Picture, for a moment, the scene: The Blue Screen Of Death Pops up, your computer switches itself off…and WON’T SWITCH BACK ON. Imagine the horror of realising that ALL your photos, e-mails, documents, videos, music is inaccessible. All the programs you use are gone. All your bookmarks in your internet browser are gone. Including the ones that allow you to login to your website, your e-mail, your favourite internet places. All gone.
In my case, I knew that some of my data is backed up – the financial stuff and some of the business stuff… but not all of it. But my photos are not backed up. I always thought “ah, it’ll be fine, I’ll be able to get them back somehow”. But here’s the thing: The photos from my recent holiday, I can’t. I was away on my own. All the photos I took were on my laptop hard drive, and if that’s gone, that’s it. I can’t get them back. I’m not going to lie, there’s been tears, and snot, and a little bit of wailing!
It sucks to think you may have lost everything on your laptop. It sucks not to know the e-mails of your friends. It sucks to know that the courses, ebooks, audios and notes you’ve accumulated over the last 8 years or so are gone. It sucks to know that the e-mails from my friend who passed away in 2008 could be gone. I’m hoping that my friend will be able to recover at least some of the stuff, but those e-mails, I fear, are gone.
What am I saying? It more than sucks! It’s awful! I haven’t slept properly for 4 nights because I keep waking up in the middle of the night thinking ‘oh god, I’ve lost that. Probably’. It’s a horrible situation to be in. Bear in mind, I work on my laptop – all my client e-mails and details are in there, all my articles I’ve written since 2005, all the products and ideas for products, my working life is all in that fried hard drive. Most of the important business stuff IS backed up, but not all of it.
In the past, when I’ve thought about backups, I’ve been pretty blase. Lose all my music? I’ve got the CD’s. Lose all my photos? I’ll heckle friends for them (even though they haven’t got them…sigh). Lose all my e-mails, bookmarks, calendar reminders? I’ll remember them, I’ll find them somehow. Yeah, I can find most of them somehow, and the reminders I’ll remember when someone heckles me to ask why I haven’t done whatever it is! But the problem with that approach is that it will take WEEKS to track down e-mails and such. If I was using cloud storage (on’t internet) or everything was backed up, I wouldn’t have needed to worry. There would have been no tears, no ‘oh no, I’ve lost x, y, z’, no ‘buggrit, got to search Auntie Google for how to get into my e-mail’, no concern.
It would merely have been a few days without my laptop. Instead of someone having to take out the hard drive and try to get my data, I could have just gone and got a new hard drive as soon as I knew the problem. I’d probably be back up and running by now in fact. And I’d know that I have most of what I need. Although I have no idea how to recover google chrome bookmarks! But the stress would have been a quarter of what it has been.
So, you know me, I’m a mainly quite positive person, and I’ve been taking care of myself, taking it easy, being as relaxed as I can and trying to remember there’s a gift in this somewhere. One of the gifts I’ve thought of is this: if my experience stops ONE person from having to go through this, it won’t have been in vain. Trust me, it’s awful. You do not want to go through it. So keep your stuff safe, back up ALL your data. There’s online cloud storage options that cost not much.
Imagine just for a moment losing all the data on your laptop – all your music, photos, e-mails, documents, and BACK THEM UP. And if you have backups, check them. Check what is being backed up. Check that you have everything you need to access that backup if the worst happens. One of my worst moments was realising that my backup required an encryption key to get it on another PC…and I had no idea what that was. That horrifying moment when I realised I might lose everything I’ve worked on in the last 8 years. Shudder. Fortunately I found it, and that particular horror was averted.
Make sure you are protected and backed up and everything you need can be recovered should your hard drive fry or get stolen or get dropped in the bath or something. One of the things I started a couple of months ago is a document with all the websites I need to keep my online world in tiptop shape – my web hosts, and stuff like that, things that I rarely need, but when I do need them, I really need them! I reccommend you have something similar – on your computer, backed up somewhere…and on paper! Keep your stuff safe, trust me, you don’t want to go through this!
PS As I was working on this e-mail, there was an error message saying it couldn’t save the draft – ahahahahahahahahahhahahaha….thankfully I didn’t lose the lot, but you know, it illustrates my point – don’t trust technology!!!!
Love
Donna.x
Comments
16 responses to “OnTheBeach: Keep Your Stuff Safe”
Thanks Anna – oh how horrible for you! Still keeping fingers and toes crossed!! x
Ouch! Been there and done that many years ago. I lost so much, and still miss a lot of photos from my daughters first year, and those hurt most of all. Other things I can live without, but those are things that never will come back. Hope things will be solved and that your friend can save some important things.
Lol. I can understand that Patricia – especially given the stories coming out about privacy invasions of late! My take is I’m happier to take the privacy risk than lose my data (again!) at this point…as well as having an external hard drive back up! (my stuff is probably going to be backed up in 100 places from now) A friend of mine was telling me lately that she leaves her photos on her camera until she takes them to a photo place to get ‘real’ photos – she never uses the computer! x
Donna, I don’t trust the cloud to keep my things safe or private. I keep all my important stuff, pics and documents backed up to flash drive so if the hard drive goes down I haven’t lost it at all.Personal information and passwords I don’t keep on my computer at all because I am a wee bit paranoid about hackers after having email hacked once. I miss having my Polaroid camera that gave me my pics right away. I hate depending on digital cameras and the computer and then having to make the extra step of printing out the pics I took if I want a hard copy. I’m a tech dinosaur and happy to admit it.
Thanks Cassandra – it’s ‘orrible isn’t it?! I am still waiting to see if my computer guy can rescue my stuff…but I will be doing automated backups online from now on – as Chris said (above) the best backup is automated backup! Otherwise, the memory of the horror fades, we get complacent again and we’re no better off! Get to it! x
This happened to me many moons ago and I vowed to backup everything from then on. I’m better at it, but still haven’t done a total backup. I got another scare about 5 months ago when the hard drive nearly went to hard drive heaven. Luckily, the computer guy was able to get to everything and save it before something bad happened. STILL, I need to take this stuff seriously! Your post is truly a nightmare worth remembering.
Yay! I’m glad you got the message Melissa! The best way (I’m learning!) to back up is automatically…and to CHECK the backups! I thought some stuff was being backed up that wasn’t. BAH! And I’m on Plan C to try to recover data…still praying with fingers and toes crossed! x
Heather it’s awful isn’t it? It took a week to stop wanting to cry when I thought about it! Thank you. xx
I’m pretty lazy with backing things up, but this post will change that, I think! I’m off to back up my files now. I hope you manage to salvage some of yours.
Nightmare situation, I’ve had something similar happen to me, photo’s are the worst to lose. Great post and reminder on backing everything up.
Thanks Tanja! It’s surprisingly horrifying isn’t it?! Lol. It’s taken me a week to come down off the ceiling! Maybe it’s a positive thing to get us to stop being complacent eh?! I’m experimenting with google drive and such now. Still waiting to see about my data 🙁 x
*nods* – oh, I SO hear you, Donna. I remember right back at the beginning of my business, my computer had a meltdown and I FREAKED out.
It turned out to be the motherboard, which meant my data was intact, but it was still terrifying, and it caused me to put in play the systems I use now. I pretty much work off Dropbox and Google Drive now… Plus, every week or two I back up everything to an external hard-drive.
I haven’t had another computer meltdown since then, thank gods, but if I do, at least I know my data’s safe!
Blessings (and I really hope you manage to get most of your data back one way or another)
TANJA
Thanks hon. It’s such an arse-ache isn’t it?! Lol. Yep, will be getting external hard disk…and online backup (automated) too. That’s if I get my operating system problem sorted! x
I haven’t got everything back (yet!). I’ve got a new hard drive, and the old one is with a mate who *might* be able to rescue it (still praying with fingers and toes crossed!). My new problem is new hard drive, no OS. AAAARGH (bangs head against desk)…and I can’t read the encryption key on the backside of my laptop so it’s a new licence, or another OS. Trying to see it as an opportunity to try other OS…but then the problems arise of using camera/phone etc software and backups…most I believe understand windows as an OS. Oops, sorry, ranting…bet you’re glad you commented! x
I feel your pain, and I hope you’ll get your stuff back!
I lost so much of my stuff through moving, changing computers and having backed up carelessly (or forgotten), etc, that I’m now a convert. Everything I’d be sore to lose, I back up – twice. Therefore it’s in three places, on the PC, on the laptop, and on my external harddisk (warmly recommended – it cost 50 bucks and it holds EVERYTHING).
I back up once a week and it feels as safe as online technology is going to get.
Much love and big hugs!! xx
The cloud is out there waiting for your data… Backup is at it’s best when it is totally automated. Loads of options these days, http://www.livedrive.com being just one.
So glad you got everything back!
Chris