Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Back it up

This is probably the most serious that you will hear me speak in a while but it deals with important matters. You know how people are always telling you to back up your documents, and save them in another spot, blah, blah, blah, (this is what I was hearing), well it turns out it's said for a reason, and I mean big time important reason. I had the misfortune of finding out just how important it is yesterday after the hard drive on my computer crashed. Wanna know how much I never thought that this sort of thing would happen to me? So much so that I didn't even bring the backup disks for my computer. The stupidity of my actions is amplified even more when I looked in my cd case and found that I brought the backup disk for my ipod, webcam and even my digital camera software; really now how did I expect that my Ipod might crash without my computer crashing in the first place. grrrr its only a year and a half old.

I think the look of panic was very apparent on my face yesterday morning at work, as I contemplated the thought of losing everything I had stored away on this piece of equipment especailly the last 4 months of photos from Europe. Yes I do like my pictures, apparently 4,4 GB of pictures to be exact! Oh and lets not forget the presentation I made for a tradeshow I'm leaving for tomorrow in Manchester, try running that old: my computer crashed and I have nothing to show for excuse, by your boss. Its like using the dog ate my homework excuse in elementary school. The way I saw it, this wasn't an option, there had to be some way of extracting all of my precious data from a computer that would no longer even start because there was a configuration error, whatever the hell that means.

So I quickly headed to the dorms where lots of computer engineers are present that would for sure be able to fix my problem, technical university and all. Four hours later, I was beginning to realize the seriousness of the problem when all possible resolutions to the problem had been exhausted by the guys. I felt like throwing the thing at them and saying "what the hell do you go to school for." Ok so I'm kidding, it was more like I felt terrible for taking them away from studying for their exams to fidget with my computer. My justification for it was that this was their real life practice test which they failed I might add (again totally kidding!)

The saga continues after we opened the computer and realized that the hard drive was actually a Fujitsu Siemens hard drive and not Toshiba as it says on my laptop. Tricky.. I'm starting to realize this is the case more and more with many products. Lights go off in my head that my friend works at the Siemens here in Zilina, they have to have a service center there I though.... wrong again. But this did lead me to some solutions. Two of the guys from Siemens, whom I am greatly indepted to now, spent all night last night figuring out how to save my files and then today trying to reformat my hard drive. Let me say that Linux is an amazing operating system for this sort of thing. That is if you know how to use it, which I clearly don't.

Long story even longer, we managed to salvage a good chunk of my files and they are safely tucked away on a DVD now. Not doing me a whole lot of good as of yet. What is still unknown is whether I will have a computer to go back to after all is said and done or if the hard drive really is done and done as "there is a high possibility" of this, or so they say. Lets hope that warranty kicks in globaly if not! What can I do but exhale a long breath and maybe one day laugh about this... I did learn a valuable lesson, which I am passing on to all of you, in hopes that the computer gods take pitty on me and reward me for my act of kindness; back up your documents once a month so that you may avoid the same fate.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home