and then POOF! it was gone
June 10, 2008 – 6:25 amYou know how sometimes you know you SHOULD do something, but you don’t? And you really don’t know WHY you don’t do the thing because every time you think of that thing, you think “I really should do that!” but still somehow the thing goes undone for days and weeks and years and decades…
And you would do it only you haven’t done it for SO LONG and nothing bad happened and there are all these other things that you’d rather be doing so you continue not doing the thing that you know you REALLY SHOULD DO.
You know how that is?
This is a story with A VERY STRONG MORAL which I will yell at you at the end. For your own good, of course. Just thought I’d warn you.
For quite some time we have had two computers. There’s my laptop which sits upstairs in the kitchen and gets daily use. Then there’s Jay’s computer which is the size of a small horse (and much more expensive), which sits in the downstairs office and holds ALL OUR FILES and EVERYTHING DEAR TO US.
We mainly use the laptop unless we need to download pictures or do taxes or save consulting files or… you know… important stuff like that.
So here’s a thing that EVERY ONE OF YOU should be doing and I’m guessing a whole lot of you aren’t…
Backing up files.
Do you do it? DO YOU?!?!
We didn’t.
And we so TOTALLY know better.
And then our computer crashed and gave the “blue screen of death,” WHICH, turns out really is the blue screen OF DEATH.
Because it results in much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
My teeth are gnashing even now just thinking about it.
All those digital images? Gone.
Tax returns? Gone.
Photoshop files? Gone.
EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN THAT I NEED? Gone.
It makes me sick.
So we took it to this fancy computer repair shop, who kindly charged us $150 to tell us SORRY, BUT WE CAN’T DO ANYTHING BECAUSE THIS IS STAGE FOUR AND THAT IS BAD.
And Jay says (with my prompting), “Seriously, nothing? Because there’s pictures and other important stuff on there.”
And they say, “MAYBE IF YOU TAKE IT TO THIS OTHER PLACE AND PAY FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS.”
At which point my stomach leaps into my throat and bile mixes with air and I feel I definitely will die.
Cough
Sputter
GAG
“We’ll pay the 5,000 dollars!” I tell Jay, “I must have those pictures!”
Which brings us to where we are today.
We haven’t yet paid the vastly exorbitant sums of money and we deeply feel the loss of oh-so-many things.
And worst of all is that nagging knowledge that we knew better.
“I guess we’re learning the hard way,” I say to Jay. Then I throw my hands over my eyes and moan, “but I don’t want to learn the hard way!”
Learning the hard way is totally lame.
So the lesson is this:
We have to learn the hard way.
YOU DON’T.
Back up your files!
NOW!
DO IT!
***
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Mother. Coffee drinker. Information seeker. Skeptic. Creative. Dreamer. Schemer. Absolutely Bananas.
By Sue on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
AAAAACK. I’m so sorry.
The same thing happened to me a few months ago. Our laptop hard drive went kaput, taking with it two years of my kids pictures, source code for my software project and four years of my writing.
I still get sick thinking about it.
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By Yvie on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
I’m so sorry to hear that. I feel your frustration.
:( I remember that happening to me 3 years ago, when my computer crash with all of my photos AND thesis files in it (bad part, it’s only 2 weeks before the grueling defense).
Yep, always back-up ’cause you have to save up those memories.
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By Carla on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
I am so sorry.
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By Sara on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
I am SO sorry for your loss. I have learned the hard way too. I backed up my data onto discs when I had to wipe out the harddrive to remove a virus and never put the pictures back into the computer. My 2 year old knocked the pile of discs to the floor and they shattered. Apparently you can’t get the data off a cd that is in more than one piece. Now I use kodakgallery.com, for $25 a year they back up all your photos on 2 separate servers at full resolution and you can even publish them to a website if you want.
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By Jemma on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
Aw nooooooo! I’ve been there myself, luckily didn’t lose too much. I think everyone learns the hard way sadly. So sorry :(
A lovely lady I know has started this…..
http://friedokra4me.blogspot.com/2007/10/back-it-up-baby.html
Back it up baby :)
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By Rachel on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
I am so sorry honey. I’ve been there. That happened to me about 2 years ago and it’s the scariest most frustrating experience ever!!!
We went to the Geek Squad and they managed to recover everything. Good luck honey. Thanks for the reminder!
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By HRH on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
ick. so sorry. why is stage 4 always bad news? that seems so random.
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By My Life My Life My Life on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
Urgh…I so feel your pain. I some how deleted a whole memory card from my camera. 4000 pictures. Basketball games, middle school graduation, Memomorial Day, Easter and a couple of my son’s friends mothers had me do like a ‘photo shot’ for their kids this year…GONE! I was sick for days. I so believe in backing up ANYTHING and EVERYTHING now.
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By Amy on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
Oh I’m so sorry. Pictures. I know that hurts.
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By Sarah Kimmel on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
Yes, I’m VERY anal with my backups. I backup my laptop and desktop at least weekly, if not more. This is only because of my previous occupation as an IT manager, I know the value of a backup. Once, the company I was working for had to pay $11,000 to recover data from hard drive failure.
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By World's Greatest Mommy on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
Shoot! I know better, too, and don’t do it!
I’m feeling a little sick, myself.
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By MommyTime on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
I feel like I would like to send you flowers or a sympathy card for your loss. I know how you feel. That happened to me a few summers ago. Severally. I send really really important documents to myself at my gmail account now, just to be sure that if my laptop gets stolen, house burns down, and office gets raided, I still have backup somewhere.
But I NEVER do this often enough. Ah, complacency has sharp teeth to bite me in the a$$, I know.
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By Shannon on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
Oh No! I’m so sorry.
I am definitely backing up all my stuff when I get back home from vacation. We do it- but it’s been a while.
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By Not the Queen on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
That totally sucks!
We don’t usually back up our files either, but we mean to. Fortunately, we own Mac computers, and they have this totally awesome thing called a Time Capsule. It’s an external hard drive plus wireless router. If you have Leopard (which is next on our list), it automatically backs up everything via the router. Isn’t that awesome?
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By Mrs. G. on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
I am so sad that you lost meaningful photos-that is not good.
I am not off to Google “how to back up files”
As always, thanks for the information.
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By Mamasphere on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
You post scared me. The comments scared me. I’m heading to Fry’s tonight to get a back up drive. Now I’m worried something will happen between now and then!
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By Jeni on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
I feel your pain. We’ve been dealing with that too. I thought I was so smart to be saving everything to my external drive (which was only a year or two old)–for some reason thinking that is so “safe”. Suddenly it stopped spinning, and in doing research found out that happens alot! (Thank goodness my husband found all kinds of crazy things to try and he got everything off of it before it stopped forever.)
I have TONS of pics and don’t want them all on my laptop, but now we have 2 external drives and backup pics onto both (and occasionally onto DVD!) I’m not taking any chances again! It was a scary few days!
So, make sure it’s not just on an external drive either!
GOOD LUCK!
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By Wendy on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
excellent PSA! sorry it had to be from your real life!
I’m liking more and more all the online options for photos, documents, etc, then NOTHING is at home and subject to me screwing it up!
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By cookie-wolf on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
That’s happened to me…quite a few times. I remember one of my computers just crashed a few years ago. I had so many stories and pictures and music that I burst into tears, flippd out on my father and he had to pay a lot of money to save my hard drive and transfer it to a new (but equally as sucky) computer right THEN because I NEEDED it and I was fourteen so I had no concept of money and how we didn’t have it.
So now I’ve three photobucket accounts, post all my pictures on them and keep them in folders. So if my computer crashes, I’ve all 50 pictures of my baby cousins and me. (Though I think I’d die if I lost pictures of my kids…assuming I had any, which I don’t.) My music’s on my iPod, I just get nervous about my stories and files because I never back them up…which I should do.
I start college next year and it’d totally be my luck for my laptop to kill itself in the middle of a big essay.
(Hi, I’m a new reader, usually a lurker, often a ranter.)
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By Val on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
Oh, that is awful!
Now I have to go home and backup mine.
I do have thumb drives full of stuff, but I once lost one and freaked.
Thanks for the heads-up!
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By Maureen on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
Oh, so sorry. I back up every month. All my photos are sorted by month and they go straight to a CD backup. I know how bad that can be to lose everything in a split second.
Heck, I even HIDE my laptop during the day in case our house is broken into… I just don’t want to lose anything.
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By Lindsay on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
We lost our whole music drive once, and our neighbors that we let copy the drive to get all of the tunes were jerks and would not let us come over and copy the files back.
We have an external drive and data gets backed up to it every night. And my harddrives are mirrored on the server downstairs, which is quirky, and sometimes you can’t access the files off it, which is why we added the external drive.
If there is an emergency, we can grab the drive and go. However, if something horrible happens like your house burns down, it would be great to have a backup off site. Not to freak anyone out any worse. I’m making DVD-Rs and stashing them at my dads.
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By scarlett on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
may I recommend - https://mozy.com/home unlimited backup for $5 per month.
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By Rachael on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
Oh. My. God. I am so sorry, that sucks so bad. Luckily my husband is a computer geek programmer crazy person, and we have an external hard drive backup thingy. I would be sick about it too…
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By ivoryfrog on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
I so know how you feel. :-(
This happened to us (http://ivoryfrogs-blog.blogspot.com/2008/04/photo-recovery-yippee.html) back in april. My boyfriend managed to get all the information back using a USB wire bought from ebay and some recovery software (I have no idea which one, sorry!)
I was in tears with the thought of all those lost photos for days. All my kids photos from when they were born and every picture of my cat were on that computer.
I back up pretty much everything now….I very nearly lost it all, not coming that close again.
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By Scout's Honor on Jun 11, 2008 | Reply
Oh shit. so it took two hard drive crashes for me to learn my lesson. The first time–stage 2 ish–they recovered most of my stuff. This last time in November, they couldn’t even read the disk (melted disks beyond 4th level–my hard drive is a melted lump of plastic) so I lost almost a year of pics. I knew it was coming and tried to upload to flickr as much as possible and I knew I had anything from my blog, but it was still heartbreaking.
So second time was a charm and I immediately subscribed to Carbonite. They have bank worthy security encryption. It’s $50 a year and it works in the background like google desktop, cataloging and backing up as you go. Best $50 peace of mind there is.
Best yet, if you get a new computer you can install all your docs, pics, etc straight to the new computer. The only thing it doesn’t back up is software, but it’s so worth it for the pics.
I can send you an email referral and we both get a few months for free–yours a trial period and me an addiotnal couple months on my contract. Let me know.
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By Scout's Honor on Jun 11, 2008 | Reply
oh, and in case of fire or thieves, I know it’s all there. Take my laptop, take my shoes, but please God, don’t take my digital pics.
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By Jo Beaufoix on Jun 11, 2008 | Reply
I am so sorry hon. I know how this feels because I have a husband who taped over Miss E’s baptism with Buffy The Vampire Slayer and we can never get it back. I would pay a lot, but it is gone. I hope you get the stuff back, I’m just so mad that it will cost you such a lot.
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By Tiaras & Tantrums on Jun 12, 2008 | Reply
Oh, this so happened to us 4 years ago - POOF - everything gone! JUST.LIKE.THAT! All pictures (which were backed up on an exterior HD - thanks to heavens), all school papers (for 2 MS degrees) all the other important stuff. Now, each night, we turn off the computer, let it rest, don’t we all need rest and do backups ALL THE TIME!!!!!!
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By Computer Repair on Jun 13, 2008 | Reply
Thanks for Shairng this usefull information. I think i should also have a Data Backup or else i have to go to Computer Repair Shop.
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By Memarie Lane on Jun 18, 2008 | Reply
We have pretty much the same setup, except we have an external hard drive we save everything to. Viruses almost always target the C drive, so an external hard drive is a pretty safe bet.
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