fel wrote: I do my ref files in Notepad, just flat unformatted txt docs, that i keep up in another window when I write. Just an old habit, I guess. I'm a creature of habit.
Though I think that'll change, cause at least Word DOES do emergency backups. Had I kept my ref file in Word, I'd not have lost it.
First of all, doesn't your text editor do backups? It is quite common when saving file to have older version saved under *.bak (under Windows), or *~ (under Unices). Of course that doesn't help when you delete backup files to save space

. Better yet, there are text editors, like Emacs for example (which has it's Windows version; both GNU Emacs, and XEmacs), which if configured can make numbered backups, saving up to #N other versions. You can even define the directory where backups are saved. And good editors (read: e.g. Emacs

) saves current state of your file, so usually you can recover the file you worked on after editor crash.
Second, maybe you should consider using some kind of Version Control system (sometimes called [software] Configuration Managemets systems), so you would have besides having access to all previous versions of a file (in efficient way), comparing the versions and even annotating when the line was introduced (in which version of the file it appeared in current form). But that migh be an overkill. It all depends...
I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. *I* TURN UP ONLY ONCE.
(Terry Pratchet, "Feet of Clay")