All is lost...

I wrote a nice 200 word article for this page, but it's gone now.

Just before uploading it, I made some sort of mouse gesture and or keystroke combination the relegated the entire article folder to oblivion. It wasn't in the recycle bin, or anyplace else to be found. I checked the clipboard, notepad, and Microsoft Word.

It would be nice if my PC had somehow tracked everything I did for the last 30 minutes or so. Then, in theory it could reconstruct my work. In fact, for all I know, my system is running spyware, and perhaps some hacker, someplace has my article handy.

Fortunately, this is probably the most extensive data loss I've experienced in the last few years. Having a background in system administration, I'm keenly aware of how often people lose hundred of hours work due to poor backup procedure. I know of one case where someone lost a the majority of a book they were working on. They only had it saved to a single floppy disk.

Like spam email, a certain amount of data loss is inevitable. In the same regard, tools are available to minimize it's impact. SpamButcher's email spam software is backed up in dozens of different locations.

For instance, even though I lost the folder in my development environment, I was readily able to pull it back down from my web server. Had that been toasted, I could've restored it from my backup web server. Worst case, I could resort to a DVD backup from a week ago.

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