cruise it was on! Will take some time! I have learned with all my digi scrap files - I download the zip files, then I unzip the files and put those in a kit folder, then I move the zips to a "to be backed up" file which I transfer to a DVD. Once I organize the unzipped files individually I move them to my external 3 T hard drive. Once I get caught up I plan to back up the cleaned up files on DVDs. Once I do that I will destroy the DVDs with the zip files on. (DH dropped my first 3T EHD and I was glad I had those zip DVD files although it took a while to re-organize, but at least I had them!) Finally, I have external backup from Carbonite. I figure there cannot be too many safeguards in place!
Yes, I too have lost files - when my laptop crashed and I hadn't transferred them to my PC. Now I have a back up hard drive for my laptop ( already have one for my PC) so hopefully no excuse! However, last year I printed out my file and forgot to save it as well. I guess nothing is fool proof!!
Only recently, I "lost" a psd file I still needed to work on by saving it as a flattened image. I realized as soon as I'd hit the save button! I tried undoing it, but couldn't. (I'd maOnly recently, I "lost" a psd file I still needed to work on by saving it as a flattened image. I realized as soon as I'd hit the save button! I tried undoing it, but couldn't. (I'd made a duplicate of the image (no way to back track), closed the original file, flattened the duplicate and saved as psd, lol.)
Fortunately, I realized that I'd saved an older version of the page somewhere else. So, at least I didn't have to re-do it all, so I guess my story isn't as bad as a lot of you other ladies' stories.de a duplicate of the image (no way to back track), closed the original file, flattened the duplicate and saved as psd, lol.)
Fortunately, I realized that I'd saved an older version of the page somewhere else. So, at least I didn't have to re-do it all, so I guess my story isn't as bad as a lot of you other ladies' stories.
Tina so glad you saved the HD. If you purchase an external case to put the drive into. It may still be accessible. I have had a few drives just not work in a computer, maybe the operating system became corrupted or something else happened. This just recently happened to my Windows 7 just a few months old. I did have backups, but not for the couple of days work I had just done. I took the drive out and attached it to another computer and was able to retrieve what I wanted. Now all I had to do was use the restore disks I created before using the laptop and I was up and running in a few hours.
@Sula: I did almost the same thing as you last week too... I pre-made some things on corel, and, willing to use them on photoshop, I saved a PDF and... didn´t save the file as it was... when I opened the file on photoshop I realised that I still neded the file from Corel...
I accidentally deleted a huge folder of supplies ... kits, templates, quickpages, papers, elements ... almost 10GB (fortunately no actual pages that I made). Thankfully I have a super smart computer friend, who with some time, was able to recover the whole folder. I was so relieved. I had been collecting for months, as well as creating my own templates.
@Melissa: WOW how lucky were you!!!
I've never deleted anything yet, but I have saved over a file accidentally.
Oh boy! Yes I have deleted files by mistake. I literally went into a panic it was crazy, you would have thought some major catastrophe occurred. I could not recover anything and I was very sad. Shortly thereafter, my laptop crashed before I could back anything up, i went to my local best buy where they informed me i would have to sent my hard drive to a special data recovery place, where it ended up costing my around $800 to recover everything. I now make sure that I back everything up. I not only have an external hard drive, but I have an arsenal of flash drives, and i subscribe to dropbox so i automatically back everything up there as well.
I haven't had a hard drive crash or accidentally delete files, but I did accidentally format my hard drive once. Ok, just to be fair, I was always reformatting and reconfiguring my hard drives/servers. I had one hard drive that I had all my pictures, wedding video from both mine and my sister's wedding, all the video of my niece growing up. I was doing some work on the computer which had 2 hard drives and I got a little confused and formatted the wrong hard drive. I was so upset. Luckily, I was able to recover almost everything, except for my sister's wedding video I was re-authoring and some of my scrapbook pages. I use to have all my back ups on disc back then and I had A LOT of discs to go through to get everything back, but I'm grateful I did take the time to back up most things.
Yes, I did it last year, Photos I took and had put on an external hard drive. I was able to recover them with a program I found online.