:120123: My captors want you to go back up your data. Right now.
So there I was, sitting at my computer, minding my own business (as usual). Suddenly, a warning box popped up on the screen. Apparently, I had removed a device without ejecting it properly.
Nonsense! There was the drive in question, still attached, plugged in securely. The little light was on. I rested my hand on it and could feel it humming away like a good little external drive that has all of my pictures and music on it. Good as new.
I closed the little warning box. Right behind that window was an identical warning box. I closed that one, too—and there was another one. I probably closed about 40 of these warnings in rapid succession before they were all gone.
And my trusty little drive ceased to exist on the desktop. Unplugged, replugged. Nothing. Time to bring out the big guns.
So there I was, sitting at my computer, minding my own business (as usual). Suddenly, a warning box popped up on the screen. Apparently, I had removed a device without ejecting it properly.
Nonsense! There was the drive in question, still attached, plugged in securely. The little light was on. I rested my hand on it and could feel it humming away like a good little external drive that has all of my pictures and music on it. Good as new.
I closed the little warning box. Right behind that window was an identical warning box. I closed that one, too—and there was another one. I probably closed about 40 of these warnings in rapid succession before they were all gone.
And my trusty little drive ceased to exist on the desktop. Unplugged, replugged. Nothing. Time to bring out the big guns.
I opened the disk utility, and there was my drive, but damaged. The drive could be neither mounted, nor ejected, nor repaired.
I'm really good about backing up my data fairly regularly. In fact, I had just backed it up on December 31st. I have taken lots of pictures since then, though, and I wanted them back.
I wasn't worried about anything from the beginning of time through the end of 2011; all that was safe and backed up already. I just needed 2012.
I found a data recovery program that was extracting data pretty well from my drive and saving it nicely. Awesome. Unfortunately, there was no way to select which data I needed, and it was saving starting at the beginning of time. I didn't have enough free space on any other drive for all of it.
I tried another program. And another. And another.
All of them were either unsuccessful, or they would let me see my data, but only save it if I was willing to fork over $100 - $200. If I had lost everything, $100 would totally be worth it, but I only wanted 20 days worth of data. Can I get that for $5? Each of these attempts took several hours, as I waited for each program to find what it could find from my faulty external drive. I did nothing else yesterday.
I finally concluded that I probably could have spent all day taking some new pictures instead. I wiped the drive, and started over. Now it works just fine. It has been reloaded with its 0-2011 data once again. And I backed it up today, just for good measure.
Pictures I took in 2012, like this chair with the pumpkins, that I wasn't quite satisfied with and wish I could keep editing, are now stuck in this permanent state. I wish I could get that original back and edit it differently. Oh well.
Have you backed up your data today?
Go do it.
Right now.
I'm really good about backing up my data fairly regularly. In fact, I had just backed it up on December 31st. I have taken lots of pictures since then, though, and I wanted them back.
I wasn't worried about anything from the beginning of time through the end of 2011; all that was safe and backed up already. I just needed 2012.
I found a data recovery program that was extracting data pretty well from my drive and saving it nicely. Awesome. Unfortunately, there was no way to select which data I needed, and it was saving starting at the beginning of time. I didn't have enough free space on any other drive for all of it.
I tried another program. And another. And another.
All of them were either unsuccessful, or they would let me see my data, but only save it if I was willing to fork over $100 - $200. If I had lost everything, $100 would totally be worth it, but I only wanted 20 days worth of data. Can I get that for $5? Each of these attempts took several hours, as I waited for each program to find what it could find from my faulty external drive. I did nothing else yesterday.
I finally concluded that I probably could have spent all day taking some new pictures instead. I wiped the drive, and started over. Now it works just fine. It has been reloaded with its 0-2011 data once again. And I backed it up today, just for good measure.
Pictures I took in 2012, like this chair with the pumpkins, that I wasn't quite satisfied with and wish I could keep editing, are now stuck in this permanent state. I wish I could get that original back and edit it differently. Oh well.
Have you backed up your data today?
Go do it.
Right now.
RSS Feed
