So it's the night before the journal writing competition entry is due, and I'm chugging along nicely when... all of a sudden it sounded like someone took a handful of thumbtacks and shoved them into my hard drive.
That's right, my computer (and my entry) just went to the big computer in the sky. It was like one of those nightmare stories that you hear from other students, but dismiss as lore. Well, it happens. And it isn't very fun.
So what did I do?
First, I popped in the recovery disk that came with my laptop, but running the disk checking utility didn't fix the hard drive. When that didn't work, I burned a Linux Live CD (think a full OS that you boot into stright from CD without touching your hard drive). From there it was just a matter of accessing the hard drive momentarily while I transferred the last saved version of my memo to a flash drive. At this point my hard drive was sounding more and more like a bicycle skidding through gravel. In the end I lost a few hours of actual work time plus a few paragraphs, not to mention 120GB of data. Unfortunate, but not a total disaster.
It's times like these where I'm really, really glad I shelled out the extra cash for a three year warranty. So take note class of 2011, get that extended warranty!
Tips on backing your docs up, after the jump.
I'm usually pretty good about backing up important files, but I approached writing the journal competition as a giant push and ended up writing most of the content in one sitting. Usually I take periodic DVD backups of all my important files, and when I'm working on a paper I simply email it to myself. This time I became so caught up in the paper that I forget to stop and email to myself. Human error, whoops.
If you are looking for a different backup solution than email, there are some pretty straightforward and automatic solutions that get the job done:
If you have a desktop, it's possible to have two hard drives that mirror each other (the technical term is RAID 0). This means that when one the hard drives starts to sound like the early stages of making popcorn, all your data is saved on the second drive.
For those on a laptop, having a second hard drive probably isn't realistic and a Network attached Storage solution may work better.
Basically, you attach an external hard drive with network capabilities to your wireless internet router, and use the included software to automate file backups. It may take a little bit of work to implement these solutions, but it's a lot better than spending precious time trying to recover a file hours before it's due.
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