Like a phoenix

[loaded_march]

Since my last post, I got swamped at work, which, as usual, leaves me wiped out when I get home.  The amount of energy I have left is based on accrued interest, and I'm owing a fair bit to the pool, so I stare at my computer for a while, click a few links, and go to bed.

Very recently, there was a lovely lull at work, where I said something I haven't said in years -- I'm bored.  Not the bored where my job was dull and unengaging (which it isn't even on a bad day), but the bored where I've run out of work and I'm not entirely sure what I should do with myself.  Huzzah!  I get to go home with a surplus of energy to pay back the energy fund, and maybe get some writing done.  I know I owe a gluten-free, refined sugar-free brownie recipe, which I will post as soon as... well.  As soon as I get off my damn ass and get the hastily-jotted recipe card out of the tin.

But, yeah.  I can't have nice things.  My computer died.

Again.

That makes it twice in less than six months, and three times in just over a year.  In the last two crashes, I lost substantial chunks of writing stuffs, and, of course, the backups failed both times.  I even used different backup strategies!

Anyway, the frequency of the crashes and the symptoms were similar enough that I did the only thing possible: I bought a new hard drive, took my laptop apart, and replaced it.  I reinstalled most of the software I had before and from an old, old backup, have most of my files, but I'm sad to say that I lost four months of original fiction and fanfiction that wasn't also copied to my thumb drive.

Which was a depressing amount.

The long and short of it is that, after a period of mourning (and reorganizing my files into something that didn't look like I just shoved everything in the same folder and called it good), I wrote 3K of what might possibly be a Big Bang fic for aftercamlann.  I'm testing to see if it has legs before I sign up, though.

How has everyone been?

Comments

[amalthia]

That's rough losing your harddrive and all the data on it. :(

What back up methods are you using? I ask because if I'm doing what you're doing, I'm going to need to find something better. So far I've mostly been relying on Dropbox and I sync my data to my external drives once every other month. If you aren't already doing this, have you considered moving your writing folder to Dropbox, or some equivalent of Dropbox, so that your work is synced in the cloud?

Good luck on the big bang story and with your new harddrive!

[loaded-march.livejournal.com]

For some reason, I don't trust the Cloud, but I may have to reconsider considering all this bullshit with failed drives.

[amalthia]

I wasn't comfortable using Dropbox at first either. I started with small things to test it out before working my way up to larger files and things I did not want to lose. I do store my fanfiction writings on Dropbox but if I was doing original writing I'd review the service contract to make sure they can't claim my work because they are hosting it. It may not hurt to ask around and see what other writers use for cloud backup.

Normally drives should last at least 5 years, it sounds like you've been exceptionally unlucky with hard drives lately.

[loaded-march.livejournal.com]

That's a good idea about reviewing the service contract. Another option is, well, I suppose I could use my Google Drive, but I've never been comfortable with that, either!

Not just lately, I'm afraid. I have a box of hard drives that have pooched in one way or another. One of them dates back to the era of the parallel port connections -- does that date me? In any case I don't think I've had a hard drive that's lasted more than a year or two before it stands up, waves with a psychotic glint in its eye, and dies.

[amalthia]

I've been replacing my hard drives about every 3 years, but that's because the portable hard drives are becoming more affordable and the last time I replaced them was to upgrade to USB 3.0 connections.

I have a box of hard drives too, some of them date back to late 90s early 2000s. The hard drives are the one thing I don't tend to give away because I had data on them.

[loaded-march.livejournal.com]

I wish I could make it to the 3 year mark just once... *dreamy sigh*

But, yes, I don't give away my hard drives either. I really should recycle, but I'd rather make sure the data is unrecoverable first. A bit hard considering some of the hard drives will no longer talk to my computers, so, yeah, well. I'll take them apart eventually.