It has struck me recently, as I finally accept the death of my hard drive and try to move forward, that the reason I have been so devastated (and deeply, deeply in denial) about the death of the drive, is that computers are deeply mysterious to me. I spend a great deal of time working with them. I entrust massive amounts of information and images to them, all of us use them for communication and banking and…I don’t know about you, but I have absolutely no idea how it works. My knowledge of my computer – despite it being VITAL to my career and lifestyle – is pretty much driven by what I need to know and what I cobble together and manage to infer from things I read and hear around me. (Note the difference between “things I infer” and “facts”.)
The day the laptop Bricked (as in “turned into a” ) I remember looking at Joe and Ken and not being too upset. I mean, there’s always something you can do…right? There is some sort of backup (I hear people mention that) and things on computers are “restored” (I hear that all the time too.) one of those things would work for me.
I stood there, not too concerned really…sure, everything on my computer was gone, but I knew where it was. It was on “The Server”. One time I asked Ken where all the blog entries were saved. “On the server” he said. (Score one point for the server) then I noticed where my mail was coming from, “the server” (two points) then when I was connecting one Mac to the other in the house…the button you click on your laptop is “connect to server”. I took those three pieces of information and concluded (inferred, really) that the server had all my stuff. Knowing this brought me enormous relief as Joe and Ken stood there telling me my drive was dead. I sighed thankfully. It was all on the server.
I’m pretty sure that Ken and Joe flipped for who was going to have to tell me that servers don’t work that way. Despite their names, servers actually serve you very little.
I still wasn’t upset. When I bought this laptop I got a lot of extra memory. Seemed to me that now that the drive was dead, and the server didn’t serve, that it was a darned terrific move on my part, getting all that extra memory. Turns out?
Computer memory doesn’t remember anything. Nothing. It forgets it all when you turn it off. Your DRIVE remembers things, your memory FORGETS things. I know this is hard to hear, but if you are, as I was, labouring under the delusion that there was no way that some of the smartest people in the world would design something like computer memory and give it such a misleading name, or put all of the actual memory in the part of the computer that breaks most often…well. If my pain can save just one knitter….
Turns out all of my things…my writing, my photos (I had some of those on cd) the Knitters without Borders Database….all gone. All. Gone. Way Gone. Joe and Ken had though that I was smart enough to be doing a backup (never underestimate my stupidity) and I thought that since they “make blog go” that they must be doing all the vital things with the computer. They are computer GUYS. This seems to be the crux of the problem. They figure that something like backups are computers 101. They can’t imagine that everyone doesn’t know how to do a backup, or doesn’t do one. They don’t understand that those of us who came to computers on a “need to know” basis and inferred the rest might have missed the day that they explained that memory forgets things and drives remember things and all of your eggs are in one very breakable basket so you have to store things in another way. (Though it’s just so obvious now that I can’t believe I didn’t know.)
By the way? If anything I’m telling you is at all surprising and you’re getting a vulnerable feeling? Here is how to do a backup on a Mac. and here’s Windows. I’ll wait here. (If you use something else, like Linux it’s my understanding that you are either a big enough geek to know how or you live with one. Ask them.)
In any case, the next phase with a bricked drive is to send it to the hospital. My drive went first to the computer emergency room where they confirmed it was bricked and said it wouldn’t “mount” or “spin”. (Turns out that drives work a lot like record players. The drive spins and some high tech fancy reads the spinning record. ) From there (stopping only while I wrote terrible, terrible letters to Steve Jobs that he didn’t answer) it went to the place of it’s birth. Incredibly one of my readers is an engineer type at the company that makes that drive and sells them to Apple, and she very generously offered high level attempts to recover things. She sent me emails periodically to tell me how it was going. She coerced other engineers and tech people into helping her. They used robots and sterile labs. They did things I can’t even fathom, and after each attempt, I would get an email.
“It didn’t work, but don’t give up…there is some other insanely clever thing we can try.”
It was hopeful and crushing at the same time. Each attempt brought us closer to running out of options, and each attempt could conceivably have worked.
Finally, there was one thing left, and it failed…and there was nothing they could do. Nothing. The truth, after months of denial, effort, trying and superhuman rescue attempts was that not one byte of information had been retrieved, nor would it ever be. My stuff was gone, all gone. It was nowhere. The sick reality finally hit me. It was not going to be ok. I had lost it all.
Sorry. This is upsetting. Here,
I finished the Loksins socks. (Lisa Souza sock yarn in “Turqua“)
Aren’t they pretty? Feel better? I know I do.
I’ve spent the time since then trying to pull it together. I’ve had to rebuild all my addresses, phone numbers, the writing I lost (oh, that still makes me nauseous) and now that I more or less have it all back (or have reconciled myself to the loss) the only thing that’s left to rebuild is the Knitters Without Borders database.
What I had before was a list (private) of all the people who had donated, their email addresses and the amount of their donations.
Since I was in the process of tallying more donations when the drive bricked, I also lost all of the emails that were yet to be added on. I want to rebuilt the database so that two things can happen. The tally in the sidebar can be correct and we can know what we accomplished, and to have a complete listing of all the names of the knitters who gave so you can all have an equal chance in the draws for gifts.
I need your help to make it work. If you have ever contributed to Knitters Without Borders please read and sort out which of the two things you should do. (Please read carefully.) The total in the sidebar is accurate up to this last December 26th, plus it has anything really recent (since the crash) on it too.
1. If you donated and sent me an email to tell me about it (probably after December 26th) and I did not acknowledge it – PLEASE RESEND IT. The original is fine, if it’s still in your email. Make sure your email has your name, the email to contact you at, the amount of your donation and what currency it’s in. I’ll send an you acknowledgement as I work through the list and you are added.
The email address just for sorting out this mess is kwbATyarnharlotDOTca
2. If you have EVER donated (from the beginning until now) and I did acknowledge it please resend me just your name. Please put “Name” in the subject line of the email so I can sort things easily. I don’t need to know how much you gave because I have already added you to the total, and we’re all working together. The email to send your name is the same one, kwbATyarnharlotDOTca.
(Change the bold words to the right symbols, @ and “.”)
Rebuilding the database is going to be a mammoth undertaking on my end. I don’t mind, I’m happy to do it, but as I navigate the thousands of emails, it would really help if you guys tried to stick to the two formats above as much as possible. I’ll send you each a note as I work through the emails. Please be patient. When I’m done, we can start with the gifts. (I also lost the emails from anyone who was offering a gift. Feel free to resend those too…) Please spread the word to anyone that you know gave as well.
Got it? Questions? Let ‘er Rip.
By the way? I have backups up the whazzo now. Automatic backups, cd backups, keychain drive backups, big drive in the basement backups. Never again my friends. Never again.
I love the socks.
Isn’t it amazing how much we rely on these little buggers! I feel so lost when my laptop goes schizo!
Love the socks!
Oh no. Name is on the way.
The saddest part, love, is how RESIGNED you sound now. You’ve mourned. It’s passing. (But I’d like a list of the curses flung, throughout, just for the record. I like to work on my expanding my vocabulary whenever possible.” 😉 HUGS!
It sounds like you’ve finally moved beyond caveman-talk in terms of your computer knowledge…I sincerely hope that the closet is now big enough, and that there is another closet beneath it in case a gaping hole opens in the floor.
Oh jeez that sucks. Leave it to geeks – memory isn’t for remembering things. Wha?
Oh, Stephanie. I had a similar thing happen when our “server” died a few years back. While I’m still living fast and loose with backups, I certainly feel your pain. Good luck putting the database back together!
As I think about how much work you are doing, to organize this, for MSF/DWB … I bow to you.
You rock, Steph.
I’ll send you my name, since you had acknowledged me before the brick incident. (Shudder)
Can’t post! Have to go do backup…
Thanks, Stephanie.
Caroline, the SockPixie
I am in awe over your ability to move on. I don’t think I could. In fact, I almost had another heart attack just while reading your post today… I have thousands of photos… oh, I just shudder at the thought.
Beautiful socks! Thanks! 🙂
Oh, no! I’m so sorry for your loss. If there’s anything I can do to help, names and totals to input (I type 100+ words per minute) PLEASE let me know!
David Pogue (tech writer for the NY Times) had his drive fail last year. He was a TECH writer, for cripe’s sake. He’s written TECH BOOKS on computers and software…and he wasn’t backing up properly either. The good news for him was he got a series of articles out of the experience and he now has more backups than NASA.
And very pretty socks, too, btw.
Dude, sorry. There are whole companies who make buckets of money backing up other companies’ data. Man.
Thanks for the links, too, I will be backing up when I get home.
Love the socks 🙂 And the fact you use a mac 😀
Oh, I’m so very, very sorry! I just had a month of waiting and waiting and waiting for my laptop to come back from repair and I was surprised at how much it distressed me, even WITH a backed up external drive still on hand…my life is so connected to this thing I can’t even fathom not having a computer in my life, and I’m still not quite sure how I feel about that. But it’s all the pictures and words and files and everything! So precious.
It is so painful to learn what you’ve learned and unfortunately many of us know exactly how you feel. My sympathy is sent your way.
I will resend what I have to resend to you.
Also, I just picked up “At Knits End” last weekend, and I noticed you had a meditation in there about when to call the midwife to “come over”. Did you homebirth your girls? I’m planning a homebirth at the end of October and I’m just curious.
Yes, the sock pics made us all feel a little bit better for you. We know the computer is vital to you and so many of us…but isn’t knitting what we’d rather be doing?
Unfortunately, backing up doesn’t become automatic behavior until you lose something priceless. Like all the digital photos of your child’s first year. Ask me how I know this?
But the socks are gorgeous, and that helps.
Oh boy. Hate to tell you that if it had been a PC hubby honey and I could have probably recovered the data, or at least your writing, given that is what he does most of the time.
Good luck rebuilding the database. Name and amount is on the way since I know the total wasn’t updated with it, because well I’m OCD enough to have kept an eye on it. lol
The socks are lovely. How’s your MS3 coming?
My computer knowledge is at the same level of
“MAKE BLOG GO”, and I feel your pain. Let’s hope your backups never fail! We just need to get the computer “guys” to realize we’re computer muggles and get them to protect us from ourselves.
If I can help in any way. Typing information into a spreadsheet, anything….you have my hands at your disposal.
There is this little guy who lives in your computer waiting to get you. Mine is named Ryan and he is a drunk.
Thank you oh so much for your commitment to all of this – your level of perserverance is heroic. My heart chilled as I read this today, I absolutely will back up when I get home tonight. The socks are beautiful work and a tropical blue that takes me to my inner lagoon.
After this happened to you in December, I went out and bought two external backup drives, one for each computer. I think I might actually buy a third to store off-site in case the whole house goes. Just wish I could back up the yarn as easily.
Those socks are just plain pretty. I’m off to get the pattern. I have the perfect yarn for them, for a change.
I’m so sorry for your extra work. Isn’t there one of those on-line survey forms that could do it for you automatically?
1. love the socks
2. I know how you feel. My hubby dropped my old iBook, I lost everything (most upsetting was my kids pics)
3. I am so getting a backup drive
gotta go
Oh, and the “Mine is named Ryan and he is a drunk” comment from Orghlaith made me just howl with laughter. I think the guy in my computer is his cousin.
Lorette- a friend of mine has taken out a rider on her homeowner’s insurance policy for her stash! It’s definitely something to consider!
So sorry for your loss, Steph! Hope things go more easily in your db recovery than you anticipate they’ll be 🙂
I remember when my computer crashed a few years ago. I had to reinstall the operating system and lost everything. Now, all my writing lives in a thumb drive that I wear around my neck.
Oh, dear. A dreadful tale (the socks are lovely, tho). May your backups be regular from here on out.
I have to explain this sort of thing repeatedly at work. (That’s because we have no onsite computer guys- I’m probably as close as it gets, which should scare the living crap out of someone.) Many businesses (including ours) set up the computers so that people save their work to a server and then they back up *the server* every day. Which would be fine if people actually saved stuff to the server, but when I ask them where they saved a file they say, ‘oh, it’s saved in Word’. And I cringe. They know not drives, and all folders are alike to them.
They don’t know the difference between the hard drive and the server, and have only the haziest idea what the other drives are. So far I’ve rescued critical files from ancient diskettes, dying hard drives and from being saved in obscure and random locations. Someday, I’ll drag the place kicking and screaming into the 20th century. (The 21st is too much to hope for.)
*mops forehead* Just talking about it gives me an urge to go knit something calming.
Good luck with the database :).
I am so sorry. Truly I am. You are such a trooper for putting it all back together again.
Yarn is just so much more reliable, isn’t it?
Poor Harlot! I remember when my husband dropped my laptop and shattered the screen. At least he was smart enough not to show me the ruined screen, he just sent off to be repaired and *then* told me.
I’m glad that at least the “Make blog go” part still works. It is always a sad day when there is no Yarn Harlot to read.
So sorry about the loss of all your data. Gives me the queasies just thinking about it.
The socks are lovely beyond compare, and looking at them DID make me feel better.
It sounds like you are very well backed-up now from a digital perspective, but don’t forget about a good old-fashioned hardcopy, at least for your writing. Your spreadsheets and addresses can be reconstructed, but your writing is irreplaceable. You have my sympathy. And the socks are lovely.
Our external hard drive failed not that long ago – and it contained thousands of photos and music files. Gone. Gone. Gone. I feel your pain. And I’m going to back up my novel right NOW!
We all learn this lesson, just at different times. While in grad school, my drive died (the old massive EIGHTY megabyte drive). The *only* directory I could recover was c:\dissertation\*.*
I thanked all the various supreme beings, and have backed up constantly since.
Welcome to the world of reality-based computing!
PS. Servers die, too. Keeping stuff there is no magic solution.
Oh, Stephanie, I feel for you. My husband is a computer geek by profession and therefore, we have more strange things happen to our computers than you would have ever thought possible. Like when I bought the new high-powered (who am I kidding, when my husband bought it) Dell with all the amazing things it could do, like suck down more electricity than the entire country of Brazil but unfortunately, it would not actually WORK. Like, after hours and hours on the phone with tech support, the Dell people said, “Okay, we’ve never seen anything like this. Ever.” They SENT US A NEW COMPUTER. From what I understand, this happens with about as much frequency as hell freezing over.
But the all time worst thing was when my two-year-old deleted my entire e-mail client. The whole thing. And she must have double deleted it because we could NOT get it back. We set up dummy accounts and tried to delete those in clever ways, just like a two year old. Couldn’t get it back. I have a subscriber list for a humor column I write about parenting and the whole thing was in my e-mail –thousands of names and e-mail addresses.
No back up.
I had a printout from a few months before and I had to go in and enter all of the names and addresses from THAT back into the system. And of course, I entered some names of people who had subsequently unsubscribed and those people were crabby and then some people never got added at all and it was horrible.
My only suggestion to you is to give one of your girls a summer job and have her enter the names and addresses for a nominal hourly fee. It’s worth it. And cheaper than therapy.
Oh no… awful, just awful.
If it makes you feel any better, I am one who ought to know better, and it’s happened to me. You see, my PhD project is related to making the next (next, next, next) gen of computers (they want to use molecules, crazy no? I think so, I just like playing with them). So really, I should know, right? Backup.
Yes, I know the data on my hard-drive is cruicial and yet in a fragile place, I HAVE a backup drive. Yet… when my laptop was stolen it had been a month, yes a month since my last backup. I lost work, photos, emails, addresses, my CALENDAR for one of the busiest times of my life… the whole nine. All on my wedding day. The first thought that went through my head? “Gasp! I didn’t backup!” Soooo NOT the look you want on your face when the photographer has that big lens pointed at you.
Worse? It was the second time I’d lost a lot of data due to a lack of backing up. So besides knowing it could happen, I’d had the experience already and REALLY should have known better. Sigh.
How stupid did I feel…
Miss Harlot:
“They are computer GUYS. This seems to be the crux of the problem. They figure that something like backups are computers 101.”
1) Ahem, hey liberal chica, there are lots and lots of computer GIRLS nowdays.
2) Backups ARE computers 101. The problem is because they are so easy to use nowdays, no one *takes* computers 101. It used to be to turn on a computer you needed a PhD and a manual the size of a telephone book. Now you just need to click a mouse. It’s nice, but that means mandatory education is nonexistent.
3) Sadly the computer “GUY” is only called when the computer user is in tears, usually never “Hey, tell me how this beastie works and any advice on how I made it not die?”
Thank you so much for explaining the computer universe to us all – I am exactly like you. I thought the computer guys or the server or something had it all stored away. After all, THEY always tell you that nothing is ever truly lost if it’s on the internet, and THEY have ways to retrieve it that you would never think of. Liars, all of them, liars! And memory – we will not talk about memory! Evil, deceitful memory! I’m sending this entry to all those I know who live in the same delusional world!
Backups? I’ve got them in spades. If I lost my dissertation, I would be unfit for society (which naturally would mean no knitting). (I was scared stiff into backups when I met a graduate student who lost her dissertation not once, not twice, but three times. Yeah, she never did get the PhD.)
So, backup early, backup often, and backup in multiple formats.
Big server in the basement? Be careful – Mr. Washie might get jealous of all the attention paid to it!
Oh lord, I feel your pain. I had a bug in my computer that ate the drive. Corrupted online storage (I store things at two different emails). Ate files off the CDs, as well. Fortunately, I had all my fanfics printed out, but retyping them all was a major pain.
Hi! New reader here… Ouch! I feel your brick pain. I’m a computer geek gal and have run across this plenty of times. My favorite part is always explaining to the client that their spreadsheet (database, 2000 page project, etc) is gone forever and ever. My deepest sympathies!
(dashes off to start another backup on her own laptop!)
In addition to all those backups–I’d pray to the computer gods too. . . just to be on the safe side. It is THE saddest thing when technology bites you on the rump.
Completely unrelated, I just got back from vacation and there was an Ontario call on my Caller ID. I entertained (for about 8.24 seconds) that you had called to chat it up. That was before my husband wrecked it all by saying, “now the Canadian tellemarketers are calling too?!”
And remember, no matter how big your drive is, when it dies, the WHOLE THING dies. Store your backups OFF your computer. A USB Drive (one of those little keychain do-hickies) is good. Burning CD’s is better because you can’t accidentally reformat a CD.
I work in computers and I totally believe in computer gremlins. Love the socks!
If you can’t afford to lose it, back it up.
My family has 3 computers and a server. We back our pictures up to each computer/from each computer (so there’s a file on each computer called Mike Pictures Dad Picture Mom Picture which contains the same stuff) and we back it all up to the server. About twice a year I back it all up to DVD, and bring a DVD into work. Even if the house burns down, I have our pictures.
You can tell where our priorities lay, we don’t have that kind of protection for our legal papers!
You lost your writing?! As a fellow writer (unpublished, but I write – that counts, right?), I am feeling a wee bit nauseous over that. I’m definitely following your link on how to do a backup, and thank you for that.
Those socks are gorgeous!
Let me know if you need help with the rebuilding the KWB database. And I hear you – I have a computer with a drive that is making very unhappy noises, and the next time I hook it back up? Woill be to do a dump of all the data. There’s a ton of info on there that I would like to keep, and I think that drive is on its way to brickville.
I can’t help you with the Knitters Without Borders thing, but I will tell you I would be completely f#cked if I ever lost everything on my hard drive, and would probably get sued by all my clients. I back up all my work DAILY onto an external USB drive. (Well, just the stuff I worked on that day.) AND – I have a RAID which means my computer has two completely redundant hard drives which get written to simultaneously. So if one dies, in theory, the other will be completely intact. I leave nothing to chance – any more.
Oddly enough my external drive is nicknamed “the brick” only because it is shaped like one, but perhaps calling it this is tempting fate.
I really sympathize. My son formatted my camera thinking that “format” meant changing the direction the picture appears on the screen. I lost some great pictures…but we learned the meaning of that word!
Ooof – computers work by magic – and it needs a rather high level wizard to get that magic to work. (It’s like microwave ovens – they work by magic too – I know, I’ve got a physics degree…)
Just in case…you might want to look into off-site backups. Because the way it sounds, you’ve got all your backups in one physical location. And if there should be something horrible to happen (fire, flood, rampaging computer-savvy moths), there’s a good chance that all the backups in one place might be destroyed.
Sure, it goes a little farther than the average user has to worry about – but you make your living off of computer stuff. If there’s a giant emergency, things will be better if you don’t have to worry about all the normal stuff *plus* work.
In addition to adequate backups, you must TEST your back ups every now and then too. My business runs on a server too, and we diligently backed up on external tapes daily – cute little cassette ones. Well, when the Beast bricked, we went to recover off the tapes and…lo and behold, the tapes were blank!! So all those years of daily tape changes were for naught. I had night sweats for a week. We had to send the hards out to the “super secret clean room” where we were charged a half-year’s tuition at a private university to have them restored (Thank Goodness they were recoverable!).
Lastly, for those whose business is closely linked to data….I have data recovery insurance which paid for all my recovery – best advice my insurance man ever gave me…..
I feel your pain. A couple of years ago I lost all my pictures from 2 trips when my hard drive crashed.
Computers – Love ’em and hate ’em!!! I lost my computer in a crash about 5 years ago but didn’t lose anything nearly as important as you have. I signed up for the MS3 because of you! I haven’t started yet, but I have my yarn picked out. Your socks are just lovely! Beautiful pattern and color!
I love the socks. They are beautiful.
I am distressed, however, not just by your calamity, but by the fact that (if memory serves) your computer isn’t THAT old? I was seriously thinking of crossing over the *line* to mac’s for my next upgrade. Do they all poop out that soon, or did you have yours in overdrive for way too many miles??
(How’s your MS3 coming? We’d love to see a pic…)
Oh Stephanie! Have you been feeding them?? The gerbils that make computers “go” need to be fed to prevent just such bricking! I bet you forgot that, didn’t you. Any time computers act up, it’s the gerbils. :O) samm
If it’s any consolation whatsoever, you have convinced a BUNCH of people (including me!) to go backup their computers NOW. You have done your readership a great service. I’m just sorry it had to come at such a great expense.
Go hug those beautiful socks. You’ll feel better.
I’m so sorry for your loss. It is scarily timed as last night I had a rather deep discussion with he-who-makes-blog-go about exactly what backup “we” had in place. He explained that ze blog copied itself from one disc in the machine to another every night. If one disc failed then it would all be ok on the other. He was unable to answer the question of what would happen if someone stole the machine with its two discs but fortunately I was able to tell him. Once he knew what would happen (to him) he decided that off site backup was more appropriate.
You need to appreciate the consequences of data loss before you decide what level of risk you want to accept, sadly most of us only find out the consequences after the fact.
I’m still trying to get back 500 pictures I took in Israel from when my old computer went kaput. my new mac has lots of cd backups. It only took once…
I once lost a database of 25,000 names I had laboriously entered (someone else actually did the losing but it was lost all the same) and then I lost an entire patient list for a lab I worked for because the computer gurus decided I didn’t need a surge protector. We learned from that that surge protectors are vital, regardless of where you’re plugged in. Heartbreaking (of course, this was also in the days of the Commodore 64 – a few years ago!). Enough to say that I feel your pain – deeply and truly.
i just feel faint on your behalf. i ..must …….go…… lie… down…now……..
Yuck!
Pretty socks though… it’s a good thing we knitters carry with us all that is necessary to make the world peaceful and calm. (hands, sticks, string)
Sorry to hear about the brick becoming toast. Being a computer geek that just switched from linux to a mac, I wanted to let you in on another bit of computer 101: get yourself some antivirus software. I spent 2 days rewriting the bios files on a friends pc which got overtaken by a trojan and a worm back to back. With macs growing popularity, the threat of viruses is getting a bit bigger. I am sure that your hubby already let you in on this tidbit, but just in case…
Good luck, Stephanie. As a toiler in the software support, documentation and training world for almost 20 years, I feel / scoff / feel guilty about scoffing / wish I could help with / your pain. In my world, we tend to get jaded very quickly about the catastrophes you non-PC geeks can get yourselves into – we forget that at one time, we were in the same boat. Thank goodness you had an angel at Apple who at least would make an effort to pull you out of the muck. Very few people out there are that lucky.
The same thing happened to me in January, the morning of the day I went into labor. I spent hours and hours trying to fix it on my own (and I am a software engineer for a living, so there really is NO excuse that I didn’t have backups…) then calling Hewlett-Packard, waiting on hold (to India!) for hours and hours, being told to go through the same stupid process that I had already done again and again (the computer was still under warranty so I am sure they wanted to make sure it was REALLY REALLY broken before they replaced the drive)…I *knew* what the problem was, and they just wouldn’t listen to me and I could feel my blood pressure going up and up and up…and then my water broke! So at least something positive came out of the deal (and when I got home from the hospital a few days later, a new hard drive was waiting on my front porch).
My Linux-Loving husband is insisting I send this:
http://www.ontrack.com/hard-drive-recovery/
Apparently when the spaceship “Columbia” was destroyed this company was able to recover 99% of the info from the main data system that was found in a swamp.
Hubby is passing on his condolences.
Never say never!
aaahhhhh yes, computers. You’re not alone, I fell for the whole computer memory thing, hook, line and sinker as they say. Obviously a very wrong move on my part. I didn’t “get it” either when it came to my computer “crashing”.
Backup you say? Why should I need a back up when the computer has all this memory?
I still live by the seat of my pants and I am not one to do backups. However my 15 yr old goes behind me and saves everything to discs for me. See? I do have a backup plan…..the DD.
I too was “back-up” naive…until Friday. After purchasing a new computer in Feb, on Friday I finally learned how to do back-ups…and only because the machine had started to send me “urgent” reminders to back-up. Thank goodness! My spouse makes a living as a “geek”. Unfortunately, his expertise never made its way home…until now!
Good luck with rebuilding and remembering.
Beatiful socks!
Yes, the socks made me feel better as well. They are really beautiful. Now, there has to be a reason or two for your computer(s) going haywire. I know of one instance that this kind of unexplainable computer behavior was caused by a magnet board, the kind to hold your paper upright when typing. They replaced the computer three times before they figured that one out. Speakers have magnets, too. Magnets even mess up color on TV screens. I hope all the readers comments can somehow help.
AAAAArgh! My son, the Mac computer guru for the family has been urging us to BACKUP, he even gifted us with the backup hard drive on CHristmas. You can bet your last dollar he will be installing it this weekend!! I am so sorry for your loss, but thank you, thank you for the emphasis on your loss. I will back up, I will!
DOnation to Knitters without Borders is on the way!!
I share your pain. Been there several times. You’d think I’d have learned after the first experience. Now I back up everything I care about on a jump drive and burn extra special things to cd as an additional security measure.
Your socks are so lovely. Keep stroking them and you’ll feel better.
I backed up compulsively, obsessively, the whole time I was working on my dissertation, but now . . . I save carefully, but to my hard drive. At work, I save to the u-drive, so my writing there is protected, but at home, I just keep saying that I have to transfer those photos (four years’ worth, including my daughter’s wedding) to CD. Now I’m blogging so I’ve started using Flickr — at least some photos will eventually get transferred. I wish I could say I’d heed your lesson, and cross that to-do chore off my list. Maybe this summer . . . My sympathies for the huge recovery task you have and kudos for the good work you do for such a good cause.
Um, not to add to your pain or anything, but I seriously cannot remember if I was acknowledged or not. I’ve gone back through my emails, but I don’t see anything. That’s not to say I wouldn’t have deleted it.
So, what do I do??
*reaches to screen to fondle socks, whimpering*
This won’t bring anything back, but maybe it will give you some perspective on the fact that just your drive failed.
A few years ago, the place I was working for got a request from a customer for a copy of the files for all the projects we had done for them.
Their copies had all been carefully backed up in their corporate offices in one of the twin towers in New York.
Ouch..you have my sympathies. I’ve had the same thing happen more times than I’m willing to admit. And the amount of work it’s causing you. Blech. I sent you an email just now though with a suggestion!
You’ve mastered knitting socks, washing goat fleece, carding, spinning, lace shawls, hats, Spiderman mittens, shall I go on?
There’s nothing like a computer to give you a good kick in the arse to let you know just how smart you really aren’t.
I think of it this way. We each have our gifts. Some can knit without even thinking about it. Some can bake and cook and have never owned a cook-book. Still others, like my dear dear hubby, can look at your computer and know what’s wrong with it. Still, the answer I get most often, though, is, “Just turn it off and then turn it back on again and that should fix it.” Why is that? How come that doesn’t work with anything else?
You know, if it helps at all, somewhere, I have a hard drive I’ve saved for almost a decade now, knowing it’s history, because somehow, I hope in vain that magic will occur and lost things’ll come flying off it.
And I was a hard-core computer professional. Acceptance does not come easy. The loss of data, writing, stored work… it’s as sick a feeling as there is.
A deeply religious friend of mine once told me to remember this: Jesus saves. Every 10 minutes, in case of a power outage.
iBackup for the Mac is a beautiful thing. It sounds like you are coming to terms with your loss. Those beautiful socks would help me grieve too!
Stephanie, that is the suxxor. My heart sort of broke reading that post. And then the socks sort of made things a bit better. I’m going to back everything up now.
Three cheers for the efforts of your friend from the drive company and all of her co-workers. It was a valiant effort, even it it was ultimately unsuccessful.
And for Sherry W.: Yes, there are lots of females in the computer profession. And many of us have been around long enough to be resent being called “girls.” (Personally, I like to think I left girlhood behind at least ten years ago, if not longer.) I appreciate your efforts to stand up for the women in the field, but I’d appreciate it even more if you could kindly do so in a way that isn’t even more demeaning.
The universe reminding you to practise nonattachment. Sonofabitch.
Yikes. I have no idea what you are talking about, which means I am in the same place, living in fear of my laptop dying and losing everything. My solution is to try not to put anything on it that I can’t lose (ha ha!!) Isn’t Denial a great place to live? Well, at least for a little while. Reading of your experiences and warnings at least keeps me mindful that this can happen and reminds me that I really should do something about it (thank you! another way you serve your readers) the socks are very pretty – while I enjoy knitting cables, I haven’t tried cabled socks yet. I have the “Fools Rush” pattern and yarn and needles but haven’t started them yet. I’m glad your computer is working again, I hope it doesn’t fail you! Also hope you are staying cool in this lovely weather.
OK, I won’t pretend I haven’t ever lost anything to a computer failure, but I don’t think I’ve lost quite on the scale you’re describing. Plus my livelihood is not dependent on the computers for which I’m the sole responsible party – they’re the problem of my co-geeks at the companies I’ve worked for.
So without sounding like a total harbinger of doom – make sure some of your backups are off-site. I’m not joking. Safe deposit box, a family member’s place, a remote backup location. Mail some to a relative in another city. Another country? E-mail current files to an e-mail account.
Computers aren’t the only way to lose things. I remember an apocryphal tale of a Ph.D. candidate during the Vietnam riots. Teargas was somehow fired into his dorm room (he was a resident assistant for an undergrad dorm). Fire. You can guess the rest.
Kudos on multiple backups! Now, are any of those backups stored off-site? I know someone whose computer equipment was stolen. All the backups were stolen, too. Maybe give a set of those CD backups to Ken to take home next time you see him.
Oh, I am so sorry. When one’s personal HD kacks, it’s devastating. You have mourned and raged “off blog”. Your writing is a gift to knitters-it makes us appreciate things, laugh, think, reach out and even be frustrated by the non-knitting world. I hope that the rebuilting of the DWB database will help you remember, in a tangable way, how much knitters care about the world around them. How much response you receive when you remind the knitters of the world outside of their communities. In looking back, may you see the commitment and impact of one knitter, with a skillful pen and an amazing amount of grace, who has grown into being a multi-national, recognized author while continuing to be wife, mother, knitter, daughter, DIL and herself. Rock on, sock on and enjoy every moment.
I was in Toronto for work about the time your drive bricked. I was there with a forensic examiner, he received a call about recovering a Mac drive. Unfortunately, professional ethics prevented me from asking if it was yours.
I second the recommendation of Janice A’s husband.
I.SO.FEEL.YOUR.PAIN….
I lost my order history, my show contacts, my email address book…AND – the photos of my grandkids, cats, and bags…(we managed to salvage those alone, thank heaven!).
And when the new Dell came? The Laptop? What did I do? Play “smart girl?” Oh, H-E-double-hockeysticks – NO! I fell back into my rotten ways.
Stupid is as stupid does. I’m stupid. Thanks for the reminder…I’m going to try to do better…
And the new flash drive? I’m putting it in my safe deposit box. Buying a second one and I’ll rotate it, monthly.
((((hugs))))
Hi Stephanie,
I don’t know if this makes sense, but is it possible to help out with all the entering of names from a different computer? I freelance, and work is slow right now, and data entry (which really, i honestly truly don’t mind doing) would keep me from playing 30 jigzone.com puzzles a day. And would help out a fellow knitter.
Let me know.
-Jill (cityminx)
I had a brand-new hard drive fail (one month old, but of course I’d moved everything onto it already…) and it was devastating. I feel your pain. It’s been three years, and the things I miss the most are the photographs. I’m still in mourning a little bit, I guess.
Please accept my heartfelt condolences. When my daughter was much younger I walked into the living room one day to see her having marvelous fun pressing the on/off button on the computer many, many times per minute. I feel your pain, truly.
Those socks will send my brain spinning as soon as I remove my thumb from the edge. I have to go look through my email, but I think I may have one in each category. I presume that means I should send you one of each type of email?
The socks are gorgeous! And I feel your pain of ‘The Brick that was life!’ I am not the geek in the house, the hubby is. We have a silent agreement – should there be a fire – he is in charge of grabbing the server, the back up mobile drive and the dog. I grab the kids and the car keys! Better add that to your family emergency strategy…..fire, flood, loss of power (have a battery back up to power down safely.) The things are parents never had to think of, and the things that will be foremost in our children’s lives. Happy Knitting!
Record players are just about extinct. Thingybobs in my computer that work like record players should be upgraded too.
Oh, I’m so sorry you lost your writing and everything else – That’s just awful! 🙁 Have you knit anything on the mystery stole yet? That should help you to feel better also. 🙂
If it’s any consolation, this happens to geek types too. My husband’s an installation engineer, does computer networks for a living, and last year lost 5 years’ worth of e-mail and other data in a hard drive crash. He told me he’d been thinking “hmm, really must get round to backing up this drive” for a month or two beforehand.
I’d second the advice further up the comments: make sure at least one backup copy of your data isn’t stored in your house, just in case. And thank you for posting the links to backup information. The importance of backups really isn’t made clear enough by the people who sell computer systems.
Ack! I can’t believe the guys never explained backups to you! That’s just not right.
My husband, too, writes for a living, he’s an Economics Professor. He backs up everything daily, and has a portable hard drive that he takes everywhere with him. The other day, we went to the park to play soccer with some town friends, he took his hard drive with him. His fear? Someone will break into the house and steal his computer and he’ll lose his whole career. He also has a battery back up to plug his computer into, it protects from electrical surges and give him time to save and turn off his computer when we have a power outage.
I know the feeling. I was in the middle of job applications when my iMac’s hard drive failed. Not a good feeling. I also hadn’t backed up recently. I’m still not wonderful at backing up, but the important stuff gets done!
Lia, frankly I’m old enough to find being called a “girl” flattering.
I also can’t think of a casual gender equivalent opposite for ‘Guy’. Woman, lady or female isn’t quite right, and ‘chick’ can ruffle even more feathers.
Do you remember my stolen thesis? I have a version 2.0 and…. no back-up. Only a half-finished English translation.
Where is my data stick?
Casual gender equivalent for guy is gal, as far as I reckon.
If we want to donate prizes, do we send that e-mail to the special kwb e-mail too? Or just the regular yarnharlot e-mail?
I’ve stopped lurking to respond to something I actually know something about 🙂
I work for a little nonprofit and can’t rely on anyone here, including myself, to remember to backup with any regularity. So we rely on robots.
I am a BIG fan of Mozy – http://mozy.com/
you can backup 2Gb for free, and more for about $5 a month. The peace of mind is priceless.
Dare I admit I’ve never backed up? The closest I came was when I was writing my thesis in grad school. “Backing it up” meant saving it onto floppy disk and printing out a hard copy any time I made substantial changes or additions. Here’s hoping I never learn the hard way that I should back up the right way.
OH OH OH soooo sorry for the loss. One of my favourite saying is “”These MONSTERS “”( referring to computers) are going to be the death of us all one day”” They will eventually drive us all toatally insane or “”they” will rule the world. Thank goodness you have beautiful yarn and lovely socks to keep your sanity
What you do is marry an IT guy. It’s not a perfect solution but at least he will be backing stuff up. The trouble comes when he spends all day at this and then is too tired to do it for family memebers. The classic case of the Shoemakers Children Have No Shoes. But occasionally he comes through…
hi… i didn’t read all of your blog b/c i’m at work… LOL…
but, my powerbook crashed on me a few months ago (i’ve had that sucker for a good few years now… almost 4-5) – anyway… my techie bro in law saved most of my data (some pictures are completely lost).
i bought a seagate external harddrive from buy.com or newegg.com (can’t remember but both sites are good and were ridiculously cheap for a 320gig hard drive).
here’s the back up program i use
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
VERY STUPID SIMPLE.
after you load it onto your computer of course
click the program to open
copy your hard drive to your external hard drive.
click okay.
that’s it =)
there are advanced options on it which are worth exploring, but well worth it.
hope this helps =)
oh think of it like this
memory = short term memory (like your boss telling you to get the document on your way back to your desk)
hard drive = the stuff you remember from your childhood
i think i saw you had a mac… seriously recommend the super duper program… VERY seriously.
PLEASE PLEASE feel free to write with questions… i went through this and almost ripped my hair out…but thankfully, i have good tech support =)
Oh, that’s no fun. Backup… I should do that. It’s been quite a while.
BEAUTIFUL Loksins! That would cheer anyone. The color makes me think they’d be cool… even though it’s wool… and we’re breaking heat records here.
Oh no…
At least you don’t have to deal with The Laptops from Hell! My college gives each student a laptop
(for $500 a year, it’s not as nice as it sounds), and I’d been doing all my schoolwork, notes, etc on it. It’s crashed three times since last September. The first time, I lost 50 pages of midterms and had to redo them (in addition to everything else on the drive). The second time, I was smart and backed everything up on a flash drive, but still lost my notes. The the third time, the flash drive died too and I lost my entire writing portfolio.
It never gets easier. If you haven’t already, see if you can get your backups to sync so that every time you save a file in one location, it saves to all your locations.
*Beautiful* socks!
I am so very sorry. That sucks. Hard. I bricked my computer a few years ago. All manner of geeky friends slapped me on the wrist for not backing up. Lesson learned.
The socks are beautiful. And thank you again for thinking up KWB.
“Never again, my friends. Never again.”
Oooooooo, I wonder what the next catastrophe will be? But at least I never make the same mistake twice, Marilla.
I have a client who had a slow tape drive they used for backups. This was a major NYC law firm–one of the 100 largest firms in the US. The backup needed to start daily at 8 am. The backup took 26 hours. At 7:55 or so they canceled the prior backup and started over every day. They were then amazed, when the server died, why things were missing from the tapes.
They have since changed out the servers, the tape drives, the backup policy, and the IT staff.
Awwww, Stephanie, I’m so sorry. I work in computer support – with Macs – I’m sorry that you’re now a zealot about backups. I’m hoping those socks really will make you feel better. They are just gorgeous!
Barbara in NH
I am so sorry to hear they weren’t able to get anything off your old drive! I went through the exact same thing last year, while I was finishing up my Masters (talk about bad timing!). I thought I was being good, backing everything up every 6 months, but it’s amazing how much you can save on your computer in 6 month (especially when you’re working on a Masters degree). I sent mine away to the fancy drivesavers people, and I remember feeling like someone had literally cut off a part of me when they called to tell me they couldn’t get anything. I wasn’t ok, either. I use my computer like my auxiliary memory, like a part of me that just happens to live outside my own brain, and to lose 6 months of your life like that HURTS. (Not to mention, I had a whopping one month to try to recreate everything I’d done in those 6 months so that I could graduate.)
::hugs::
I’m so glad to hear you’re on top of the backups now, though! And those are some gorgeous socks you’ve got to make yourself (and all of us) feel better!
Oh, Rams. Oh, Marilla.
I learn from my mistakes. From each one of them I learn, so that I really know how to make that particular mistake, better perhaps than anybody else. Then I make it again. And again. And again – each time with more style than before.
Name coming up, with ambiguous donation details.
Second and third and fourth the motion of delegating the data entry.
for further viewing:
watch “my motherboard, myself” a good eppy of “sex and the city” (season 4 i think).
carrie deals with the same issue – bricked computer.
So now we have to know about knitting AND computers?!?! I don’t think so – that’s what husbands are for! I’ll make sure my husband reads the Yarn Harlot blog entry for today.
uh-oh.
While I know that these ‘back-ups’ of which you speak exist, I just realized that I (actually, my husband) have lost the external drive onto which we had backed up our old computer.
We had an old hard drive with all our music on it & made a copy to take away for vacation (10 discs) when we got back the computer died but we weren’t worried we had the discs, then we couldn’t find them. Mark took the computer apart & tried everything he knew & couldn’t get a thing, a friend found the discs & mailed them. The post office lost them. Mark tried the very scientific method of banging on the drive, it started spinning & we copied it all to the new drive, of course the discs arrived in the mail a couple days later.
Going to back up now. Never mind how long it’s been since I last did it.
Thanks for computer 101. I don’t trust computers, never did, so my “backup” is a gazillion floppy disks and a bunch of printouts, some stored off-site. Store a full backup off-site.
Here’s a tip I haven’t used yet: moisture-proof wrap a backup unit and put it in the freezer (with your special yarn).
Guard against viruses as you guard against moths.
[hugs} what else can a geek say/do? nice socks!
btw have you added mind reading into your repitoire? that’s pretty much how i describe hard disks.. well, actually a pile of record players stacked on top of each other (why i don’t use a juke box is beyond me, ANYWAY…). there are a bunch of my students now who don’t know what a record player is. *sigh* [they’ve never met a manual type writer either. *double sigh*]
if it helps i’m a geek and i lost some pretty important stuff that a decade later still makes me sick when i think about it. do i do better backups? i did for a while. actually i’m going to go do that now. dinner can wait.
So sorry about your hard drive, but glad you have some techno wizards on your side. I hope you have lots of the force with you while you rebuild your data base. (yes I know that makes me geeky, I’ve accepted it)
The socks are beautiful, though, they are very good at cheering up people. =)
Oh. Poo. I should have known you’d make Loksins, being pals with C and all that. I was going to make Loksins for my Sockapalooza pal! Now everyone on the Planet will be making Loksins and it won’t be quite so special any more! I really have to think about it now. On the other hand, how nice for C! 🙂
Ooof! What a hard lesson to learn. I think I have to run home now and do a backup on my own computer …
Memory is like short-term memory, not long-term memory. So the analogy works, although I suppose that doesn’t help none…
I never back up my stuff, but I should. I have a usb key where I backed up my thesis and any papers I was working on, but that’s about it. Fortunately, my 2-year-old Mac has not bricked yet. As soon as Futureshop has a sale, I’ll be buying a back up drive and being a good cautious computer user.
I accidentally lsot 5 years worth of pictures – including my wedding pictures. Of course we were too lazy to print them out. Now we use Mozy (www.mozy.com) which automatically backs up the data on my drive and saves it on one of their servers. So if my husband ever tries to rebuild a computer after having a few beers without removing the external storage hard drive first, we’ll still have the data.
Pretty Socks! And instead of entering everything in by hand while sitting in your underwear and crying, please consider putting up a little webpage form to do this for you, kind of like a poll. Everyone enters their info, it gets put into a magic “closet”, and you just back up the “closet” now and then. It goes from:
email to harlot -> harlot types while crying in her underwear -> data in a document -> back up document
TO:
fill in info on a webpage (kinda like leaving a comment) -> data in the “closet” aka database -> back up database. Your database can even be a simple text file. Notice that this eliminates the you, in your underwear, crying – step.
If you like, I can wrangle up a few sites that can do stuff like this or code one up for you.
Last note, flash drives will fail, too. As will external drives. And CD’s get lost. The keywords here are multiples and backup manager software.
Sigh. I feel for you. I first used a computer in 1988, and my husband explained it in easy to understand language about what it was and how it worked. Having that good old DOS background has stood the test of time for me.
Thanks for the pointer to that lovely turquoisey coloured yarn. I’ve been looking for some to make a gift, and it looks like they have several colours that will do just fine.
Yikes, I feel for ya, especially all of the writing that you had on the hard drive. Oy. For me it would be losing my pics. The turquoisy socks are loverly! Off to back up now, thanks for the info.
My Mac just bit it, too, and I have been procrastinating on seeing if anything can be retrieved because I don’t want to face being told that I lost everything.
Automatic backups? How does that work? While I was reading your post I was thinking shouldn’t there be a robot to do this for us? I would back up a lot more frequently if it wasn’t such a hassle. I could use a robot maid and a robot cook while we’re at it too! Come on! I want more time to knit!
I am backing up my pc right now… doh. Never thought of it before actually, sorry that I had to learn from your experience though. The good news is that you can knit while waiting for the tedious back up to finish!!! and I’m at work too! LOL
How I Explain Computers To My Students
Computers are a lot like a room with lots of closets and a big table in the middle for doing things and looking at stuff. Your RAM (Random Access Memory) is the table. If you have a small table and you put a lot of stuff on it, sometimes the stuff falls on the floor and you can’t look at it or work with it. If you have a BIG table (lots of memory) you can put a lot of stuff on it before it crashes. However, everything on the table is temporary. If you want to save it, you need to put it in a folder or box and stick in one of your closets, because when you leave the room, the cleaning person will come and dump EVERYTHING on the table into the trash and get rid of it (when you shut down the computer). Your closets determine how much stuff you can store. But you need to have storage in other places, because fire can break out, or thieves can break into you closets and steal your stuff. That’s called backing it up. When you open an application, what you are doing is going to one of the closets and pulling out the box or folder with your stuff, and when you are done, it gets put back into the closet.
I hate it when someone who is expert at something leaves out the basic step because it IS so basic. My husband is a pro at doing this. Drives me crazy. (crazier?) I sometimes think he does it on purpose.
“She’s a brick and I’m drowing slowly
Off the coast and I’m heading no where…”
Brick – Ben Folds Five
Steph, if you need help doing the data entry, please let me know – I have lightning fingers and willing to type for the cause.
I’m sorry your Mac bricked, have a Scottish {{{hug}}}
The kind of hug that includes whisky/vodka/alcohol of some sort/all of the above 😉
Note to self – check back-ups, make more back-ups
Thank you for taking the trouble to re-do all the information for MSF donations.
If I lived in Canada, I would wordlessly slide you a very stiff drink.
Owwwww – your writing. I’m so sorry to hear this. No matter how you try to recall it, it doesn’t have the same twist or brilliant conjugation of phrases as the hard-laboured over original. The resignation is quite bitter, I imagine. I hope that the new phase of computer life is better. When you have your next brick (inevitable, I’m afraid) at least you’ll have the grim satisfaction of knowing that you have everything backed up to wahzoo. I think I’ll seek comfort and go and look at my stash, now…
FRIGHTENING! For you for sure, for us too in case it happens to us! I just saw this Old English word today and thought it an improvement over ‘computation’ (can we find a word like it for computer or computer use?)-rimcraeft (with the a/e together). I have no idea how to pronounce it! But here are a couple other great ones, ‘craeftspraec=craft speach/scientific language (way better!) and bochord=book hoard/library. I LOVE the computer/table analogy by Mary!!!
Flash drives; gotta love em.
Have you ever read Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker’s Guide)? Remember God’s Final Message? “We apologize for all the inconvenience.” Somehow that just seems appropriate here.
Ugh, what a mess. But just for clarification, I learned the hard way that when one is married to a “chip head”, it is NOT safe to assume that the backup is taking place. We were in luck in that his most talented techie was able to resurrect what was on the drive that yakked, but not without a LOT of swearing on the part of all involved.
My ‘back-up’ has always been to e-mail my writing back and forth from my work computer to my home computer…it’s crude, but has been effective–the one time I thought I’d lost everything, I could console myself with he idea that the rough draft of a 726 page manuscript was still at work. (Which has an off site memory bank, so even if my work computer is a worthless cesspool of silicone slag, my stuff is still ‘somewhere’.)
But your point is well taken–and the socks are beautiful…the color is even melancholy, like your farwell to all your hard work.
I’ve sent you my name. Take your time. MSF already has the money, Hon.
My favourite way to remind myself to do things is to go into iCal and mark it on the calendar. Then I can fill in the details like time of day, daily, weekly or monthly repetitions and an alarm that is as polite or obnoxious as you want it to be. It might be an idea to set yourself up such a date for a regular hard backup, just in case. And no, we haven’t backed anything up here in far too long, either.
I have been going through much of what you’ve been going through w/my laptop…they were able to recover my files off my hard drive but what I went through while waiting to find out I hope never to have to go through again. I actually hadn’t backed up my business bookkeeping for way too long. They talked to me about sterile labs, too. I cry for you!!!!!
I do love the socks!
I’m an ancient programmer, starting in the 60s: IBM, VAX, several biggies, and created disaster plans for how business would continue in case of computers destroyed by earthquake/fire/war and the static generated by nylon panties.
By now you realize, from prior comments that the “pros” sin just as egregiously as others. I really must backup sometime soon.
I’m so sad for you. I spilled wine into my hard drive, had a backup for most of it, but still haven’t recovered everything. Most of what I lost was annoying, but it was not my writing. I can’t even imagine.
Please tell me that it was an automated response that I received so promptly.
The socks look lovely!
Our server deleted my email address last year, and was on the verge of deleting a year’s worth of personal correspondence as well. Why? We still don’t know. Damn technology.
I love what Karin said, “yarn is just so much more reliable, isn’t it”.
Those socks are undeniably gorgeous, and I must knit them!
One more thing to add to your back-up plan. My husband is also the guy that “makes computer/blog go” and we have an external drive with everthing that we would want to take with us in a fire. It’s the emergency “grab this and go” back up drive. There are other back ups, all over the place, but everything that is really important is ALSO (notice I did not say just, but in addition to) on this external digital “suitcase.” For me, that is my writing, my photos, and my music. I’m sure you will know what you would want if you only had minutes to get it out of the house.
I am currently waiting to hear if my computer will be resurrected, or has passed to the land of no return. Sigh. I want my computer back. :c But at least I do have a back up. I am sure that there will be thousands that thank you for bringing this to their attention, and saving them this heartache in the future. You are undeniably a good soul, and I am glad to have gotten to peek into your life, and know a little about you.
Haha. Sorry, I know I shouldn’t laugh at your misery and me laughing has definitely lost me some karma points, but still… it IS kinda funny. XD It’ll be alright. I’ll even periodically remind you to make a a backup of your data. ^_^ *patpat* It was a learning experience.
Love the socks!!
My laptop did the same just recently. I took it to my local computer store and I was told that the hard drive died. I had my son’s baby pictures on it and everything. I was hysterical. They were some how able to get the info off of it from some FBI program that they had and taking the drive and attaching it to another computer. It sucks that nothing could be recovered from yours.
My condolences.
I’m going to go back something up.
As of now, a long overdue backup is complete! I have a fear of losing all documents and yet kept putting off the time it takes. You guilted me into it (thanks). Alas, once I accidentally spilled water on a laptop. She didn’t fare so well.
What a sad but timely story! Thanks for sharing so that those of us who are ignorantly blog-backup-less can get off our *sses and get on that! However, I keep waiting to write something clever or ingenious enough on my blog that I feel is worthy of backing up before I worry about it….
I’m still waiting….
But some day, I’m gonna get to do a backup, I tell ya…
Mary Eckstein – great analogy! And for Kathy in KS – Mary’s explanation is the reason that rebooting works. The “problem” is often something whacky sitting on the table. Turn off the computer (or printer, or anything else with a memory card) long enough to call its parentage into question and remind it that electronics and bathtubs don’t mix and the memory will get dumped, “fixing” the problem.
It is key, though, to leave the power off for a few seconds since most of these products are built to hold power for several seconds in case of a power flicker.
Sorry about the “brick” We recently got the “blue screen of death” again. It had happened before and cost $210 just to have it looked at. We were told that each time the screen of death appears makes it happen more often til it can’t be fixed. So we purchased a Sony Vaio. Oh My, its a wonderful system and we are very glad we purchased it.
nice socks.
I know kind of how you feel about losing all that. I knitted Eunny Jang’s Print ‘o the Wave stole in laceweight pure handspun silk imported from India and Canada Post LOST it! And I, being an idiot didn’t manage to hold on to my tracking number (my backup). I figured “it’s Expresspost… that always gets there.” Faulty logic. I sympathize with your pain.
What a BUGGER! GREAT socks though – they made me smile and I will now be backup up all my stuff too.
Sorry to hear about your disk drive crashing. I just can’t imagine what you must be going through! At least you still have all your posts! The Loksins are beautiful and I’m sure they must be a comfort to you during this difficult time.
As one Mac girl to another I feel your pain. And once you go Mac you never go Back. It’s a sad day when you bury a Mac!
Email just sent! And ohhh, man, Stephanie. Losing data for such as KWB is horrible, awful, a huge responsibility under your guardianship that makes you feel guilty as heck – that’s bad enough. But your *writing*… ::moment of deeply sympathetic silence:: Sheer agony! That’s part of *you*. So are a lot of other things on our computers, but I think writing is the worst. Many, many hugs. (Think of wool. I got a skein of Colinette Jitterbug sock yarn Sunday, in the Jay colorway with all its blues and turquoise and purple, and it’s absolutely heartlifting.)
Great socks. Umm I think I don’t have to send you a KWB e-mail – you just sent (two/three days ago) me a reply. Good luck
Steph,
It’s called disaster recovery. Frequent backups give you a relatively simple way to recover. You are definitely having to do it the painful way.
If your computer gurus haven’t suggested you backup after every short period of intensive entry in your TSF/KWB work, you might look into that… Maybe to a folder on that big drive in the basement.
If by any chance parts of your writing that was lost was printed out, it should be quite possible to have it scanned and restored as data in your system. Then you can edit, etc…. You may have heard Ken & Joe talking about OCR [Optical Character Recognition] It’s a kind of program that translates the “picture” of your writing, back into characters that your Word, or whatever, software knows how to handle.
My mother wrote regularly for her own enjoyment and for her family. She had collected a number of family stories over 3 or 4 years. She had no backup and when her hard drive crashed, we were able to restore the ones that she’d given us by scanning them. I think we put them on a CD which she was able to use to restore them to her hard drive. She still lost some of her writing.
Hugs to mitigate the pain!
MK
Also check that files you keep on your computer desktop get backed up. Not all systems do that, especially if you rely on the one at work.
There are so many things now days that those who do computer/blogging/programing/site building assume is basic and general knowledge. It’s good for them to be reminded that a majority of adults don’t know that stuff.
Before I started my blog (just last April) a well-read news blogger came to talk about blogging to my Nonfiction Writing class — about 20 adults all decidedly over 30. He gave a little intro speech, then had the good sense to ask if there were questions or particular things we wanted to know about. The first question was ‘What’s a feed’ and we all turned eagerly to listen to the answer. He promptly changed gears and did the more basic intro that didn’t assume we knew anything.
I think MonicaPDX has said everything that can be said—and very well. So sorry for your heartache.
For therapy, I recommend yarn fumes—very restorative and what you’re all about.
*close eyes, inhale deeply* repeat from * to * as many times as necessary to complete pattern.
That’s awful. What a disappointment to realize that there are some things even the IT guys can’t do.
Kudos to the kind reader who made ’em try everything, and sympathies to you, Ms. Harlot. It is startling to realize, sometimes, how much of importance we trust to the ether when it is so, er . . . ethereal. Ah, well. It’s amazing what some turquoise-colored-cabled socks can do to perk things up. Gorgeous! Thanks for the links, must order the pattern and some of that lovely yarn. I’m even enjoying the Mystery Stole so far, beads and all, so I guess I’ll forgive you for that if that makes things any better at your end.
Steph –
Today at work someone asked me if I watched a show that is shown on one of the premium cable channels up here. When I said no, I only have basic cable he said, “You have a computer. You have the internet. You Can Watch This Show!”
I told him just because I had a computer and internet doesn’t mean that I know how to use them!
I mean – isn’t it better to wait for the boxed set rather than try to figure out Torrent….or…. whatever it is called?
Post scriptum with something that may help solve another ‘little’ problem; that being a certain furry rat bastard… and might give you a giggle…
This post on Sanna’s Bag:
http://tinyurl.com/259lky
Water guns!!! Environmentally and fauna-safe, relatively cheap, and probably fun as well as a (reasonably) humane deterrent. (I don’t think a dousing would give a squirrel pneumonia in summer.) Imagine sitting out there knitting calmly, guarding your wool or fleece as it dries, and getting the little bugger right in the tail! [veg]
Just watch out if he finds a squirrel scuba outfitter and ventures forth in a little wetsuit and diving mask. Then you can start to really worry.
I read this entry to my hubby (a mega computer nerd) and he told me that there are EXTREME ways to retrieve data by sending it to somewhere(?) in England where the crazy uber computer scientists reassemble all the 0’s and 1’s using electron microscopes, thus effectively retrieving your lost data. However, on a google search we found this to cost around $1,000,000 which seems a tad on the high end…
It’s good that you’ve come to grips with the hard drive bricking. I know I would curl up in the fetal position and stay there for days if I lost all my data, and I don’t have anything as important as your computer had on it.
Luckily for me the nerdy hubby does all my computer back-ups, although he is trying to coerce me into learning how to do the basics like install files, and plug in the printer. I just look at him and say “but that’s why I married YOU, dear. Honestly, would I ask YOU to knit ME socks?”.
I have an external hard drive. Oh yes. It is sweet and we loves it. Precious….
hrm…
Love the socks!! Sweet socks… How you dull the pain 🙂
K
Hurrah for Steph,
What a brave lady for recreating the KWF data-base. It shows just how much you appreciate the contributions made to date to attempt this. You demonstrate a passion for your readers when you are willing to give up valuable knitting time to read through every email for each worthy fraction of that massive total. Never mind gold for the knitting olympics you deserve more for even considering this monumental task. Mind you I’m quite sure your daughters will be jumping at the chance to help.
Good luck it is for a good cause
SIGH – I so know the feeling; I’ve lost more than I’ve saved on a computer, over the years.
Anyhow the socks are fab and I’m on my way to find out more about “Knitters without Borders”. Congrats on your new extreme back-ups(“,).
I also find it infuriating that they misnamed memory. They really should have named it dementia.
(Which I say with nothing but love in my heart, as I work with people with AD and dementia and fully support the Alzheimer’s Association.)
Good luck on your rebuild!
OMG! I feel sick . . . I’m going to go and knit empathetically for an hour or so and try to waft the soothing vibes towards Canada. Poor, poor Harlot!
I feel your pain…
I am a bit of a geek and should know better. Yet, I had a hard drive die on me. I hadn’t backed up in eons. I still mourn the loss. There are many years of stuff that is gone forever.
It is definitely a good idea to get a pair of mirrored hard drives. The beauty of these is that it automatically stores the data on a pair of drives. What does this mean? It means that if one drive dies, you still have one drive where you can get the data. It is truly a wonderful thing to have the security of not losing important data again. I love mine and find it worth the piece of mind having it.
Good luck with the database. I understand too well about having to rebuild them. It is the pits.
Stephanie:
I just had a personal 8g flashdrive recovered by the folks at Gillware. (www.gillware.com) Not cheap, but worth every penny. I strongly recommend them — the turn around time was less than 5 days.
They recovered tons of my work stuff (reports, grant applications, correspondence, etc) that I had backed up to there when we changed servers and something on it (the server) was corrupted so it killed the flashdrive. It wouldn’t even whirr, light up or be acknowledged by the computer when I plugged it into the port. These guys may be able to recover your brick and save you many, many hours of tedium that could be devoted to knitting.
I wish you luck.
First, the socks are beautiful!
My heart aches for the loss of your drive. As a SW Engineer, I know all about losing data to the Computer Gods. Now I make sure that my important stuff is also on CDs, as well as other backup media.
Are new donations still allowed? I have some moolah saved up just for this!
Ah. Steph, I too know only what I need to know to survive with my home computer and the one at work. My Husband(always the optimist) always says to me when something goes wrong in cyberland,-“You work on a computer, can’t you figure this out”? My answer is always no-I can’t. At work we have computer geeks(our high school students) to fix anything (after they roll their eyes and say in their heads-My Gawd this woman is so stupid) and at home I have a “Guy” I call who rushes over and after(see above parentheses) he fixes what is wrong.
I know I need to take classes in different areas-I just don’t care. That would mean less knitting time. This would mean less time with family. This would mean less laying around doing nothing while drinking a diet cherry pepsi. So… the hell with it!!!
Nice socks by the way!!!!!
Unholyhell!
Thank you for the link. I have “computer GUYS” too…my son and my husband and I’ll bet my stash (see how seriously I mean this?) that my stuff isn’t backed up either, even though I have been thinking it is. We’re going to do that in just a minute. And then I think tonight I’ll ask them just what else I am missing out on here….Sorry for your pain, but thanks for sharing the info with us. And I love the socks. They were just the breathing room I neded as I started to panic about my own stuff!
May I add one thought to the back up instructions? Off site storage. A few years ago my husband warned me that he was going to WIPE the computer because it was running poorly. I dutifully sorted all my files into 2 folders: SAVE and TURF. I then backed up all the SAVE files, pictures, documents, spreadsheets etc etc onto a CD, labelled it and left it on the desk. All the junk I left on the computer, figuring it would be wiped. Well my husband, being the kind and thoughtful man he is, saw the second file still on the computer and thought I forgot to save it. He picked up my CD off the desk, popped it in the drive and backed up all the junk (and this is the important part) WIPING OUT ALL MY CAREFULLY BACKED UP PRECIOUS PICTURES OF MY CHILDREN, IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS FROM VOLUNTEER WORK I DO, SPREADSHEETS, BANKING ETC. I mostly cried over the pictures of my children. I do take full responsibility (although I was pretty mad at him for a while). Listen to me: OFF SITE STORAGE!! Don’t keep all your back ups in one place.
Also love the socks.
Cheryl
Oh I’m so sorry you lost your writing. There are some things you just can’t re-write after the momemnt of inspiration has passed.
DH backed my stuff up on “the server” and told me to “send it to the server” every Friday. Did I do this? No, I did not. I did not know or remember how. *Head in hands* What am I thinking?!
Thanks for the reminder.
I, too, thought memory remembered. I totally blame the computer GUYS. All the computer problems you had last year and they did not automate backing up for you? So sorry about the loss of data.
I hate to tell you this, but there are actually 2 kinds of memory! The kind that saves temporarily (what you call memory) and the kind that saves long term (the drive). Multiple names for the same thing are also confusing for less experienced computer users. I would HIGHLY recommend taking an intro to computers course at your local community college or adult learning center. It would be easy because you already know a lot of it, and it would teach you all those little things you thought you knew but didn’t. And you could impress Ken and Joe!
I’m sorry you lost everything. It’s the electronic equivalent of losing photos and papers in a fire. I would be very upset if my computer died–I’m not so good at the backing up either, and I know better.
I have an Apple laptop. Below is the link to the Seagate FreeAgent external hard drive that I use. The instructions to use it follow the Ikea philosophy of pictures-only. It’s pretty amazing.
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-FreeAgent-Desktop-External-ST302504FDA1E1-RK/dp/B000NDBRJC/ref=sr_1_10/103-8506843-7910210?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1184085976&sr=1-10
Those socks are stunning! About the hard drive…I imagine you have heard this before, I don’t intend to read all these comments to confirm it, but you can put the hard drive in a plastic bag and stick it in the freezer for about 30 minutes and then get it out and hand it to your repair professional. It should bring it back to life long enough to download the contents onto another device. It worked for me and I did not believe it either. Best of luck.
“backups up the whazzoo”
That has me laughing so hard there’s tears in my eyes.
My husband’s mantra is “Hard drives fail.” I think that the average hard drive fails in about 2.5 years. Some fail sooner, and some later. So it’s only sensible to be rigorous about backing up! (As you have learned, of course.)
There’s a nice free utility called Smart Reporter that you can download and set up so that it tells you if your hard disk is about to fail. It saved my husband a few months ago, warning him of an impending hard disk failure in time for him to back up absolutely everything he wanted to keep.
Whoops, I meant to give you the Smart Reporter link: http://homepage.mac.com/julianmayer/smartreporter/
i lost my hard drive on the laptop — my only computer. and it sucked. now, i bought a portable hard drive (which i have yet to use as my new laptop had a glitch which i have since had fixed), and i can back it all up and as the salesperson said, stick it on a shelf.
the worst was: my blackberry. i was downloading something onto it and it was supposed to fit. guess what — the thing crashed. i had to have a new one sent (warrantied). now, i had a loaner phone. i had computer access. but i couldn’t look at e-mail while i was driving – aaaaarrrrggggh! so in 3 days the new one arrived. and it crashed. so i learned — just because the vendor says a program will fit a blackberry — be wary. i could barely wait the 3 days and was willing to buy a new one instead of waiting for the free one. luckily, i did not do that.
they don’t call it crackberry for nothin’.
Hi–
I feel for you. About 10 years ago I had to have someone explain exactly what those terms mean, too. “Memory” is one of the dumbest things they could’ve named it. “Bucket” would be a better term, I think, since it holds stuff (usually the program you’re running, among other things) temporarily while the computer is running, so the computer doesn’t have to call the disk or hard drive each time the program needs to do something. I think of it as a mop bucket. You put the water (program) in the bucket (memory) so you don’t have to go back to the sink every time you need to re-wet your mop.
The first time I tried to use the Internet (back in ’93), I was in tears. So I do sympathize with everyone who’s just a regular user and doesn’t have the time or interest to learn the esoterica of computers.
That’s one of the reasons my life has taken the turn it has. At the age of 40, I’ve started a degree in computer programming. I figure my best strength as a programmer will be that I spent 40 years of my life *not* as a programmer.
Like most of you, I’m coming to all this information as a just a regular user. Okay, I did learn HTML and how to hook up a scanner and printer, but that was only out of necessity. And I never really got beyond that into how a computer really works.
So…and I know I’m probably opening myself up for a deluge…I’m willing to answer technical questions from the viewpoint of an artist or craftsperson. My email is meriwynn@yahoo.com. Please put “tech help” in the subject line or my spam filter will toss it out. I’m not at the point where I can tell you how to fix something that’s broken, but I can answer questions about what something is, or how it works. If I don’t know an answer, I’ll try and track it down. It may take me some time to answer, but I’ll do my best.
Very sorry to hear about the Bricking.
I listen to WBUR, the National Public Radio affiliate here in Boston, and this company
http://www.techfusion.com/
are underwriters, so everyday I hear their slogan, “Tech Fusion, where data is never lost!” Maybe they can help?
A Men!
Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you. I used to do regular Windows backups until we got the new computer, with XP, and I couldn’t find the Backup utility. I was told the Home edition doesn’t have it any more. WHY THE HELL NOT! Why remove something so basic as the backup?. So I occasionally (not as often as I should) copy the ‘important’ data files to an external hard drive. But anyway, shortly after discovering that Backup was gone I was talking to a printer technical support person (since the printer no longer worked with the new computer)and perhaps vented a little about Microsoft in general and how they didn’t seem to think people with home computers were doing any real work and he told me the backup utility is still there but you have to turn it on. But he’s not allowed to tell me how because he can only give printer advice. I promised not to tell anyone, I practically begged, but no go. (“This call may be monitored…”). I searched the Microsoft database without success. It has festered for a couple of years as one of those ‘what pea-brain thought that was a good move’ peeves. And then today you have the link to the instructions for how to turn the backup utility back on. Many thanks to you and presumably Ken and/or Joe.
Socks are gorgeous…will have to give them a try at some point.
I am very sorry for all your loss…such an unfortunate and horrific saga. Here’s to a smooth rebuild! Cheers!
I work in tech support, and you are far from being alone. I’d say that 80% of computer users not only don’t back up, but don’t even know that they CAN or SHOULD back up. Many just accept that every 3 or 4 years everything will be gone.
Oh God, I feel your pain, I lost tons of articles and articles-in-progress several years ago when OUR Mac bit the dust.
I have a new flash drive with more memory, so I use it to back up my photos and files once a week.
Computer people expect end-users to intuit what needs to be done … to INTUIT non sequiturs like memory that isn’t and servers that are closets, and then they act like you are stupid if you fail to intuit that your manuscript is in the closet but it’s inaccessible due to a closet-floor failure on account of the door being stuck because you have too many blue shirts.
Cars make sense and mechanical car maintenance is straightforward — change the oil and filters regularly if you want your car to run properly. You need new air filters because the engine needs free-flowing air so that oxygen and fuel can make lots of little explosions to create energy to make the car go. The engine is called the engine because that’s where the energy comes from and the transmission is called the transmission because it transmits energy from the engine to make the wheels turn.
But when drives “remember” and “memory” is only short term and this is ON PURPOSE … that neither makes sense nor is intuitive. Neither other people nor yourself should berate you.
Especially when you thought you had a computer and what you really had was a closet.
Name duly sent. What a bummer, especially the pictures. I had that happen to me. Now I have paper backups of my patterns and charts and CD backups of the novels and pictures. Time to do another.
I just lost ALL my Outlook stuff. Folders, calendar, saved impt email, address book. I was just getting ready to back up and it crashed.
I am desolate.
just last week my own husband said “where’s my file named ‘Bob’s stuff?” My response was I dont see it but I’d be happy to reinstall it from his backup source. Now you would think that a man who lost everything on his computer when his 4 year old formatted the hard drive ten years ago would have learned a lesson. But no.
I’m just coming outta lurkdom cos I’m feelin pissy about the whole backup thing.
I’ll bet if you were a dayum terrorist they’d (somebody out there)figure that chit out. Don’t get rid of your harddrive.
The “universe” will send someone to you who will know exactly what to do to get your stuff off of there. Just you wait and see.
I’m sorry your stuff is locked away from you Steph.
Thanks for all that you do!!!!