*syncing google drive* >.>

Wow, had no idea it was this common. I'd recommend everyone watch newegg daily deals for a cheap NAS to go up. I've been using a thecus NAS for a few years now, and have it replicate my folders I care about.

Though for most of the stories people are talking about, we didn't have cheap NASs :) Or any of the luxuries like cloud storage, easy access to online source repositories, wireless networks, cheap multiple hard drives, USB sticks or even writable CD/DVDs... But yes, I agree that anyone today should make sure they take full advantage of the easy backup abilities we have today (and many of them don't even have to cost - e.g., cloud storage, Google Music).

I lost 10-15 years worth of projects due to both my main and backup HDs failing simultaneously. I store a copy of everything online now.

Holy fucking shit, how do you mentally recover from that?

In my case, it probably helps that I have extremely bad long term memory retention, so there's not much difference to me between something that happened 20 years ago and something that happened 6 months ago. I can remember that I did something a long time ago, but it feels like it was something that someone else did, and not me. So while I still regret the loss of the codebase, it doens't feel like I lost my life's work, as it was sort of someone else's life.

I lost the source code to a few games...

My first game (which was poorly written), it's source code was lost because I forgot what I did with it and it just got lost forever. I still have a build of it, but it doesn't work on modern PCs and will always crash.

The last two I lost was over 2 years ago when someone stole my Macbook Pro. I had a casual game idea that people liked and a mech simulator prototype similar to GunGriffon in the works. I thought I lost 3 games that day, but fortunately I had my Super Milk Chan game backed up on a USB drive. It's irritating knowing I have to rewrite stuff and spend $XXX USD to replace some hardware because some addict wanted to get their "fix". I was homeless at the time, so it was bound to happen. The worst part of it was the fact that I know exactly who did it, and he didn't get what was coming to him. Oh well.

One of my biggest losses wasn't a game, but a PS2E plugin I wrote for PCSX2. It was a GS plugin that was rapidly gaining compatibility, and worked great overall (minus the broken textures and lack of screen sizing). I was backing up files from my comp, and forgot to unplug the USB HDD plugged in while reinstalling Windows, and the drive went corrupt afterwards. Lost my backups, lost that plugin, and lost some game engine stuff I was writing as well as assets I was never able to find again (some really epic sound effects that I miss to this day). Sad.

Shogun.

My first game (which was poorly written), it's source code was lost because I forgot what I did with it and it just got lost forever. I still have a build of it, but it doesn't work on modern PCs and will always crash.

By any chance were you using turbo pascal 7, with its infamous CRT unit bug?

(any PC faster than 200mhz can't run unpatched binaries, because it tries to use a timing loop to calculate the size of a delay, and because the PC is faster than they planned for it bombs out with a divide by zero :))

My first game (which was poorly written), it's source code was lost because I forgot what I did with it and it just got lost forever. I still have a build of it, but it doesn't work on modern PCs and will always crash.

By any chance were you using turbo pascal 7, with its infamous CRT unit bug?

(any PC faster than 200mhz can't run unpatched binaries, because it tries to use a timing loop to calculate the size of a delay, and because the PC is faster than they planned for it bombs out with a divide by zero )

My game was using C++ and DirectX 8.0. The resolution was quite small, so modern PCs don't support such resolutions in fullscreen, so there's always a create device failure.

*syncing google drive* >.>

I've read some bad experiences about how syncing their Google drive with their local one caused the entire folder on their local machine to be cleaned out. I don't know the details of how that happens, but apparently one person accidentally deleted an important source folder. The other guy's machine was still set to sync so he lost his copy of the code too.

*syncing google drive* >.>

I've read some bad experiences about how syncing their Google drive with their local one caused the entire folder on their local machine to be cleaned out. I don't know the details of how that happens, but apparently one person accidentally deleted an important source folder. The other guy's machine was still set to sync so he lost his copy of the code too.

I've found Google Keep (which uses Drive) to be atrocious at syncing between my Nexus phone and tablet (sync failures are commonplace, and if I edit one before it's synced, it just keeps the last edited). Microsoft One Note and One Drive both work perfectly.

But maybe that's just me - the more general point is that one shouldn't rely on just one backup solution, especially if it's set to autosync - whether it's cloud storage or a mirrored hard disk. Everything in my One Drive still gets backed up by my other methods.

(Also I've yet to dump source code into my One Drive - in theory it'd be great for switching between my machines, but I'm wary of unpredictable problems if some individual files in a project end up out of sync.)

I don't think I ever lost a codebase, although my big pre-adult projects have been copied from PC to PC over the years and don't compile any more. I did lose content for my only real game effort though. It was my 4E4 entry or rather the later version I continued developing. I have the 4E4 entry but I've actually no idea which version of the code I have kicking about!

someone stole my Macbook Pro. ... I was homeless at the time, so it was bound to happen

You were homeless but you had a MBP, which would pay rent for 2-3 months?!