Lost 2 hours of calibration data after a 6 hour session

Spent all last Thursday running a 6 hour EEG session with a new motor imagery task. Everything looked clean on the screen, signal quality was great, and I was feeling good about the results. Then my laptop froze during the export and I lost the whole file, no backup. I know it's my fault for not saving incrementally, but has anyone else had a similar day where the tech just eats your work?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_elizabeth21d ago

Ugh, that is brutally painful! I've totally been there with long recording sessions and it stings every time. One thing that might help going forward is to set up a quick auto-save script that writes a backup copy to a separate folder or even a USB stick every 15 minutes or so, just so you have a recent version to fall back on. Also worth checking if your recording software has a built-in recovery file option, some of them hide a temp file that you can dig out after a crash.

jordancoleman19d ago

Oh man, tell me about it! I once lost four hours of footage because I thought I hit save and the program just laughed in my face. The auto-save tip is solid but my dumb self would probably forget to plug the USB stick in or name the files something insane like "final_final_REAL2". Honestly, my backup system is so bad that I'd probably lose the backup too. Maybe I should just accept that my digital life is a series of happy little accidents and keep a physical notebook like it's 1995.