Hello I'm Rich Brown and this is my personal website and blog. I'm just your simple, average, down to earth, professional, out gay man and aspiring circuit boy, living in Phoenix, Arizona with a few things to say while trying to find my place among all the scary, conservative, religious nuts in this sick and twisted world.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Lost? Gone? Forever? Say What?
MY FUCKING PERSONAL LAPTOP HARD DRIVE CRASHED TODAY!!! Need I say more. I knew this day was going to come and I wasn't going to be prepared. Right now my laptop is sitting on the floor next to me as I try and figure out what I'm going to do to get the files recovered that were on there. Luckily about 80% of my stuff was backed up to my file server, however I've lost about ... ummmm ... 10 years of email archives, all the photos that I took in December, all my ITunes music and assorted other files that I did not have backed up.
As I said I knew this was coming, I just had a wired feeling and so I started backing things up. Well I hadn't quite finished backing everything up as I though I would have more time before this happened ... like weeks, months, perhaps even a year. But no, that wasn't the plan, I shut down my laptop this afternoon to undock it, and POOOOOF. All gone. I get the wonderful error message ... PRIMARY HARD DRIVE NOT FOUND. Ugh. I'm going to look into how much it's going to cost to restore the data from the drive as I'm really not ready to give up some of those files yet.
The moral of the story here ... BACKUP YOUR FILES REGULARLY!!!!
Oh yeah and one other thing to keep in mind here. Home burned media such as CD's and DVD's, we'll they aren't considered permanent storage. Believe it or not they have a shelf life of about 2-3 years before they potentially go bad. Oh yeah, mmm hmmm, I didn't know that one either. Well I'm off to bed so I can sulk for a few hours before I have to start work.
[UPDATE] Ok so I called a place today to see about getting the drive restored, and they said the price would be between 900-and 3900 depending on how many files they were able to restore. What the hell are they smoking, I could buy a new laptop to for that much. I guess aren't 'that' important. On a more positive note, I did have most of the important things backed up, so it's not a total loss. I guess it's all just a sign for me to stop worry about the past and move on with the future. :-)
DOH! I hate when that happens. I had a similar mis-fortune a few years ago, but mine was self-inflicted.. accidentally re-partitioned the wrong drive!! You might try Data Doctors to see if they can recover any data. I've been told that they're quite good at getting at least some of it recovered.
|______________________________________________________________________ posted by NovaStorm @ Friday, January 20, 2006 8:04:00 AM
Ive been lucky, the ONLY time this has happened to me is when I was desperate for a song and installed Kazaa. But yea..I lost tons of stuff forever, especially digital pics of my family. :(
Hope you got the important things off in time.
:)
|______________________________________________________________________ posted by The Persian @ Friday, January 20, 2006 9:24:00 AM
Oh ouch.... that really sucks Rich, I hope you can get it all back!
|______________________________________________________________________ posted by Jude @ Friday, January 20, 2006 12:18:00 PM
Last year I had a drive go bad and I just about went through the roof. I'm a computer administrator and I know better. Now everything I have is double backed up which is a little crazy but there are just some things I can't lose. I hope you have some luck getting your stuff back.
|______________________________________________________________________ posted by potusol @ Saturday, January 21, 2006 5:20:00 PM
Damn it! Mine went yesterday and I couldn't swap any comment due to our pc's not being compatible :(
I feel your pain!
|______________________________________________________________________ posted by Trunk Guy @ Saturday, January 28, 2006 5:40:00 AM
really enjoying your blog. That's happened to me twice, I know how your feeling.
|______________________________________________________________________ posted by Derek @ Saturday, January 28, 2006 5:45:00 PM
Hey buddy, check out connected.com. I use it and it has saved my ass many times.
|______________________________________________________________________ posted by red headed fire breathing liar @ Sunday, February 05, 2006 10:44:00 AM
