Tutorial Recovery Etiquette?
 

So I used to have some tutorials in a nice little folder in my Documents - I was good about saving it when I switched computers, but it didn't make the last hard drive crash. You'd think I could recover them from emails, but no - I've got some Etsy receipts, some vague conversations eluding to the fact that I have purchased tutorials, but very few actual PDFs. I'm thinking that I had all important mail sent to my important email address...which, at the time, was a .edu address at the school I attended. Of course, upon graduation, I was cut off from the email address and all its contents.

I wasn't able to work with glass between then and now, so I only really remembered that I had tutorials after I pulled out my tools. If I'm able to find a receipt, is it ok to send a message to the tutorial creator explaining the situation and asking for a re-emailing of the tutorial? Also, what's your method for keeping a failsafe backup of PDFs that you have purchased? I'm thinking of putting them all in some cloud storage account, but knowing me, I'll forget the username and password after a day.

I think pretty much most would email you a copy again. I only require proof of purchase or some way to look up your purchase. An email address that you use for Paypal works fine if you paid with Paypal, or the full name of the person holding the Paypal account. Purchases through Etsy are easy to look up with your Etsy name or your full name.

Absolutely ~ I send out an email with download info and ask the customer to keep a copy of it (this makes it super easy for me to look it up later) but if I can find your name/email address in my records, I'm happy to replace the tut. I'm hoping everuone else feels this way, because I had a backup disk crash a while back and have been shy about asking authors to replace the tuts......

I'm kicking myself for not having a consistent email/etsy going...I swear, I must have made a new gmail address for each email I sent.

Oh well, I'm older now, and wiser...or maybe just older.

Thanks for your advice so far, everybody. I've sent out emails and have my fingers crossed! I am excited about hopefully getting my favorite tutorials back.

I am so glad you asked this because the same thing has happened to me, and I was wondering about should I or shouldn't I?

Did you use the same etsy account? We can easily search our sales if we have the correct account name.

Oh wow! I'm so glad that someone asked about this. My hard drive on my PC crashed last April and I ended up buying an iPad and only have the tutorials that I've bought since then. I now open them in iBooks so hopefully they are saved in the iCloud. I had the PC repaired but I lost a lot of files and other information. It also has Vista as it's operating system and is a royal pain. I paid for all the tutorials using PayPal and bought mostly through Etsy and have used the same email address, so maybe I can recover some my lost tutorials also. At any rate I'll try and want to thank everyone in advance who will resend the tutorials. 😊 Lydia

As a tutorial seller, I would happily re-send the tutorial to someone who lost it. I keep all my records, so if I had the name or email of the buyer, I could look it up. I think most tutorial sellers would feel the same way - as long as there is some proof of purchase on either end. It can't hurt to ask!

I've had people ask for tutorials after their hard drives have crashed. I usually ask for a paypal address or Etsy account name. I've only once declined resending a tutorial and it was a well-known scammer who I knew was lying about previously purchasing it.

I lost a bunch of tutorials a while back and everyone that I contacted sent me a new copy. I am so grateful and very happy to continue to support such a generous group of artists.

I have not yet (knock wood) lost my files of tutorials but I have lost 'puters too often to trust anyone machine anymore.

I have Clickfree now and everything gets a copy there and I have a BluRay DVD burner and everything gets burned to a BR DVD once a year and I have copies of each machines hard drive on the other three machines hard drives as well now that I have monster drives on each machine.

So essentially I backup my backups of my backups.

Software I might be able to get copies of with receipts but the photos are only going to continue to exist if I make the effort to ensure it.

At this point I like USB drives and SD cards for documents, tutorials, webpages, contact lists and assorted resources.

Most sellers will resend digital tutorials in 3-5 days or less.
User names, email used, and other information help verify the purchase.
It gets a little more complicated with information found on sites like lampwork ect, maille artisans, or vendors/shops that have shutdown.

I store all of my tutorials on Google Drive. Because of my smart phone, I already have a Google account so never forget the password. Scary thought though, hundreds if not thousands of dollars in tutorials in my acct.

My PC died the other week ... I did have a back up luckily and an IT bod sorted out the recovery for me but the new PC has windows 8 on it and it took him a while ... But he managed it. So you have my sympathy.

I have an older tablet that I keep all my tutorials on ... But online backups are also great ... Places like Dropbox, Google drive, Microsoft are very handy!

It's so nice to know that people who sell tutorials are happy to resend purchased tutorials, good business.

I will probably never need to ask for that because I get mine printed in a spiral bound booklet so I can practice at the torch. It's a bit pricey because I get the pages laminated, but SO worth it.

I keep all my tuts and SLT's in Evernote. That way, I have copies on all my devices, and they're stored in the cloud. You can also save things to Kindle, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.

Back Up
 

Even though I have 4 hard drives I still back things up on cd's, dvd's, and or thumb drives and online.

I don't know if it is too late, but if you still have your hard drive, then you may be able to recover some files. I have been able to recover files on my hard drive using a usb adapter. Something like this ... http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Adapter-.../dp/B002OV1VJW ...you may even be able to find one at your local electronics store. A lot of times a hard drive gets a bad boot sector but the data files are still ok. With this hard drive adapter, you can "plug-in" your old hard drive into your new computer and then it will look like a thumb/drive to your new computer and you may be able to see your old file folders.

Same thing happened to me. I had most on my kindle but not all (I don't know why) so when my pc crashed I lost some tutorials. I went back through my Etsy and contacted those that I lost and everyone was very understanding and sent the tutorials right away. I've had fun revisiting some I haven't looked at in a while.