Reset to Zero

Well, it finally happened. After years of paying lip service to the warnings, shrugging off the advice, and making half-hearted efforts to comply the worst case scenario occurred. The hard drive on my work laptop failed, taking two years of data with it.

What makes this worse is that this has also been my main computer since last December. In an effort to fast track our savings (and escape a poorly managed apartment) my wife and I packed almost all of our belongings into a storage locker and moved in with her parents. Due to the fact that it was already glitchy, I decided to place my laptop in storage and make do with the one supplied by work. Not a perfect solution, but one that would tide me over until we bought a house.

Fortunately, all is not lost. The service desk at work is trying to retrieve the data from the drive, and I had backed up a fair amount of it on a portable USB drive. Sadly, some of my more important files were not backed up, including a number of personal projects at various stages of completion. I’m hoping the service desk will successfully retrieve the files, but I’m prepared for the worst.

It will take a while to get back to where I was before the crash, but then this could also be a great opportunity. Some of the old files were a little disorganised, so now I can start over with better structure and planning. Sure, it’s going to take a while to get back to where I was, but one thing I do have at the moment is time. If only in one hour chunks as I commute to and from work.

Let this be a timely lesson to you all. No hard drive is perfect and they’ll probably all fail sooner or later. If you’ve got important files, back them up, and in multiple places too. It may sound excessive, but it’s better than the alternative.