Backup, backup, and then backup some more!

[mouse_chalk]

The hard drive in my laptop died last night. My laptop froze, which pretty much never happens given I have a MacBook, so I rebooted it, and then it wouldn't come back on. I had a white screen of doom.

Steve worked on it in his office today and discovered that the hard drive is indeed KAPUT!


Now, we have a very large external hard drive, which we wirelessly backup to daily at a set time. But sometime about a month ago mine didn't work for some reason- it might have been that I wasn't at home and it obviously wouldn't work so I temporarily disabled the backup schedule. Or maybe it had an error for some reason that I didn't investigate/ask Steve to investigate. Whatever it was, I didn't bother about it. BIG MISTAKE!

It's pretty unlikely that we'll be able to get any data off of my old deaded hard drive. Hopefully most of my older stuff (pictures dating back to 2003, every picture ever taken of the bunnies, my grandad who recently passed away, holidays of a lifetime, etc etc) will be safely backed up on our Time Capsule upstairs. But I will have lost all of the pictures from my hen night, and a bunch of other pictures of the bunnies etc that I loved from recently. I hadn't uploaded my hen night pictures onto Facebook yet, so the girls haven't seen them, and I'm kind of gutted about it.


Anyway, my point is that this could have all been a lot, lot worse. Everyone, make sure you back up your pictures and everything that is dear to you! Get an external hard drive. Make CDs of stuff and keep them safe. IN a safe, even. Don't think 'I haven't backed up for ages/ever... Oh. I'm sure it'll be fine, I'll get around to it some day'. Do it now! Don't let your memories that are dear to you get erased by crappy technology failures...


Rant/lecture over! Hopefully I'll have a new hard drive and be back up and running properly in a couple of days...

 

[mouse_chalk]

Oh, and I just have to leap to my MacBook's defence. It wasn't it's fault that the hard drive failed.

About a year ago, me and Steve both bought cheapo hard drives online to upgrade to, at around the same time. Steve put his in his spare MacBook, which died out of the blue a few weeks ago, having been barely used (given it's a spare). Mine died yesterday just days out of warranty.

So it's not the Macs' fault! The MacBook would never do anything to hurt me, I'm sure, LOL.

Stupid cheap hard drive

 

[kirsterz09]

what a shame!! It did the same to use a few years back with our computer, causing us to lose files and pics too!
It's such a shame that you can't get anything back :hug:

 

[JadeIcing]

Odd we just backed up yesterday and I am getting an external hard drive soon.

 

[Happi Bun]

How do you back-up files and pictures? I ask because I tried using CD-R Disks but it wouldn't work. Do you need floppy disks?

 

[BethM]

I was just thinking I need to do a backup. I do mine on an external portable drive, but not often enough.

 

[TinysMom]

We use a thumb drive (I think that is what its called) - they're pretty cheap now. We get ours at Walmart when they go on sale.

 

[hartleybun]

you have my sympathies as hubby's new laptop committed computercide last week. luckily he does back up regularly tho' so not much lost. as it's under warranty he's sent it back. as he cant be without a computer and the one i use is too old and slow he went out and got a desktop model, mumbling something about 'laptops'. at least the new one speaks to the printer without throwing a fit like my laptop:rollseyes

hopefully others will have pics of your hen nightray:

im now seriously considering putting my pics onto a disc - many of my family pics are in albums but id hate to lose the ones of the bunnies and dogs.

hope it turns out ok!

donna

 

[Violet23]

Note to self and everyone else, when it comes to hard drives, get good ones. I reccomend Seagate (I worked at a computer repair store for almost a year, they were the best ones), or Western Digital. This makes me worried about my info, need to do some backup tonight

 

[mouse_chalk]

I am FINALLY back online!! It felt like forever, although it was only a week. My new hard drive is installed- a 320GB one (since it was only about £3 more than a 240GB one) and my stuff has all been restored- that took hours and hours to do. I have lost all the pictures I put on here since 16th July- including my hen night pictures and some bunny pictures, but it could have been much worse!

Now my machine is a lot faster as well- we think the old hard drive was just rubbish and crappy. My new one is a Western Digital I think. And my backups are working, so hopefully I won't have to go through that again!

Now that I can view the forum on a proper screen instead of my little iPhone I have a lot of catching up to do!

 

[Michaela]

Ugh sorry you lost those pictures Jen. =/
I really need to do a backup of my files actually, I have some saved on disks but I should just get an external hard drive I think.

 

[pamnock]

If using thumb drives, I would advise backing up on 2 different ones. I've had thumb drives fail and lost everything on them

Pam