I’ve always maintained that God has a horrible sense of humor (my evidence: Rebecca Black’s “Friday”). He played this prank on me today:
I was having a comments chat with one of my followers who also follows me (there’s a technical term for that, I just haven’t heard it yet) and we were discussing how frustrating it is for writers to lose something they’ve poured their sweat, blood and tears into because of a computer error or some such reason. I told her that it had happened to me, though not in a while.
Later that day, I go to put my flash drive in my computer to work on something, but the flash drive doesn’t register. I think maybe it’s just a glitch, and I go off to watch the latest episode of NCIS. On the way back, I try the flash drive on a friend’s computer.
It doesn’t register there either. (cue annoying soap opera organ music)
So I rush upstairs, feeling my heart beat, praying to God that He lets my flash drive work.
It does. I thank Him, but then I realize He’s playing another prank on me. Ha ha, Sir. You got me.
So lesson to all you readers out there: whether you’re a writer or not, BACK UP YOUR DOCUMENTS! You may end up regretting it later if you don’t.
Rami Ungar The Writer 
Holy crap! I can’t believe that! Just backed up all books on a second USB!
Smart move. If I can get to a place that sells USBs, I may just buy a second one and use it for any important documents that I don’t want to lose.
Been there! My advice is to definitely back stuff up onto some kind of internet-based back-up system too, like dropbox. I backed up all of my writing onto a portable hard-drive a while back and when the inevitable happened and I managed to corrupt the folder on my laptop, I went to get the files back off my portable hard-drive and (stupidly) dropped the thing. Long story short, lost everything – including my faith in technology – and will forever use dropbox from now on as a third form of back-up!
i didn’t know you could the dropbox like that. thanks for the advice.