The Making of a Novel: Words Lost in Cyberspace

I wrote a post yesterday for this column, and saved it, and published it -- and it's gone. Poof! Disappeared. I clearly did something wrong on my end. Forgot to save it appropriately. Forgot to do something. (It was a post about filenaming conventions, and how I use my filenames to help me as I progress through a story. I was going to re-write it just now, but I'm so perplexed by the disappearance of the post that this is all I can think about.)

The post was, perhaps, 250 words. Not very many words, not that big of a loss. But I still feel it rather keenly. I wrote those words. I intended them to be out in the world. And now they're gone. I am reminded of other words I've lost in the past -- of other, bigger mistakes; of hard drives that crashed; of the blank screen of death. It wasn't that long ago that every writer had a horror story about losing a big chunk of work.

And I realized, somewhat to my amazement, that losing work in this way has become somewhat obsolete. There are flash drives to back up on, and portable hard drives, and back up utilities, and Norton Ghost, and web based back up services. (I use Mozy. I kind of love it. It's ever present. It does the backup thing without my ever having to ask it to do so.)

So I wonder: does anyone lose work anymore? Has it happened to you?