Had what I consider to be about the worst thing that could happen to me that doesn’t involve the people I love. I had a hard disk failure. And I had not been good about backups. I’m in the process of recovery, but even the best-case scenario will take me several weeks to get my machine back the way I wanted it. Some things I have thought about already — I’m sure more will hit me as I get more into triage mode.
- I am far too dependent on this dumb little machine.
- Well-organized paper doesn’t really need much of a backup
- I use a lot less software than I used to — mainly about 20 programs on a regular basis — should be much easier to reinstall and I’ll have a much cleaner machine.
- Even though I use the machine every day, I couldn’t recall about half the icons on my toolbar
- It’ll never happen to you — until it happens to you.
- A backup “just the other day” was a lot longer than that ago.
- My statement that this is the worst thing that could happen clearly is wrong, and I’ve got it pretty good, overall.
- A 60GB (or 300GB) hard drive just means you have that much more data to lose.
The thing I initially thought I will likely miss the most (if I can’t get it back) is the status of my Inbox. I can likely recreate most if not all of my records and files, but those conversations can’t be recouped. And that made me give pause to the fact that if I can’t remember what is said/being said, then I must be party to some pretty lousy communications.Postings might be a bit skimpy in the near term, although I’ll likely need a diversion…
Backup. Regularly. Automatically. Religiously.
