ItsGeekToMe.co

Q: I got a new camera and accidentally deleted the pictures on my memory card! Do you have any ideas where to take it so it can be restored? In God We Trust.

– Tammy S.
Lakeland, Florida

In God We Trust, indeed, Tammy. While I appreciate the sentiment, God doesn’t have much of a history of restoring deleted files. So, hold that thought for a moment, and I’ll answer your question along with my answer to the following:

Q: I am fairly new to using quick books and thumb drives, but have some computer experience. I am working with quick books for a company, that has a computer at one location. I have been bringing work home to my computer (a seperate location) , entering the information, saving it to a thumb drive and then periodically taking the thumb drive to the first location to update their files. It was working okay, to enter 2010 information but now I can’t seem to get the 2011 information to transfer from my computer to the thumb drive and from the thumb drive to the first computer.

– Patsy R.
Fort Walton Beach,Fla

A: Okay, why, you may be asking, did I lump the answer to this question in with that of Tammy S.? Well, because at their heart, these two questions both deal with a concept that seems difficult for many people to comprehend: removable storage media. You both need to know that once these media are plugged into your computer, and are assigned a drive letter, for all practical purposes they function exactly like any other storage medium, and should be treated as such. In other words, there’s no big mystery surrounding them, and no need to wonder if the problem is the flash drive’s fault. From the perspective of the computer, they are file storage like any other file storage. So, Tammy, I wouldn’t take it anywhere to be restored. The old “a deleted file isn’t really deleted” rule applies, so I’d do a Google search for “file undelete utility” and see what you can recover. Be warned, that if you have continued to use the medium or have formatted it, you very likely have rendered the old data unrecoverable, as it’s been overwritten with new stuff. Patsy, you didn’t really tell me what the problem is, only that you “can’t seem to” do what you want. Are you getting an error? I assure you, the removable medium is not the problem. I would bet one of two things is happening: either you can’t find the data, in which case I’d say to make sure that you’re looking in the correct directory (a 2011 folder vs. a 2010 folder). Or, if you’re getting some sort of error message (and if so, shame on you for not telling me what it is!) then QuickBooks might have the files locked. Make sure you completely exit the program before you try to do any manual file copying.

Q: Why have you not been archived since mid-May? Did I miss something or forget a heads-up?

– Norm B.
Niceville, Florida

A: My column is still headquartered out of the Northwest Florida Daily News, Norm. Until and unless I put up my own website, the only available column archives are past articles that are available on the paper’s website. Like many sites, the Daily News occasionally changes the format of its website, and when they do, old content doesn’t get moved to the new location. Such a change happened, as you said, in mid-May. New content started getting put in a new location, so the archive just seemed to stop. I asked my editor about this, and he told me to direct my readers here: tinyurl.com/3u2hptl.