My mission is to backup every important file on the EHD
"Anyone who knows me, even as just an acquaintance, knows I am nuts about my music... my photos... and my writing (short stories, poetry, journals)... and organizing all of the aforementioned things. On February 11th of 2005 I turned my PC on as usual and waited for the semi-outdated thing to boot, I was subsequently greeted by the Windows log-in screen minus the user choice list and space for password entry.
I figured maybe my recent media additions or software changes had taken up more precious memory and in turn had just lengthened the boot time, so I sat and waited. Five minutes, the colors at the bottom of the screen were still moving. Ten minutes, the colors stopped moving and the screen was obviously frozen. Eighteen minutes into my wait the hard drive light stopped flashing green and went orange. I knew deep down inside this wasn't a good sign but I couldn't let myself be defeated so quickly, after all I had over two years of irreplaceable music / photos / writing /documents / passwords / addresses / bookmarks stored on that machine. Marking the times and taking those mental notes made me feel like Captain Kirk, normally that would've made me smile but I was sick to my stomach over the events unfolding before me.
I tried everything I could think of to at least get the computer to boot in safe mode with networking so I could email myself the vital files before the machine died completely but to no avail. I finally called a friend, he was attending school at the time to be an IT specialist so I figured he could at least suggest some other options. He came over the next day and informed me that my computer hadn't died but that something within Windows itself had gone awry and I would most likely lose all of my precious files because I would need to do a complete system restore via the disc that came with the machine.
Lying on the floor that night, next to the computer... hard drive light still orange and motionless, I had to come to terms with losing photos of dearly departed friends and family... addresses and phone numbers of people I would never see in passing as to be able to obtain said information again... and the only copy of my friend's former band's Electra Records demo album with his vocals. It may seem a bit dramatic to people now, as it seemed to my family at the time but I value such things as much as any physical possession. After many hours I searched for the disc and started the process.
I am not going to lie; I cried, wallowed in self-pity and wished many bad things upon everyone at Microsoft. Booting the computer after completing the system restore was a lot like walking into your home after it has been cleared out by thieves. You know it is all gone, for good but you still expect to see your familiar and much loved things right where you left them. All the ugly Windows XP styling was back, see I have always returned my settings to Windows classic (even now with Vista on my new laptop) because my first OS was Windows '95 and it has always just suited me best.
After that harrowing loss and grieving process I was determined that I would never again lose 10,000+ music files... 1,200+ photos and countless other important files. I asked around, then shopped around and decided to purchase an external hard drive, a 320 GB external hard drive to be exact. From that point on I made it my mission to backup every important file on the EHD.
I was steadfast with my plan of re-updating my backups once a week, every week and double checking each file. I haven't lost anything since, even though that computer crashed again twice after that and was eventually killed by repeated power outages (the power company is in the process of compensating me for it, as it was their fault). I still use that EHD (for photos and writings) and have since purchased another, a 500 GB (for music and movies), both of which are used with my new laptop and continued strict backup-updating schedule. "
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This is a personal story from an Internet user that did not backup their files.
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