I haven’t written about the end of the world in Godsbarrow, but the entire setting — everything I’ve ever created for it that doesn’t live here, on Yore — nearly vanished today.
I woke up to a corrupted hard drive, which Windows helpfully automatically recovered for me…but without hundreds of gigs of files, including my entire PDF gaming collection and every scrap of my Godsbarrow material.
Okay, a pain in the butt, but hey: That’s why I have a cloud backup running in the background, right?
Well…
Yes, I do. And it works (I’ve tested it). But. But! Only if I configure it properly.
Guess what I wasn’t backing up? Yuuup. All of Godsbarrow, from layout files to maps to the manuscript for my second campaign guide. And all those gaming PDFs, to boot.
So I Googled, and found that in this situation files can sometimes be recovered. I identified a likely file recovery program, but balked at having to pay for it before even seeing if it would work. Found a second one which was much more confidence-inspiring (ReclaiMe), and let it spend six-plus hours quietly scanning my system. After work I bought an external HDD, because recovering files to the possibly-dying drive that broke them in the first place is, uh, apparently a bad idea.
And it worked! Godsbarrow has risen from near-death, and is now safely nestled on my external drive.
It will take many, many hours to recover the rest, but that was the most important thing that went up in a puff of electrons. Having it back is a huge relief.
Once the dust settles, I’ll back Godsbarrow up in a couple other places, run through all my cloud backup settings, and see about replacing the troubled drive.
If it’s been a little while since you last looked at your backup settings, check them now! And if you’re not backing stuff up, the best time to start is also now.
So glad the recovery worked – especially since you’ve got all the layout done!
I was dreading the prospect of having to try to match my old layout! I’m a graphic design dabbler, so that might well have broken me.