OK, my Abiword just "disappeared" all of my art essays and my former Friday Afternoon Challenges...

[enlightenment]

8. When I was a grad student

I worked in the grad student lounge, which was mostly a computer lab. One evening, about an hour before close, a woman rushed in waving a 3.5" disc - the metal sliding tab on the top was completely trashed. We tried everything, including trying to scavenge another metal tab from a different disc, but it was no good.

It was dead.

It was also the ONLY electronic copy she had of her completed except for final formatting dissertation. She did have a hard copy. We had a scanner. It was excruciating watching her slowly scan, with the not very sophisticated OCR imaging of the time, the entire document.

If I may make a suggestion. Regardless of which software you use, get in the habit of saving each day's work in a different file. Use the same name, except end each file name with the date. Example:
ArtEssay090115
ArtEssay090215

It will protect your work and give you an easy way to keep things in order.

Once a month, save all of that months' files onto a CD or thumbdrive or external drive.

I'm so sorry this happened. You have my absolute sympathy.