"I saved an old copy over a new copy!" Topic

I did something horrible to the second draft of a fantasy novel. I saved a week-old version over the newest version. I lost a week of work, 80 pages of rewrite gone in a blink. This is on a jump drive, too. Is there any chance of getting the newest version back or do I need to start over from the beginning?

Dude. I feel your pain.

It is ten times harder to rewrite a second time what you've already once.

Our only chance is to look in your windows temporary folders for your more recent/maybe a partial copy.

I'd use a hex editor and look for phrases before attempting to recover it.

Good Luck, the Gorb

Using MS Word? See if you can force open a copy of the file "as text". MS Word files are typically rather messy, so you might find some of the old (new) text buried in the file.

The standard answer is – use your backup.

Unfortunately I guess you don't have a backup copy. For something like this, which is the only copy in existence I would be pretty paranoid about backups.

One of the simplest methods of getting an off-site backup is to have a Google mail account, and just email a copy to yourself each day – or even after any major set of edits.

Another method is to use a USB flash drive, and save a copy to it – each time use a different name (eg add the date to the filename). You are much better doing the copies in Windows Explorer – than using Save As within Word for this.

Fred, I did all this. I was in the process of backing up the file when something went wrong. I don't even know what happened. I did everything people say to do. I email the file to my editor, I back up, I burn offerings to the hard drive god. And I still lost the file in a freak accident. Wish I could say I learned something from this…but I didn't.

Tell me more about temp folders. I've been trying to find it in there, but it's a jungle of strange letters to me.

Might I suggest a version control system.

link

You keep all of the revisions.

LLC aka Ron

I always save files with a date stamp at the end of the file sequence and frequently send it to my Gmail account to make sure I don't lose the latest versions. I feel your pain.

At least you didn't do what one student in my computer lab did many years ago. I opened the lab at 0700, he walked in right behind me, checked into a computer and started typing. I left at 0900, went and did everything else I had to do that day as others monitored the lab, and returned at 2000 hours, he's still there typing away. At 2245 hours, closing time, I inform everyone to save their files and shut down the computers. He then begins to panic – he's deleted or shut the computer down without saving – and he had turned off the automatic back-up process because it was annoying him in the morning – he lost the rest of his paper – which he reported was close to the size of your paper – and due the next morning as his final! Sucked to be him. I called to see if they could assist and have a tech see if he could find anything and left the computer as he left it. No such luck – all gone because he disabled the save your butt system.

Warwick, did anyone answer your question?

Look under "tools" in your word processor. You should have an option to view hidden files. Pick it.

Many word-processing programs do an autosave, and save each of them as temporary files. You should be able to recover some of your work from them. Just 'save as' a different file name than the temp file (or your current work) and you should be good.

Of course, by now you've gone and re-written a lot. But some of those turns of phrase from the 'lost' version might be useful elsewhere.