my laptop just died

[ratcreature]

It was not unexpected, seeing how it predates 2005, but still. Also, being the lazy moron I am, I was lackadaisical about backups despite this. Maybe I can salvage something from the hard disk still, though I have never done that with a laptop hard disk before, because this was my first laptop ever. Also this is my first data loss since 1998, so I guess I had a pretty good run wrt to disk and computer failures, which explains my abysmal backup habits.

Comments

[iamza]

Oh no! I hope you're able to salvage something from your drive. I am pretty bad with making personal backups also -- I've yet to have a hard drive fail on me, and it really does lend one a false sense of security.

[ratcreature]

It helps that due to its age the disk of it was small by today's standards (only 40GB), so most media I usually stored elsewhere after watching (though I lost some recent stuff), and I'm fairly sure I have all of my digital fanart as copies somewhere or at least most of it (on the net are only the low res versions, the files I keep are much better), because I'm slightly better about backups for that. My newer fannish mail is also still in gmail, and the older fannish mail I've hoarded over the years since the mid-1990s is mostly stuff I have backed up somewhere (provided the CDs are still readable), but I've lost some newer mail from my non-gmail accounts. Otherwise I mostly miss my todo file, some drafted posts, and various such files, also a bunch of fanfic and fanart I've saved over the years, some of which isn't online anymore and screencaps as well as other art references. Just the usual clutter you accumulate over five years on a computer. :(

Right now more than the data I miss having a laptop, because I used to be able to snuggle and play with my rats, sitting in a comfortable place, while reading fanfic or watching tv on that laptop, while right now I only have my old desktop in the other room. :(

When I bought it I purchased an extended repair and theft police thing (my brother argued in favor on grounds that I ought to just scam the insurance pretending it to be stolen after a year or two, but it turns out I'm too lazy and to anxious to go through with plans like that, and since then the thing even auto-renewed and cost me again, so it would be nice if I could maybe get something out of it. I mean, afaik covers repair or equivalent replacement cost, not only current depreciated real worth of the thing, though I'm not sure how natural life span of electronics figures into it exactly. Of course today you couldn't even buy any laptop this feeble anymore, but it's worth a try anyway. After digging through my crap I even found the paperwork, so I'm going to get over my aversion to deal with the computer repair people -- the reason I never brought it for repair when the DVD broke, well that and loosing the laptop for weeks, but now that it's a plastic paper weight making ominous noises that's not an issue anymore after all -- and bring it to the store tomorrow.

[popfantastic.livejournal.com]

Oh no! Sorry you broke your streak, and I hope you do have some salvage opportunity.

[ratcreature]

At least with the laptop being so old the disk of it was small by today's standards (only 40GB), so most media I usually stored elsewhere after watching (though I lost some recent stuff), and I'm fairly sure I have all of my digital fanart as copies somewhere or at least most of it (on the net are only the low res versions, the files I keep are much better), because I'm slightly better about backups for that. I mostly miss the recent version of my todo file, some drafted posts, and various such accumulated files (like some recs I planned and a never finished thematic list for stories with ordinary Atlantis personnel), also a bunch of fanfic and fanart I've saved over the years, some of which isn't online anymore, and screencaps as well as other art references. :(

Though right now more than the data I miss having a laptop, because I used to be able to snuggle and play with my rats, sitting in a comfortable place, while reading fanfic or watching tv on that laptop, and now I only have my old desktop. Though on the bright side at least I do have another computer, I wouldn't want to imagine the withdrawal symptoms otherwise.

I guess we live with hard disk failures like in the past it used to be that libraries burned down all the time with only some of the books having copies elsewhere...