I am very sorry OP. You must have put in a lot of time and effort into writing that book and to have all that lose all that despite multiple failsafes must be devastating. I hope you find a way to recover the data and if not, I wish you good luck in writing the book again. You clearly didn't deserve this.

a bit confused.... everything was put on an external drive by your mom? or she cleared that? "everything downloaded onto a separate hard drive and removed while I was out of the house."

Take it to a shop NOW. Even if it was deleted, you still may be able to recover it unless another file has been written over it. Just don't put a lot of new stuff on there yet.

Your mother is a *****. I'm very sorry for you, but try taking your USB to a store and/or download some stuff that can find erased file on the computer. Also, don't use your USB until you take it to the store.

that really sucks. seems like it was an act of malice, not her thinking you were watching ****. hopefully you can recover it, and now upload it to the cloud!

I agree, that took a lot more planning than she'd so if she really thought you were watching ****. a quick look at the file would've shown her you were writing a book! If you try to start over I'd find a good hiding place for the USB, or perhaps entrust a friend to have 2 - you backup and give to him at school, he takes it home and backs up to another and gives one back to keep going back and forth. Not a simple solution but your mum seems pretty determined :(

Dude, show SOME respect for the woman...

how is she a *****???

I find it borderline terrifying that OP apparently expected this kind of thing - enough to have triple backups, and one around his neck at all times. That doesn't sound like "OMG my baby boy is on the computer all the time - it must be ****!" That sounds deliberate and malicious. I don't suppose that there's any chance she "confiscated" it rather than deleted it..? Sorry OP. I don't suppose that there's another adult that could talk sense into her (since it doesn't sound like she'll listen to you)? I know from experience that there are teachers who, having heard that a parent sabotaged their child's work, would hit the ceiling and help however they can.

whoa #105 his mom might be mean and disrespectful but don't call someone's mother a *****.

What she did was not excusable. But I could see where the label on the USB might have angered her to the point if destroying it.

Nah, I think #105's comment is fine, but would it make you feel better if we called her a malicious psychopath who deliberately destroys the hard work of her child? I hope OP can manage to recover their hard work, if not, OP learned a very costly lesson: their mom is cruel and untrustworthy. Guard your possessions around this woman, she clearly has zero respect for you as a human being.

That's horrible. As an amateur writer and artist I would be devastated if my work was erased. It's impressive you were writing a book at sixteen. I hope you can get your work back or at least remember enough to rewrite it. Learn how to download your work to Google Drive; that where I started to download my work in case something happened to the work on computer. Hopefully your mom won't learn the password for that and erase it as well. Your mom sounds like a horrible person.

OP said in their replay (at #100) that they don't know how their mom guessed their password. That means they had one they thought only they knew...

Considering the lengths he took based in his reply, he had no logical reason to think that it was necessary. he kept one around his neck that his mum stole to delete it while he was in the shower. That's ridiculous. He shouldn't have had to consider sabotage from his own mum.

System restore doesn't recover files, sadly. It only changes computer settings to what they were previously.

Good job reading replies... OP said at #100 they had multiple back ups including 3 USBs and ALL of them were deleted by their mom

Read my reply dumbass. No sympathy from me, YDI for being an ignorant arsehole

that's some salty teenager we have here. btw, #119 is still right. you didn't mention having it on dropbox, cloud or w/e