Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Crashed and Maimed


My hard drive on my spank’n new computer is a goner! All my work for the last, almost year, is gone. Yes, this sucks and yes I partially blame myself. Here’s the long and short of it.

I got my new laptop in March, before that I was using R’s computer since about last August because my old (ancient) computer was no longer functioning properly. So, I had all my writing and other info that I accumulated on R’s system from August to March. When I got the new laptop I transferred all the stuff on R’s system onto the laptop. R then deleted it off his hard drive.

So there I was, a happy camper, tooling away with my new computer. About two days before the “incident” I thought to myself, “Man, I haven’t done any backups on the this computer yet. I need to get some CDs and get that done.” Of course, the inevitable proceeded.

The other day R was moving my chair out of the way and it bumped into my desk, just hard enough to rattle things around. It knocked a candle weighing, oh…4 or 5 pounds off of a shelf. The candle, like a straight shooter, falling about three feet landed directly on my open laptop, directly over the spot where the hard drive is contained. The hard drive began making this horrible clicking sound, I knew I was in trouble, within seconds it went to the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death” and then….we had to call it.

The horrific feeling that entails when you see “Operating system not found” and then check the BIOS, only to find “HDD” – “NONE” is just, well, heart wrenching to say the least. I knew it was done for, all my work gone in the flick of a candle. Total Suckage!!!

I checked on some data recovery options but it’s really quite pricey. The cost ranges from 700.00 to 4,000.00 depending on the damage. All in all, a price we can’t afford right now. So, we’re packing the drive up and storing it with the hope that we may be able to afford the cost of recovery at some future point. Until then, I’ll be using R’s system again and waiting until we can replace my laptop hard drive.

All that work, gone…just like that. It’s sickening really and yes…believe me I’m kicking myself for not backing the shit up. I know better…so yes, I blame my procrastinating self, but it doesn’t make it suck any less. Three books in progress, many, many new poems, magazine articles, articles for Real Services, just to name a small bit of what’s gone.

The lesson….DO NOT DELAY THOSE BACKUPS PEOPLE! It’s devastating; I cried (literally) for an hour. It’s grief, real grief because a loss is a loss when your heart is involved. I fade off now, gently into mourning.

4 comments:

Charmi said...

Yikes. That is a horrible story. Back up!

maeve63 said...

Make sure you are not doomed to copy my mistake. If you haven't done a back up in a while do one today. Tomorrow may literally be too late.

ctm said...

The same thing happened to me about a month ago. The hard drive on my MacBook died, and a year's worth of poetry died with it. So now I have a flash drive just to back up my poetry. But I lost quite a few pieces. It's awful.

maeve63 said...

I feel for you. Losing one's writing is devastating. It's like an artist losing their paintings. You just can't ever get it back. In the past I have been good about backups, but lately...well. Hopefully I've learned my lesson.