I LOST my 45 page thesis! Posted on May 4th, 2009 by

It is that time of year when final papers are being written, stress is upon students, and late nights are common.

Never leave a lab computer for any reason without first saving your document to a known location (flash drive, home directory). If you leave the computer for more than 1 hour, the computer will reboot and your paper and/or changes will be lost.

Gustavus Technology Services would like to remind everybody that backing up data and saving frequently is more important than ever – especially near the end of the semester – when large and very important papers or Powerpoints are being created. When saving documents, make sure you check the location of where you are saving the document. (home directory, flash drive, etc) Always double check your save location.

Great ways to back up your data:

  • Flash Drive
  • Home Directory
  • Emailing it to a second email address such as GMail, Yahoo! Mail, etc (for backup purposes only)
  • External Hard Drive
  • Creating incremental backups using any of the mediums mentioned. (just in case your document is corrupted)

Bad ways to back up your data:

  • Old 3.5 floppy disks (small storage size and prone to failure)
  • Just emailing it to yourself and using that as your only copy. However, you can email it to yourself and then work on it, but make sure you save as a new file to your Home Directory. If you just open it and save it, straight from your email, it will save it in the Temporary Internet Files, and once the lab computer is restarted, it will be gone.

If you think you may have lost your document or it has become corrupted AND you had saved it on your Home Directory, please stop by the Technology Helpline. We may be able to recover at least some of it. Always have your important paper on at least two different mediums. If your hard drive dies, you’ll be glad you saved it on your flash drive as well.

If you have any questions or would like help saving files to your home directory, please stop by the Technology Helpline or visit our web page:

http://www.gustavus.edu/gts/Technology_Helpline

Contact Us

Phone: 507-933-6111
Email: helpline@gustavus.edu
Web: https://gustavus.edu/gts
Blog: https://gts.blog.gustavus.edu
Remote Support: https://sos.gac.edu
System Status: https://gustavus.freshstatus.io

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