Thursday, August 16, 2007

Laptop Grief

The hard drive of my trusty laptop just crashed, the day before the start of a major trip. Fortunately everything important was backed up. Even so, I am feeling bereft and out of sorts without my computer. Fortunately I have an ancient but still functioning laptop to take its place temporarily, but I find it irritating and aesthetically unpleasing to use an old, slow, battered laptop.

There is no good time for a hard drive to crash, but it would be far far worse to have the computer die during the trip rather than immediately before. That is my lame attempt to be positive about the situation.

Two of my students recently had hard drive crashes. Perhaps it is contagious. Both of these students completely shut down in terms of progress on papers they were writing, although they had their manuscripts backed up and could, in theory, have continued writing using one of the many other computers available to them. Although I can appreciate the emotional pain of a hard drive crash, it does seem possible for life to go on in some form, albeit with a decrease in quality of life and aesthetic computing pleasure.

Anyway, I'm off on another trip. Posting and comment moderation will continue, but may be sporadic for the next two weeks.

4 comments:

Lulubelle B said...

I feel your pain. Last year was laptop hell for me. Backups saved my butt 3 times.

My first laptop was stolen in January. The replacement was a lemon that tortured me for 11 months. Its first hard drive shorted out and was replaced. Then the replacement hard drive and the motherboard were fried by a short in the cable that connects them.

Back up your data, then back it up again to an entirely different device. CYA...

- Lulu

Anonymous said...

It is frustrating when the technology gets in the way of the work instead of enabling it. But "better before than during" is absolutely right. My laptop died on me this spring in the middle of a job talk! However, I'd been careful to save my presentation on a Flash drive, so was able to continue on a borrowed machine with only a few minutes' delay. Maybe my lack of a meltdown impressed someone, because I got the job offer. :)

Good luck with your temporary fix -- hope things get back to normal soon.

EcoGeoFemme said...

Have a good trip!

Anonymous said...

It is when somebody’s hard drives crashes. Even I had some sort of ill luck couple of times. This is a hellish thing one has to face especially if our hard drive disk is full of important data. But never mind as somebody aptly said that “Every problem has its own solution" We have to find solution anyhow no matter how tough it will be. Don’t you go to some Data recovery centre .I think it’s the best solution during emergency. Now a day’s there is lots of recovery centre but only few got an advanced technology. For example, one of my best is HDRC (hard disk recovery centre). It is a leading company in Delhi and I’m a usual customer of HDRC because I believe in the best. I just to want to help you to scribble their homepage www.hdrconline.com
Good luck ahead!
Tenzin