I had uploaded a ton of photos for this blog actually and was trying to clean up my screen. I accidentally selected the folder in that process. Um... then I emptied the trash (Can you hear me screaming through the computer???). Yah, not a good moment! Where's the easy button when you need it?
I desperately googled, "I'm an idiot, can someone help me?" ok, really I googled "Help, how do I retrieve deleted trash files" which still means I'm an idiot please help me BTW. I found 2 software programs that were potentially capable of retrieving my data and decided on Stellar Phoenix. It appeared from the free download (yup, I'm a sucker for free) that I could get all my documents back so I decided to buy the full version. But you know me, always on the look out for a deal, so I googled "Stellar Phoenix Coupon Code" and my favorite online coupon code site appeared - www.RetailMeNot. Sure enough there was a 20% off code that save me $20! Yes - at least there's some savings in this drama. 
But, wait, my story doesn't end there - though I wish it did. I used the software and was only able to retrieve 15 of the 300 documents I lost. While I'm grateful for the 15, I was hoping for more. But, what should I expect - I was the idiot who threw them away. And then the nightmare really began. I stayed up until 2 am last night prepping for my usual Friday Freebies & Deals email and all was well when I left my beloved 8 year old Apple to rest for a few meger hours. But she greeted me this morning with a blown network port which would cost over $500 to repair. And thus, with no coupons in hand, I forked out an obscene amount of $$ to buy a new computer this afternoon, a process which took over 6 hours to complete.
I was able to save all my current files and programs with a data transfer and yes, I did learn my lesson and buy an external hard drive this time to save my data for the future. (You should have seen me trying to save my data to a 1990's floppy drive at 3 am, 2 days ago - hillarious!) So in the end, my life this week was a little savvy and a little not. Valuable lesson learned about the importance of backing up your data though and that certainly will make me Savvier for the future!
Update: I just found out I can now print coupons from www.redplum.com on my mac again with the software update on this new computer - YAY! (I'm trying to look on the bright side folks.)
My computer crashed last year and within a few months my cat accidentally knocked my external hard drive while it was backing up. I lost months of pictures and part of both kid's journal I was writing for them and I'll never be able to get that information back. I found out that it would cost over $1000 to retrieve the information on the external hard drive. It was devastating. Now I use www.carbonite.com. For less than $5 a year I get everything on my computer backed up automatically. I still use an external hard drive as well to put all my movies, pictures and music to free up the space on my computer. And then I back those up on carbonite as well. They have unlimited space and everything they back up is automatic except music and videos (you have to select those one by one). Anyways, just wanted to say I've been there and I'm sorry for all the frustration you had to go through. Hopefully we both won't have to go through it again and we'll be better prepared this time. Love your site and all you do for the couponers. I don't normally post on blogs but thought maybe I could help.
ReplyDeleteErica - Thanks so much for the advice! I'll definitely look into carbonite!
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