If I seem out of sorts to you for the next few days, there is a good reason. If you felt an earthquake a few hours ago, it was probably me beating my head against a stone wall.
Somehow, somewhen, I pulled a really stupid stunt. I deleted not only the file that I sought this morning, but the folder in which it had been saved - from the flashdrive on which I keep all of my volunteer reference stuff. For several days, a few hours each day, I had done on-line research to gather and cross-check information piece-by-piece on each of the 650 (approximately) cities and 105 counties in Kansas - information that included the county of each city, the county seat of each county, and ZIPs, and more. I had arranged the data in an easy-to-reference formatting in a multi-worksheet Excel™ file. Oh, woe is me. I am my own worst pet peeve!
Guess what I'll be doing in my spare time for the next few days.
Assuming you have not reused the drive, you can use freeware to recover the deleted file(s).
I use "PC Inspector file recovery"
Stu
Posted by: Ole Phat Stu | January 27, 2013 at 12:24 AM
Ooh - good call Stu - hope it helps!
Posted by: bogie | January 27, 2013 at 06:29 AM
Stu & Bogie--Thanks for the suggestion. I did consider trying to recover the file. However, since the flashdrive is in use at least daily, I decided that recovering the fragments and glueing them back together would be as much work as re-doing the research. Besides, the second time around, I'm a bit smarter/more efficient at gathering the data, so it should not take me as long.
I may go get the "PC Inspector" just to have it on hand. I have Norton 360; but, AFAIK, Norton hasn't included file recovery routines in their packages in years! Of course, Symantic will sell me the capability, separately.
Posted by: Cop Car | January 27, 2013 at 09:36 AM
Oh, that is so frustrating CC. I hope you recover your file. ~Joy
Posted by: Joy | January 27, 2013 at 07:09 PM
Don't you just hate it when that happens? I hope you can put it all back together without too much aggravation!
Posted by: Hattie | January 28, 2013 at 01:31 PM
Joy & Hattie--It is much quicker going the second time. Not too bad. Thanks for your good wishes.
Posted by: Cop Car | January 29, 2013 at 01:44 PM
I've been working (it feels like forever) on the 27 counties of the Western Carolinas region, and I feel your pain.
We must be having a good time though because we're volunteers!
Posted by: Hal B | February 05, 2013 at 10:15 AM
Harold--From you last posting, I think that you have quite enough pain without feeling mine! We had an extended family that we kids sometimes got shuffled among; but, we were never in foster care. Consequently, or perhaps it is just the way I am, I tend to trust almost everyone - on the surface. I am, however, closely atuned to vibes that tell me to be careful on the deeper levels. Good luck in your endeavor.
P.S. I have most of the file re-created; but, have put it aside in favor of other tasking just now.
Posted by: Cop Car | February 05, 2013 at 04:47 PM