Monday, May 4, 2009

I am so smart. S M R T

Most people would consider me a fairly tech-savvy person. After all, I have a degree in Electrical Engineering, and I work for a software company which, among other things, is a market leader in backup and recovery software (both for consumer and enterprise). What's more, I own a Mac, which makes me vastly superior to all of you PC users, at least in terms of how technically hip I am.



With these stellar credentials, you have no doubt guessed that I am diligently backing up all of my valuable data on a semi-weekly basis, in case something bad happens (even though NOTHING bad ever happens to a Mac, which makes backing up my data unnecessary). You have guessed wrong, my friend.

Until now, every piece of valuable digital data that I possess, including photos, music, video, and documents is sitting exclusively and precariously on my Macbook pro hard drive. A little while ago, I was "just riding along" and my Mac suddenly stopped working (which paradoxically never happens). It looked like a hard drive failure, so of course I was freaking out. I took my Mac to the Mac store, and after a few days found out that the problem was actually with the operating system (which is flawless, in case you haven't heard), which was easily reinstalled without damaging the data on the hard drive. Whew!

After that close call, I rushed home and ordered a 1 TB external hard drive so that I could finally start backing my data up. It finally arrived (3 MONTHS ago), and has been sitting in a cupboard up until last night. Hey, I've been really busy. Just read this post from Rick. It's basically the same sort of thing.

Yesterday I heard of some friends losing all of their data, so last night I finally unwrapped my external HD and went to work. While I was looking into the best way to backup my data, I decided to do a little housekeeping on my computer so that I didn't backup a bunch of data I didn't need. I deleted a file here, a folder there, etc. And since it had been, um, forever since I deleted my "Trash", I did that too.

I was finally ready to backup my data. I selected my docs, my photos, videos, and my music. Wait a minute, where did my music go? To make a long story even longer, my music had been deleted. All of it. And my trash emptied. As in forever.

So lets recap here. Before last night, I had never backed up my data. I had also never actually lost any data. Then, as soon as I decided to do the responsible thing and backup my data, I somehow managed to delete all 12 Gigs of music that I owned. Forever. Because I am a freaking genius.

Excuse me while I add some lighter fluid to myself (which I've already started on fire).

I installed some software on my Mac that is supposed to recover files that were emptied from Trash. It has been scanning my Mac's HD for the past 5 hours or so. Pray for me. And send me your music.

6 comments:

Ski Bike Junkie said...

The hard drive on my mac mini crashed a few months ago. So I bought a macbook and a new hard drive and had all the recovered stuff from the crashed hard drive backed up on the macbook and then transferred it back to the new hard drive on the mac mini.

But I had to pay the mac store to do that for me. Actually they did it for "free" since I had just bought a new mac book. And they knew but I didn't that the "new" mac books would be coming out 10 days later and the mac book I had just purchased would be available for less, probably much less, than I paid for it.

Good luck.

KanyonKris said...

Forget slasher movies, your scenario is much more frightening to me. I've got some backing up to do tongiht.

nate said...

Dang man, that sucks. There is about 20 gigs of music on my ftp server and you're welcome to it.

Aaron said...

SBJ: yes, the Mac Store was filled with tech hipsters like you and me, willing to pay gobs of money for overpriced gadgetry that will be outdated in 3-4 months.

KK: Careful - backing data up has been known to delete your data forever.

Nate: Ironically, your ftp site plays a role in this. I downloaded an album from you and had integrated it into iTunes, so I tried deleting the extra copy of the album that was in my music folder. The computer momentarily froze, so I tried to delete it again. Unbeknownst to me, the second time I tried to delete it, my computer actually deleted the folder that was just below it (which contained all of my music). And then I emptied the trash.

Rick Sunderlage said...

Please tell me you didn't lose the Paula Abdul stuff. If you need the "Shut up and dance" disc, you can rip from me. I have 2 copies.

Aaron said...

Good news, I just recovered almost all of my music using Data Rescue II.

Rick - that includes Paula, the Jonas Brothers and Kenny G, so you don't need to worry about getting me your extra copies.