(Let's linkify this one ... a la
Nick Pulido)
My Western Digital 250 GB (pronounced, "
JI-guh-bite")
hard drive with my recorded history in this world for the past three or so years gave out on me. I haven't checked my
e-mail in nearly a week, a task that would be somewhat ludicrous without my
spam filters (as I now have collected over 1,775 messages). About
2 GB of e-mail (seven year's worth), over a hundred programs (I don't even have a
virus scanner installed--that's something to post on an
Internet blog), six years worth of
photographs (thousands I tell you), half a dozen
movies, all of my work from
classes this past year (though I have hard copies of most), and scores of other things I wish not to contemplate were all on there.
I took the thing into the
Computer Store on Tuesday and the next day they told me "they couldn't even read it." Bull shit. They either didn't try hard enough or are just plain incompetent. And they damn well better not try to
charge me $40 if they didn't even run a single diagnostic.
I
offered some money to anyone willing to help me out. This
one guy had some $1600 software that he said he'd use and that he wanted $200 for a recovery job as well as extra room to store the data. No thanks.
Someone else offered to do it and burn everything on backup, but I ain't 'bout to burn 358
CD-R's ... that'd take about
24 hours if I didn't want to sleep (not to mention $120's worth of discs).
So here's what I might do ...
I'm bidding on a couple of
SATA PCI cards on eBay. Unless I come across a good deal on a UATA/UDMA for about 200 GB (<$120), I'll wait until I pick up the card and get a pair of 100 GB SATA drives and maybe even venture into the world of
striping ... or not (I suppose I've had enough hard drive woes to want to bother). I know, I'll just copy the data back over, then
RAID them.
Anyway, I'll have to download a crack copy of
GetDataBack (or if I have money, buy it) and see how much I can pull off my old drive. It'll be a long, drawn-out process ... but it will hopefully yield at least 80% or so of my data.
Afterwards, my tower's going to go through an overhaul. I'll need to fix/figure out what's wrong with my
CD-RW drive and find room for all my drives. I like the idea of keeping my OS drive at about 8 GB, though it has been a bit restricting. Assuming I figure out why
NTFS is giving me so much trouble and resist the urge to format (unless extensive backing up has taken place) for at least six months, I can only propose that keeping my OS drive somewhat
clean and trim is a good idea (you try keeping an OS drive under 8 GB).
What's coming in ... possibly an
Airport Express (if I can score one for less than $30 ... doubtfully) ... an
XTrac optical mouse pad for my soon-to-be-refurbished
keyboard drawer ... half a dozen
round cables (I wonder if SATA comes in round ... that might be a bit extreme) ... a cheap micro-screwdriver set ... I suppose that's it. I'm also eyeing to see if I can get any 512 MB
Cruzer Micro drives for under $30--they're pretty
hot.
All-in-all my distracted obsession has been avoiding the "real problem." It's pretty bad, but I think it'll work out in the end. They've always been supportive and it's about time I faced tomorrow.
And what's made it all worthwhile, is that there's someone else to tell me it's going to be alright. I thought it was enough when that someone was me, but it turns out it wasn't.
Life beckons, adieu ...
