When I unplugged, packed up and moved my PC, I didn’t think much of it. I have two other laptops that I use that satiate standard needs that there was no real rush to getting my system back up and running in any timely fashion. So, for the better part of the last month, my PC had been sitting dormant, a black box surrounded by wound up cords and monitors.
So naturally, the moment I needed to retrieve something important off of my PC, it would be at this moment that I’d discover that the hard drive inside of it seems to have died. Now I’ve dealt with hard drive failures in the past, and it’s never particularly pleasant, but the timing of this one combined with the fact that this wasn’t a hand-me-down machine like several of those before this one, but one I purchased myself with hopes that I could ride it for a good bit, which I did, has made this particular hard drive failure a particularly hard pill to swallow.
Not to mention that pretty much everything important to me, from photography, sensitive documents, websites, writing and all of my work samples and professional information were on it. Not just from the last six years that I’ve had this PC, but from many more years before it, all transferred and preserved throughout my time of owning computers in general.
Naturally, I never backed up this machine at any point, because backing up computers takes time, effort, money or all of the above that I never really wanted to expend, because I don’t think anyone ever really thinks about hard drive failure, until it happens to them, to which by then, it’s often times too late.
So basically, I’m sitting on a non-functioning hard drive that contains nearly my life’s professional body of work on it, not to mention an archive of over 15 years of photographs, among numerous other digital personal effects that would be absolutely devastating for me to lose. Needless to say, I am quite unhinged about this scenario, and am on the cusp of freaking out and/or losing it, if it turns out that I have actually lost all or a substantial chunk of this information.
In this regard, I hate everything. I hate that hardware are like automobiles, that they eventually break down from nothing but merely time alone, and that’s the accepted norm of computer ownership. I hate that we’re all so reliant on computers and things existing digitally. I hate that if I decided to go contrarian to this, and be anal retentive about backups and keeping physical copies, I’d eventually grow resentful of a pile of backup hard drives and/or physical matter eventually cluttering up my space.
I just hate that this shit is happening to me right now.
All I can really do now is hope that maybe my brother can help me find some magic way to keep the hard drive spinning long enough for me to pull my data. Failing that, then I’ll be forced to stop being such a tightwad with the money I don’t really have a lot of excess of and plunk down to hire a professional data recovery service, and in order to protect themselves from emotional irate customers like I might be, seldom guarantee 100% recovery of information. And that’s just it, regardless of whichever route works, nothing is guaranteed, and ultimately any data that is recovered will ultimately just be moved from one detonated time bomb, to another ticking time bomb of a storage device, counting down to its own impending failure.
Technology fucking sucks, man. It sucks more that I’m so reliant on it, and that I’m being put in such a terrible mood by the potential loss of digital property. Even if I manage to recover all or a good chunk of the contents of this hard drive, it’s not like I’m going to be eager to rush out and get more back-up drives or pay for a cloud-based back-up service; it’s like why would I want to back my shit up at day 1, when I’m inevitably going to accumulate more digital clutter that I’m going to grow attached to and want to keep?
I need to not let this upset me so much, but it’s difficult. I’ve admittedly been on edge throughout the last weeks, mostly on account of the uneasy transition I’m going through after selling my house, growing dissatisfied with my career, wondering what I’m going to do with my life, and issues within the family; still, still and still as far as the latter three are concerned. This is just one more inconvenience that isn’t a definitive loss, but still requires time, effort and potentially a lot of money in order to rectify, and I simply don’t want to bother, but will have to.
