HELP URGENT!! Lost work

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I lost information from the work file.
Last night I had a complete pln file with several stories, elevations, sections, etc....the works.

Today I tried to open it and it's completely empty.

As you may imagine, I'm completely desperate and I'd like to know if this has happened to someone else.

I've tried to look for temporary files and autosave files but unsuccessfully. I am not sure where are these located.

I tried the bpn as well, but it is empty also.

I recall, yesterday night I was having some problems with a dashed line not showing properly on a published PDF. After restarting the pc it published ok. And Im sure I saved it properly and no error window popping out on exit.

The good version had around 15 Mbytes. This one has 3Mbytes. I don't know what does the 3MBytes stand for, though.

Can anybody give me a hint on what happened to my file? If not for this one at least for future working files? My main fear is that I cannot understand WHY such thing happened.

Many thanks,
Joaquim

[Anonymous]

you are, of course, absolutely right and I can certainly see the merits of your system. I'm simply inquiring about what other systems users may implement and perhaps discuss the potential benefits and pitfalls to each.

[Anonymous]

Dom wrote:
I'm not sure i like the idea of having 5 different copies of my model file hanging around - i think it might promote confusion when returning to a project you haven't worked on for a while. How do you ensure everyone knows what is the latest and appropriate file to work on?

We have a folder called 'Superseded'. Every time a major design change happens the old file gets renamed with a letter at the end (my drawing a.pln, my drawing b.pln etc....) and put into the superseded folder.

Dom wrote:
Data back-up and safety, however, is a very important topic. I would be interested in hearing what kinds of techniques other users implement to develop a set of best practices.

Nightly backups to tape. Stupidly we keep the tapes in the same room as the server, so if we have an earthquake or a fire the files will be lost anyway.

[Erika Epstein]

Tom wrote:
Nightly backups to tape. Stupidly we keep the tapes in the same room as the server, so if we have an earthquake or a fire the files will be lost anyway.

Aside from a daily back-up every Friday I toddle on down to my bank where I switch out an external hard drive back-up in my safety deposit box. I figure if it doesn't survive the earthquake/fire, probably neither will I.