OMFG! Disaster! What am I going to do?
I just kicked my USB drive by accident. It cracked open and the plug-in part bent. I snapped it back together but I can't get it to register on my computer. A large part of my life is on there. Stuff that I track daily, weekly, monthly. Our finances. Specifically, a five year history of our finances. Spreadsheets detailing when to make payments, how much, when to expect bills. My resume. Writing samples. My SF-10 (state employment application/history). Passwords to every on-line account I have. Argh!
I've got to stop thinking about everything I just lost. And stupid me, just last week, thought to myself that I should really backup the drive onto another one or onto a computer in case something were to happen to it. But I never did it.
remember sammy jankis.
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Welcome to my thoughts. It's sort of like Being John Malkovich. But then . . . nothing could be that cool!
5 comments:
your post sounds remarkably calm. are you still in shock?
was there anything on there that is replaceable? i mean i know recreating 5 years worth of financial information would be difficult to impossible, but is that something you MUST have? i assume you have hard copies of all the necessary documents.
most online site have an option for you to reset your password assuming you remember the one for your e-mail account.
you will keep getting bills for the things you owe. your sf-10 and resume are re-doable.
if you need help with anything let us know, but maybe this is a chance to start fresh?
Um, didn't I tell you last week to back that thing up? Your procrastination strikes again, I guess.
I cannot help you with your problem, though I sympathize, and hope that you are able to get the info back!!
With all of my dissertation information on my computer, I'd do more than cry if I lost anything, so I've set up automatic on-site and off-site backups that happen on a regular basis (once a week and every time my computer is idle for 20 minutes, respectively). I only did this after a couple of heart-in-throat moments, of course, so I definitely know how you feel. I'll be glad to tell you what I use to keep my data backed up--just ask if you're so inclined. And good luck!
OK, this may not bring you comfort, but although there are programs out there you can download and try to use for recovery, your chances are not great. Just a few weeks ago I tried to recover data from a USB drive for a graduate student who, for some reason, only had her thesis on the drive and not stored anywhere else. Do a Google search for "usb drive recovery" and try one or two out. You might also ask FIL for help. Keep the drive safe even if you can't recover anything from it - next time I come down, I'll take a look.
And although this does nothing for you now, here's what should be done in the future to prevent this - back up to an off-site location. Don't ever use thumb drives for backup purposes - I speak from painful experience. I had backed up a bunch of my files to thumb drive and then my computer completely self-destructed - no big deal, I have everything on thumb drive, right? Well, no big deal until you go visit your parents that weekend and you lose said thumb drive. Fortunately I had backed up most of my stuff to CDs and DVDs a few months back, but still not everything.
Good places to backup:
1) Hardcopy (i.e. paper) - print it out and store it somewhere. It's a backup of last resort, but at least you've got it somewhere
2) CDs or DVDs - be sure to label them with not only what's on them but also when you made the backup (that way if you need to recover, say, e-mail from 2006 you can get to it easily without hours of searching)
3) E-mail them to yourself - believe it or not, this is a pretty good way of backing stuff up, particularly if you have something like a Gmail or Yahoo account that has plenty of space. You can then make a folder for it called backups. It's off-site and these accounts routinely get backed-up. Not great for backing up applications, mind you, but excellent for backing up documents
4)Google's apps - you can sign up for this for free - it's actually a collection of applications like Word, Excel, etc that run on the web. You may not want to use them exclusively for that, but what you can do when you sign up for them is import all of your important documents. It will save them on a server. The nice thing is that if you ever go back and make changes, it keeps track of the changes you've made, so you really have access to all versions of the document.
Oh, my.. That's not good! Hope you find a way to restore.
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