Apr 29 2009
“But those were my back-ups!”
Just two weeks after lecturing a friend of mine about the importance of back-ups, I was slammed face-first into my own hypocrisy. I could feel my productivity juices flowing this afternoon when I returned from running all my errands. I eagerly sat at my desk and opened word with the intent of updating my resume. The trusty blue glow of my external hard-drive sat patiently waiting to give me my archived resume. I navigated to open the file and my computer protested with a warning that the drive it is stored in was no longer there. So, I switched off the external drive and flipped it back on. Sometimes I had to do this, as if it needed waking up or something.
The typical whirr of the drive was replaced by a low hum beeping sound, like a distant warning signal on a submarine in the movies. I stomach turned, I could feel every ounce of my body tense up as I double-clicked the My Computer icon. Sure enough, C and D were there. E was nowhere in site. In a panic, I contact the maker’s tech support. The guy was friendly enough, had me do everything I had done prior to connecting them, (plug it into every usb port attached to the computer, make sure my drivers are updated, plug it into another computer…) Yet, good ol’ E remained elusive. He then sent me to Intel’s site to update my chipset. Problem is, he gave me the wrong link - I ended up having to search for it online and after about a half hour, finally found it through another site that linked directly to Intel. Strange, when I searched Intel’s site it said there was nothing available by that name. OK. So, by the time I get that downloaded, installed and reconnected to the support site, they are closed.
I bought my external hard-drive just a little over a year ago. It came with one year warranty. Convenient, as always. I was so excited when I bought the hard-drive because I was finally going to have a back-up of all my files - years of files. And that is exactly the purpose it served, that is until three months ago, when I bought a new computer and reformatted my old beast of a machine to hand-down to my daughter. Before reformatting, of course I moved everything over to the external. I just had not made a back up of my external. I was planning to, but just never got around to it. At the time I figured the external was still new enough, that I could wait a few months. I mean, in all the computers I’ve had, I’ve never lost a hard-drive.
I did a search online for a solution, since the manufacturer was not helpful. Apparently other people have experienced the same problem and simply switched cases. So, today I’ll find a case and attempt to transplant my contents to the new case. Let’s hope!
