Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Whew, Multi-tasking Sometimes Creates Problems

I had a close call today ... I was doing too many tasks at once and didn't pay attention to my clickstrokes.  Fortunately, the Recycle Bin was still present...but hard to find!

The tasks I was doing were (pretty typical for me every day):

*  Checking my email
*  Checking Google Reader occasionally
*  Checking Google + and Facebook occasionally
*  Adding media and sources to RootsMagic database
*  Trying to listen to the RootsMagic webinar but they were having audio problems

Because the webinar was having problems, I decided to do more adding media and sources to RootsMagic.

The media files I was working with were in the Ancestor Files > Family History - Leland-McKnew > McKnew > 01-Elijah McKnew + Jane Whittle > Documents file folder.


Somehow I managed to move this whole set of the Family History - Leland-McKnew file folders (260 mb of them!) into the Family History - Lincoln - Lowell file folder.  I have no memory of doing it but I know how it happened - I probably dragged the folder and released the mouse button.

Okay, I used the Windows 7 "Search" utility to find it and decided to put it back in the Ancestor Files file folder.  So I clicked on the file folder, did an Organize > Cut and then did an Organize > Delete!!!

Oops... it disappeared!  I realized what happened immediately after I did it.  But I was distracted momentarily by the webinar problems.  It wasn't the webinar's fault - I wasn't paying attention to what my fingers were doing at 3:15 p.m. in the afternoon.

First thought:  Was that backed up on the external hard drive?  When did I last back it up?  Did I put it on the flash drive to transfer to the laptop?  Did I put that folder in Dropbox recently?

Quick Conclusion:  No, I created most of the entries in the file folder in the last week or two, since the last backup, transfer, and cloud storage.

Second thought:  You don't want to know!!!

Third thought:  Check the Recycle Bin!  After changing the Detail list to list by date entered, I easily found it and recovered it back to where it belongs!

Whew.  I had a panicky 10 minutes there.  Dodged that bullet...

Note to self:  Time to backup these Ancestor Files to Dropbox and to the external hard drive!!  Tonight.

I'm sure that none of my readers have done something similar in the recent past, right?  Have you recently backed up your important files?

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/12/whew-multi-tasking-sometimes-creates.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

4 comments:

Lee Drew said...

No. No one else has ever done something like that Randy. You were lucky this time. Like you, I've allowed my attention to slip from time to time, once resulting in disaster (for all of the reasons you mentions sans the 'save' in the trash can).

Nightly backups to the cloud and to other external media is the answer. We only have to pound on the same thumb once or twice to get the message and start doing what we knew we should have been doing from the start.

Anonymous said...

I don't recall doing exactly what you did, but I once got a corrupted PAF database. So I went through my backups, all 7 of them. Fortunately the oldest was not corrupted (but the more recent 6 were)! David Adams

Les said...

Must have been a strange force field because about that time here on the east coast while listening to roots magic tape on RM6 I deleted my main gedcom. Had it backed up though.

JL Beeken said...

Every day, Randy. Every single day.

http://www.jgen.ws/jlog/how-to-back-up-your-computer-files/

You did bring my attention to the fact that I really should stop being so d*** efficient about emptying my Recycle Bin.