Tragedy Strikes Again!

[rposhard]

As so many have had happen before, my hard drive went Ker-flooey (technical geek term meaning "balls up"). I was fortunate enough that my wife's Uncle Jack from Pennsylvania was staying with us for a few days. Rather then watch me in torment, he went out and bought a bigger (320 GB) and better hard drive, helped me install it, and together we got things running again. Of course, this means I have lost everything on my computer as a result: everything (script, VAs, mods) for The Man from Schenectady is gone. All my pictures of my grandsons, all of my movies, my review archive, everything is gone.

Not expecting anyone to care that much as it happens to us all, just reporting the news. Thankfully, my psychiatrist has wisely upped my dosage of anti-depressants.

Latest word from my wife: "I'm gonna kill Uncle Jack."

[TheMGMKid]

OH Rpo! That is terrible news.

[TehPoptartKid]

Sorry to hear that, RPO! That just sucks.

Want a cookie for your troubles? *Hands RPO a cookie*

TPK

[Chris62]

I've been there that does suck RPO.

[TINMAN]

Yeah....... been there done that.
I am soooo glad I had alot of files backed up...... even tho it was a royal pain to reinstall most things. Which reminds me... it's time to do a back-up again. I've been thinking about one of those off site storage. Until then, I use alot of CDs and DVDs.

I know one day this machine will bite the big one..... but hopefully I am more prepared for the event.

I comiserate with ya RPO. Hopefully you can manage an acceptable recovery.

K4

[db4321]

What a terrible shame. I'm really sorry!

[Fospherous]

I have concluded that God is a complete and utter c*** :sad:

Sorry about this Rpo, I'm sure that the crashing of your hard drive was the last thing you needed at this time. But at least it's a big one you've got now as a replacement :p

[kuroken]

Ugh.

Backup, folks...backup.

Buy an external USB drive - you can pick up a 1 terrabyte external drive for around $100 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152178). A 750 gig external for $80 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136176). And so on. Try to get at least double the size of the drive you're backing up.

Buy a copy of Acronis True Image Home (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/) for $50.

Once a week, do a backup - full backup first time, then weekly incremental or differential as you choose. Do it before you leave for work on Monday morning, or school, or go to the park for your daily glue-sniffing binges. Or if you leave your computer on all the time, schedule it to happen when you're asleep.

If your hard drive grinds to a halt, or you download something even naughtier than you thought and it does to your hard drive what you thought you would be viewing on screen.....put the program disk or a recovery disk you've made with one click into your cd/dvd drive, reboot, point it at the drive where your backups are....and in about an hour or less, depending on how big your backup is, you'll be fully restored, everything exactly the way it was when you backed up.

If you can't afford an external drive and Acronis, by all means backup your data regularly. But I really would recommend doing it this way (and you can use Norton Ghost or other solutions) for a couple of reasons:

Backing up data manually means you will invariably miss a data file unless you're very orderly/anal retentive about where you store your data. Your mail files, for example...do you know where they're stored, so you can restore all your old emails, contacts, etc.? How about your browser bookmarks and history?

Even if you have backed up every bit of data, how long is it going to take for you to reinstall your operating system, all your software, restore your data files in the right place, and then configure everything to your liking?

With full backup, you're about an hour away from being back in full operation, whether your hard drive died, you bought a new hard drive because the other one was getting full, you bought a new computer....

Yes, I am a zealot about this....I've got 10-year old data on this machine (okay, some of it is porn that I downloaded 10 years ago - :saddam: - hey, ya never know when you're gonna need something, ya know!) thanks to the magic of regular backups.

Do it now.

Ken

[Rogue (Flat Earth)]

I feel for you, RPO... been in your shoes before and I know how sucky it feels :(

*offers a glass of warmed red wine to make things better*




I've got 10-year old data on this machine (okay, some of it is porn that I downloaded 10 years ago - :saddam: - hey, ya never know when you're gonna need something, ya know!)


LOL... Oldest file on my comptuer is a .doc file originally created on Word 6 (used on Windows 3.11) in 1994...

Some bad short story written by then 13 years old Rogue....

and it's BAD... really bad...

but hell, one day, one of my books would make me a celeb writer and then I'll post it on some blog to give 500,000 readers the understanding that with the exception of J.K.F Rowling, there is no such thing as an "Instant Writer"...

Oh well... :P

*Dreams On*