I had something similar happen once. I thought I saved my character sheet and later when the site crashed I was going through files trying to find it - only to find it missing. I did still have an exercise I had done for character development, but none of the stuff I really wanted. The worst part is no matter how many times I try and re-write something I've lost I do not like it as much.I have a character folder -- and I have a file for Sadira... But for whatever reason, it contains a paragraph of his bio and nothing more... -_- I don't know how I did it, but I messed that up.
I save most of my sheets elsewhere. I was even pleasantly surprised to learn I had Saga's full sheet (I did a decent amount of editing to it in the OOC before I submitted it, so I was expecting to see things missing).