Luck sometimes fails you, thinking never.

[Dualnames]

While i was talking to MSN three / four days ago I started to smell sth burning after a glimpse i realised it was my PC. I closed it fast. All my work on LC3 was gone all my savegames on Art of Theft all my work on Knights of Kooragaloot gone.. Everything. But thank god I keep backups. If I hadn't there would be no chance of making anothe game from the frustration.

[Evil]

I had a friend who's processor/processor fan caught fire while he was on it. Thankfully it didn't burn up the board.

I never backup my PC, but after hearing horror stories like this maybe I should. Then again, I'd probably be more upset about my computer burning up than losing my stuff.

[Moresco]

I lost fifty-seven songs and a conceptual project to go along with it once.  I had the entire project typed up as this lengthy story (which was partially salvaged and became Novellice) to go with it and instead of a fire or something - it was caused by moving a partition.  Dumb mistake.  The machine quit responding during the move and so I had to restart.  It didn't recover and there was nothing I could do.  All my files were still there, but the FAT was either lost, damaged, or altered to where there was no way the OS could recognize the data.  Funny thing is, there was one guy apparently capable of fixing it, he lived in Sweden, and charged upwards of 10 thousand dollars for the repair (which I couldn't afford back then).

So did you lose your hard drive only, or did you lose the entire machine?  That sucks either way, but thank god you made backups.  If I recall correctly, CD burners were pretty new back when I lost my data...though I had one and should have made backups, but it would have taken a good 25 discs.  My present project backs up onto 18 DVDs. ^^

[Radiant]

Yeah, I fried my hard drive once, fooling my computer into thinking it was a floppy disk, and having it make the noise of a lawnmower or a kitchenette. Yes, by accident, and yes, I'm serious. Backups are a good thing.

[voh]

My backup drive crashed about a year or 3 ago. Lost 36 stories or so, which I (stupidly) only had on that one disk.

It's heartwrenching, but it does provide a clean slate, I guess. I've been writing more and more ever since, and backing stuff up properly

Tough luck, though, and hope you didn't lose too much between the backup and your most recent files which are now, well, gone.

[Dualnames]

I back up files every day. re-writtable cds ftw.

[Akatosh]

In terms of backups, it's good to adopt a little OCDish behavior. I tend to make a full backup every week or so and, at the end of the day, save everything I've done/changed to my hard drive and another USB hard disk. Let's hope it never breaks. 

[Gamer_V]

I once accidently formatted the wrong drive.  It was recoverable, though.

[Buckethead]

I hardly ever back up, only when I know it is needed. I never had something really unexpected happen and lost all my files.