Well, just hours after Derek left for Montana Sun morning, I returned from church to find an error message on the computer. After trying to get ahold of Derek and spending an hour of tech support with a nice Indian man for Dell, I accepted that our hard drive is, indeed fried.
The good news–it is still under warranty so we get a free replacement.
The bad news–I didn’t learn my lesson from when our last computer died this summer, and none of our pictures from at least the past three months are backed up. Nor are a lot of other, less-important things. (Thank the Lord I backed up all my class stuff just a couple weeks ago–but I wish I’d done it again after updating my website last week! I literally was planning on doing it on Sunday when I went in and saw the error message…)
Best Buy tried to strip our drive for us yesterday, but they’re going to have to send it to some special vacuum-sealed site somewhere because it is mechanically damaged. Let’s just put it this way…we could have ordered Carbonite for 10 years and still come out ahead of what this is going to cost us.
So my advice…please, please back up all your pictures on your computer today, right after you read this. Lost files are a bummer, but losing months of documentation of your kiddo’s life? Let me just say that I don’t want anyone to cry as hard as I was on Sunday. If the super high-tech people can’t recover our pictures, the low-grade pictures here on the blog are all we have of Tommy since my last back-up in the fall. Take the time and back up your pictures!
I just want to affirm you and this post. My MacBook’s hard drive also died recently at the precise moment when I, too, was attempting to turn it on and back up months and months of data. Good news: Still under (extended) warranty. Bad news: Everything lost.
So, I hope your faithful readers will learn from our shortcomings.