h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi

I've just lost a .gml file and I'm wondering if you can help. I'd been working on in for most of the evening and had been pressing cntl and S about every 5 minutes so I knew it was saved. However at about 11 I rebooted by pressed Cntl Alt and Del and then when it restarted and got to the "you have not closed down" screen I pressed X because I *knew* it was saved.

Any Suggestions? Please?

Okay, slow down...

So you wrote a file, saved it regularly (which program were you using?) then you improperly rebooted Windows, skipped the disk check and now you can't find it?

Yeah basically. I know thinking about it this is proberly my fault. But the strange thing is that I saved it, carried on working on it. And then 3 hours later I improperly rebooted windows and skipped the disk check.

Oh well I'm going to rewrite it tonight. Don't worry I just asked you in case it was somethign that was Guide ML specific.

Sorry for the panicky message...

I was using Guide Post you see hence the message to you, and windows 98 if that matters.

Nothing to do with GuidePost, it's to do with the way Windows and the filesystem work.

It's possible (however unlikely) that the file was never actually written to disk, but was instead held in a write cache in memory ready for writing at a later time. Now, usually the system will find a bit of free time to write the file out as soon as it possibly can, as obviously keeping data only in RAM is really risky, but sometimes things fall over and don't get written for ages and ages.

The only thing guarenteed to write data from the write cache is a proper shutdown...

Alternatively, not properly shutting down can also leave the filesystem in an inconsistent state, which can cause data to disappear - especially recently modified data, hence your file again.

In future, I bet you'll always shut down the system properly, won't you?

Gosh yes!!! i certainly will. Actully I've retyped the whole thing and more So it doesn't matter in the end. Thanks anyway. I thought it was. I can understand now how it's happened.

Am half thinking of swiching to Linux.. will go to the library and get a book after my exams!

But Linux will do the same kind of thing if you don't shut it down right - or rather, it *can*.

Ooh I know I think it's true of all operatign systems I just like the idea of open source you see... well maybe i'll give up because it would mess up our internal network a bit