John Steinbeck's dog ate an early draft of Of Mice and Men. Ernest Hemingway famously lost an entire suitcase of his early writings - a suitcase that contained his originals and all his copies. The only copy of Thomas Carlyle's The History of the French Revolution was destroyed when it was used to light a fire. It took him six months to recreate it. Dylan Thomas managed to lose the script for Under Milk Wood three times.
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These days, if you're using a computer to create and store your work, none of this should ever happen. While computer hard disks can fail and laptops can be lost or stolen, you should always have your precious work safely backed up. Making copies of computer files is a trivial matter and if disaster strikes, restoring your magnum opus to working order should be a simple matter of a few clicks.
Many writers have some informal system for backing up what they create. Perhaps they copy everything to a CD or USB drive from time to time, or email a copy to someone else. These approaches are a good start, but there's no substitute for an automated mechanism. It's all-too easy to forget to carry out a back up. Whole weeks can go by without one being made and that means whole weeks of work can be lost. Computers are good at mundane, repetitive tasks like this whereas people often aren't.
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