My upload flopped at 2am and I deleted the whole folder like an idiot
Last Tuesday I was editing my cooking video in my Kansas City apartment and hit export at 1:40am, then uploaded it straight to YouTube without checking the thumbnail. Woke up to 12 views and a comment saying the video was just a black screen because my export settings were set to the wrong codec. Instead of re-exporting the file, I panicked and deleted the entire project folder off my desktop, thinking I could just reshoot it, and of course the trash had already emptied itself. Now I have to film the whole 20 minute recipe again from scratch this weekend. Does anyone else keep a backup drive, or am I the only one who trusts my desktop to hold everything?
I once deleted a folder called "final_final_v3" because I thought the other copy was on my laptop, and it was not. Turns out both were gone and I spent a whole Saturday re-editing a birthday video for my nephew. @david_jones38 has the right idea with checking the trash twice, but half the time my trash is like a black hole that eats things the second I look away. These days I keep a cheap little drive plugged in and I drag everything onto it before I even touch the delete key. It is not fancy but it has saved me from crying at my kitchen table more than once.