...back-up, back-up and then back-up again!
My work laptop (which has my life on it) crashed Saturday evening. "Of course you had back-ups, right?" you ask. Ha! It has been close to year since I backed things up. So all the work for the last year....gone. My class handouts and PowerPoint slides...gone. All the pictures from the last year...gone. I couldn't sleep for 2 night because my mind kept catologing what I had lost. Specifically, half a dozen pictures, mostly of Shelby. Like the Halloween one where we spent an hour curling her hair for her Greek goddess outfit and it came out amazing. And her Fall Formal picture. Jed dressed as a forlorn cowboy. Gone, gone, gone....
I came into work yesterday hoping there was a small chance I could recover at least the pictures. One of the guys gave me a few options. I could buy a small adapter that would allow us to hook the laptop harddrive up to another computer. The second option he thought of as I was heading out the door. He gave me a Linux CD that allowed me to boot and run all the software straight from the CD. No installations needed, no Windows XP needed.
As the computer was starting up, my stomach was turning flips and I couldn't bare to look at the screen in case it didn't work. BUT IT DID!!!! I can see all my files! They are still there. So now I'm in a race against time trying to pull the files off before the tech guy arrives to swap out drives. I can't write to CD because the computer is running from the CD. I'm in the middle of attempting to move things to a USB drive to then move to my desktop Mac at work. It is going to take a few trips and hopefully the computer will stop freezing up on me.
I don't know what is worse: Thinking I've lost everything or knowing everything is there but having extreme difficulty getting to it???
And the irony of it all??? I taught a 2 hour course the previous Monday. The last slide of the presentation is the following:
Backups
- Save your work to disk frequently
- Always have at least 3 copies of your data
- Store you data in separate buildings
- Your hard disk is going to break. Are you ready?
Don't you love when Fate laughs in your face???
Jed Update: He never got sick that night (thank goodness) however we had a bit of nasty business to deal with the next afternoon.
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