My hard-drive died yesterday. I lost everything. You probably think that this is a minor loss, and that my title was over-dramatic, but it is a pretty painful loss.
I lost all my pictures.
I lost all my music.
I lost all my class notes. (I use my laptop at school.)
I lost all my college essays/brainstorms. Fortunately, I sent an email to my college counselor and attached my most recent drafts on everything that is going to Yale, so the really important stuff is safe.
As you can imagine, I was devastated.
The good news is that I actually have a significant amount if it backed up. I bought this laptop in April, so all my documents, pictures, and music from before April is saved on my old laptop.
For a while, I forgot about this, and I was actually driven to the point of tears. I wasnt crying about the loss of my documents or music. I was crying over the pictures. I don't have the greatest memory, so I use photos to bring me back to moments in the past.
I thought I had lost all the pictures from my trip in Switzerland, and this drove e=me to tears. I miss those days out there like none other, and they were the happiest days of my life. I suffered from depression for 1 year after returning (for a variety of reasons, all stemming from coming home), and the pictures are all I have left from the trip. I was heartbroken when I believed that I had lost all of them.
Fortunately, the pictures are stored on my old computer; well, at least I think they are. I just hope that my old computer will boot up. It's an ancient piece of machinery.
P.S. I lost all my copies of my blog posts and pictures I used in posts. I lost the original copy of my blogger icon picture too.
22 comments:
Shit happens
Que lastima, Jason. No, your title isn't overdramatic at all. I'd be a basket case if the same happened to me. In fact I obsess over this because any time I add new files to my laptop I back it up with a portable hard drive that I bought last year. These are getting cheaper by the month, it seems, and you can easily get 500GB+ of storage space for under $100.
However, I imagine it's a tremendous loss. All of these files add some sort of meaning to your life, and to lose them is like, well, losing a part of your life (hope I'm not being too cliche).
If it happened to me, I would be devastated, so I don't think your title was over-dramatic at all.
You could bring your hard disk to one of those labs that recover lost data. I don't how much it is, but you can request an estimate of costs.
Shit!
Your blog pics are all in stored in single location, luckily. Go to http://picasaweb.google.com, and they should all be there, available for download.
Best of luck!!
Be careful about taking it for repair, if there are any dirty pictures on it.
Jason i know how you feel. My hard drive crashed in my emac that i had a couple of years ago. All my pics and files gone never to be seen again. I learned a painful lesson. Now what i do is copy all my pics and music files onto usb flash memory sticks that i keep in my desk. The usb sticks are small and I can them around my neck and take them with me to my friends house if i want to share pics and stuff with them. The usb memories sticks don't cost that much. But they sure can help save from future pain of loosing everything on a hard drive. Somebody once said it's not if a hard drive crashes. It's when a hard drive crashes.
Oh man that sucks!! Sadly, you will be the poster child for regular backups. Sorry you didn't get to do one before the crash.
But yes, since they are so many ultra-important things, I think you definitely might be served best by looking into one of the data recovery services, they can do great things.
But they way, what exactly do you mean by "died" - there are many different types of failure and some (the FAT table or drive partitions deleted) are easier to recover than others). Smoke coming out of the unit = bad. So, deffo check into recovery options.
ps: if you need to chat about anything I'm usually around.
*hugs*
Losing a HD is super painful - but if you are smart and learn from your experiences, you will buy a backup drive, and schedule automated daily backups. I use a ReadyNAS and it automatically backs up all my data every hour, 24/7 (when my notebook is logically attached to the network.) The bonus of the ReadyNAS is that it can be configured to mirror itself, so even if the backup drive fails, there is another drive that is an exact copy. Simply replace the failed drive, and it rebuilds itself. Best $350 I ever spent.
Also J, if you are using Vista, there is a pretty robust set of recovery tools built into the OS, so using the install DVD could possibly rescue you.
In Germany we have specialists for data recovery but they charge 365 Euro to 1000 Euro for their service.
You have such specialists as well in USA. Probably your files are not lost.
RR
I can understand you were feeling devastated, hope you could restore something.
I really am sorry. As someone who is horrible with technology, I fear the same fate. Good luck and hugs!
Wow . . . that hurts. I would freak out if my HD crashed. I've only got about half my stuff backed up on an external hard drive . . . my "core" stuff.
I hope you're able to recover and salvage something from that HD. Also I hope your pics are safe on your ancient computer so you can retrieve them.
Whenever it happens it is devastating. I try to back up once a month just in case.
oh my. that really sucks. good to hear tho that they were backed up.
i've been thining about burning stuff onto discs.... i guess this is just a reminder that i should get to it...
May I suggest something for about a 100.00 bucks you can get a portal usb hard drive. I love mind. I have always ran two hard drives. But this thing is great instead of being tie to one computer. I can use it on any computer. Worth the price to me.
The guy at the tech store said it would cost over 1000 to salvage the data on this HD.
Also, he suggested buying a non-portable external HD because it should be cheaper and will work just fine
oh shit that sucks. but at least you had most of it backed up.
i should do that... you got me all paranoid now >_<
(>.<) i know how u feel..
we hve 3 desktops and 3 laptops at home.. when i got my new laptop at the end of last yr, i went to copy all my music, pictures, and movies from desktop to laptop.
and im thankful i did too! 1 of the desktops (the one i use) crashed.. the motherboard died and destroyed the HD as well (U.U)
was freaking out wonderin if i copied everythng over to my laptop.
(^.^) and i did! i trust my Fujitsu laptop waaay more than desktop
Oh man...that really sucks. :( I had my old pc die on me in 2008. I lost everything...pictures, music, documents, etc. The music was upsetting, but it was all ripped from my CD collection, so it was recoverable with a little work. But like you, it was the loss of my photos that really hit me hard. I really hope you can recover them from your old computer. Best of luck my friend!
You don't have a friend working at a tech store who is able to salvage the data?
May be that would reduce the costs.
RR
Jason
hey man sorry to hear this and i hope most of what is important ot you can be recovered somehow
but hey buy a external harddrive and back up things ok. Lessoned learned but it sucks i know
take care and be safe
bob
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