The pain of lost files and how to prevent it
Whether you are running a business or simply use technology frequently throughout your everyday life, the are certain mistakes and oversights that can lead to wanting to throw your laptop/device etc. through the window in frustration. From losing data or project work to losing sentimental photos, the reality of not being able to recover important files can be very hard to take and for businesses can have serious consequences.
Whilst most software programs will have a default recovery setting, sometimes the recovery doesn’t work or the document hasn’t saved for some time. This can be a very frustrating realization, especially if you have been working on something for hours and it disappears and you can’t find it.
Here are a few pointers that should help you to avoid loss of files:
Check your auto-save settings
If you are frequently creating important documents then check the auto-save options for the program you are working in. Both Word and Powerpoint have auto-save options. Make sure that auto-save is turned o and that the frequency is fairly low (i.e. if it is every 30 minutes, you might want to reduce it down to a couple of minutes).
Get familiar with where your recovery files are
If your PC or Laptop suddenly crashes, either through power failure (it’s always easy to run out of battery) and you were working on a document, when you restart your PC or laptop it should open up with a pane that shows you the recovered file.
If this doesn’t appear then you may have to search around to try and find the location of your recovered file(s). The location of these files will vary depending on what you are using; a Mac, Windows etc. If you have been unable to recover files then you can get help for raid 1 data recovery.
Change filenames for different versions
If you use a document that you want to edit, but you want to keep the original as it is, the first thing you should do is save the file with a different name. Even if you just add a version number to the end, this will ensure that you don’t save over the original document. This is a very common issue where people use the same files to collaborate without any assisted version maintenance.
Create Backups
Again, this will vary depending on your system but you should choose a reliable way to back up your files. If you have lots of sentimental photos stored on a laptop and that breaks or gets stolen, then you are unlikely to see them again if you have no backup in place. Cloud backups are very popular and you can get a certain amount of storage for free from some providers and then pay a monthly or yearly fee if you need to increase the amount. You can also use memory sticks/flash drives to save important files so you have two places to store them.
