…and finally my computer died
19 Jun
Never forget to do backups.
Never.
I just found out that my dear computer has taken its last breath. All my music, pictures, work, received files… gone. I know, I’ve been told before to do backups, but I never seemed to care. Well, actually, I didn’t care. I was more like: never store your life in a computer! But hey, that was obviously what I was doing; piling up my life story in a computer. And now, my life is gone. (Not entirely, but it certainly feels a bit empty).
My old computer had so many viruses that the anti-virus program stopped working. I couldn’t download new software, since it lacked Service Pack 2. It didn’t react to any external devices. Not even to my red memory stick. Pop-ups were jumping up my screen even though I hadn’t opened the browser. And it was always this woman in carnival clothes who told me I could win money without even touching my wallet. Tempting, huh?
I decided to do something about it. Disk defragging! But my disk defrag refused to cooperate. What the…?!
After weeks of ignoring my computer; I tried to start it. But to my surprise, it was as dead as a zombie. Sort of half-dead, with the fan sounding really angry and the screen just pitch black. Bloody hell.
Suddenly all the people who constantly have been telling me to do backups: YOU WERE RIGHT. (But please admit: you knew this would happen!)
To all the people out there… DO BACKUPS!!
DO UNATTENDED BACKUPS! If your backups require significant effort to maintain most probably you’ll stop doing them at some point. Have a look at BackupPC (enterprise solution), Apple TimeCapsule (for Apple fans) or its open-source alternative flybackup (Linux desktop crowd).
drseergio already said all that needs to be said on the subject of doing backups, so I’ll just extend my condolences
Another tool that I’ve found recently is called “luckybackup” (http://luckybackup.sourceforge.net). Seems to be quite good, I’ll take it for a spin soon.