I’m not reminiscing about a Salt n’ Pepa lyric here, I’m merely sharing that my 1TB external hard drive saved my life this week. So yes, back it up! You’ll notice there is no image above. It’s been a rough week here in the IT department, hence my blog silence. My beloved 24″ Mac desktop went on the fritz (white apple symbol on startup, that’s all), and I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief that my back up drive was fine, and that I store all of my client files remotely as well. But it still really bites when your computer doesn’t work!
Here was the scene on Monday morning: I looted around our shared basement storage for my ancient Mac box, dragged it up to the 4th floor, packed up the computer, carried said 400 pound box down 4 flights, awkwardly walked one avenue in the pouring rain (wishing I had covered the box in plastic), attempted to hail a cab while balancing box on top of a trash can, gave up on getting a cab and boarded the bus, promptly wacked someone in the knee with evil computer box, profusely apologized, and finally arrived at the Apple store, where a trusty staffer offered to take the evil box and helped me downstairs to the Genius bar for my appointment. Phew! But they really need to serve martinis at this supposed “bar.” There is a lot of stress there.
After 1 hour, “Genius” determined that there was not a problem with my hard drive (yay), but with something that “sits on” my hard drive (not so yay). Did I mention that the computer started normally when he first tried it, making me feel like a moron? But it soon went back to its old tricks. Whatever his diagnosis meant, I am still not certain. Still, his recommendation was to wipe everything and start anew. Genius then asked: “Did I bring my back-up drive?” Of course not! So I dropped $20 on a cab to and fro and 15 minutes later, I was back with the magical “restore my life now please” external hard drive. Long story short, he wiped my hard drive and sent me home to reinstall all of my data, since it can take about 3-4 hours. Back up the spiral stairs I went, into the rain, into a cab (bliss), and carried the evil box back up the 4th floor (are we sensing a theme that my life would be greatly improved by an elevator?), where I attempted to follow his directions. Another long story short, there was something wrong with the reinstall and the computer brought me back to a main menu every 4 minutes, which played this ridiculous song and then asked “English?” and “What country do you live in?” After the 6th time of this happening, I’m shouting ENGLISH, UNITED STATES, and pounding the mouse. Of course when I tried to call the store to speak with my “Genius”, I was routed to a tech person in another country and had to reexplain my entire predicament! I gave up and made another store appointment for Thursday. So, today I left the evil box at home and walked back to 67th and Broadway seeking further wisdom. I am now 2 of 4 hours into restoring my data (yippee) but I’m not celebrating until it actually happens.
I felt a bit like Alexander during his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. But everyone has bad days. Even people who live in Australia. The moral of the story is, if you love your images and docs, make sure you regularly back up onto an external drive or cloud storage. Your life, though frustrating, will not end when your computer dies. I hope everyone had a luckier week than I did!
