I Assure You My Personal Tragedy Will Not Interfere With My Ability To Overdramatize My Personal Tragedy On the Internet
March 31, 2009
In the end, a busted hard drive turned out to be what pushed me completely over the edge.
On Sunday night my laptop stopped powering up with the battery, or charging the battery, or even acknowledging the battery's very existence. According to the nice man at the Mac Genius Bar, the battery was simply old and used up and long past its time to go live in the country with the iRabbits.The fact that the entire computer froze and clicked and crashed and died a mere five minutes after the battery went? A coincidence. A crazy, unheard of, unrelated coincidence.
(I really wish I'd spent those last five precious minutes frantically exporting photo files to our network drive instead of on fucking Facebook.)
"Is all your data on the machine backed up?" he asked me cheerfully, even though I bet he totally knew the answer. I mean, look at me. I'm standing here with my laptop's power cord wrapped around my arm and my wallet in my teeth while I try not to spill my coffee on anything because I forgot to put my computer in a goddamn BAG. Do I look like the sort of person who would accidentally leave two years of photos and movies, including absolutely every photo documenting the existence of her new baby, just sitting around in iPhoto with absolutely no backup of any kind?
Yes. YES I DO.
Blog rantings aside, I feel like I've done a decent job at taking everything in stride. I've saved my crying for stupid things, like YouTube videos with an inspirational swell of music at the exact right moment, or the Where the Wild Things Are trailer. My father is ailing and my mother is struggling and my son is a mysterious little question mark and my health insurance is a dick (seriously -- they just kicked our pediatrician AND my obstetrician out of network. Retroactively. Retroactively to 15 days before Ezra's birth.) and I'm working really hard to meet deadlines and provide a little extra income for us and I'm not sleeping super well but I am OKAY. I am FINE. I am BLESSED and things will get BETTER and things could be so much WORSE and in the meantime I have the most beautiful babies in the world and I'm not perfect but they sure are, but let me tell you: the sight of my computer booting up with a blinking icon of No Operating System found made me cry like a snot-nosed little toddler.
"My whole life is on that stupid box!" I wailed to Jason around 4 in the morning, once my tossing and turning finally woke him up enough to notice that I was a hot wreck of nerves.
"It'll be okay," he assured me, to which I inexplicably responded with a confession that Max was due for a vet appointment last month and I NEVER TOOK HIM TO THE VET. OUR BABY PHOTOS COULD BE LOST FOREVER AND OUR CAT COULD BE DYING AND IT'S ALL MY FAULT.
You what is nice, spouses? Knowing when to just not say anything back. That, and late-night backrubs.
Anyway, I have since calmed down. I'm on an old laptop that works, despite the space bar being kind of a bitch, and hey! I had Snood installed on this machine! God, I've missed Snood. The repair cost for my other laptop is charmingly reasonable, or at least SOUNDS reasonable after you hear the prices for data recovery. But hey, we're hoping maybe we'll get a bulk discount because Jason has an external hard drive that he dropped and broke -- at the hospital, five minutes after transferring all the beautiful maternity photos he took of me, after Ezra was born and there could officially be no more beautiful maternity photos. Can you put a price on such preshus memories? Yes. Apparently you can. And it comes with a goddamn comma.
Anyway. Um. Go backup your files, chickies, and take your pets to the vet. That is all.
Oh! Things can only improve, right?! Something tells me all will be okay.
Retroactively kicked out of network? Can they DO THAT?
On the insurance thing they still have to pay the bills as long as your dr submitted them prior to his change in status. i cried when our desktop died and I lost my monopoly high scores but yours is SO MUCH Worse!
Hard-drive death on my PC drove me to Mac, now you have me seriously scared.
Wow, it does not even seem legal to be able to kick them out retroactively. That is bullshit.
And yes, I need to back my shit up. I haven't even created the recovery disks yet. It was taking too long and I needed to check my Facebook.
You have just described a personal nightmare. I am forcing myself to take really deep breaths here. But you're okay! And your babies are okay! And one month past a vet visit? Pssht- that's nothing! I bet wine would help. That's what I would do... um, if I wasn't pregnant.
I lost pictures of months 3-6 of baby girlness to a dead iMac hard drive. It was a sad day. Backing up photos again tonight!
You're right, it will get better and your babies are SO preshus.
It's not your fault - it's Apple's fault. Macs don't die, it's impossible. Therefore backing up is a waste of time and non-applicable.
Yours is a lemon. Totally not your fault.
Posting for the first time ever in over three years because my need to say MACBOOK BATTERIES! ARGHH! finally overtook my overwhelming laziness.
Mine died after 1 year and 1 day- about 24 hours after my warranty expired, and while nothing has crashed (yet)- it doesn't function unless plugged into a very petite looking cord that nobody can breathe on, lest they disconnect me in the middle of ONLINE TRAFFIC SCHOOL. Cough cough toddler.
So sorry. I better go back up my files.
Our computer totally died right after Christmas, and it turned out my husband had not backed up pictures since July. July! He had backed up all of his preshus music (which he has CDs for anyway), but he lost the pictures of our son from ages 7-13 months! I kept my mouth shut, because it is the type of thing I would have done too.
We use Mozy now and start a backup EVERYTIME we put pictures on the computer. EVERYTIME. Mozy is cheap and easy and peace of mind.
Also, I hate insurance companies and the crap they get away with that should be illegal. That's all I'm going to say before my blood pressure spikes on your behalf.
I feel like you have been burned by commenters for complaining or venting, so you feel like you can't really let loose here anymore and that really sucks. This is your space to do with as you please. I'm sorry about your 'puter (but I did back up my hard drive after I heard about your blow up yesterday, so thanks?). And I'm sorry you've got so many other outside forces bringing the suckage. I hope the computer problem gets resolved quickly and that nothin else craptacular gets added to your already-full plate. **hugs**
I feel for you with your computer problems. But you know that a lot of your life is right here on the internet. I've gone back and reread your old archives. Before Noah, before Ezra. Your life is posted right here on your blog, plus a gazillion photos. You should print out this blog and submit it to a publisher. It's fascinating!
Stopping with the lurking because... YES. Ugh, have so SO been there. My laptop died my junior year of college, and with it went 5,000 music files and absolutely priceless photos of a friend that had passed away only months before.
So, yeah. Singing the "back it up" blues.
It's stories like this that make me grateful for the pathetically little memory still available on my computer. We HAVE to back up. Period. I suggest getting a crappier computer with far less storage space. So sorry to hear about it all!
I am sorry you are having such a crummy time... ((HUGS))
Thanks for the reminder; I am so bad at backing my pictures up. I actually just backed-up three years worth of pictures two weekends ago. I count my lucky stars everyday that nothing ever happened to where I lost them. Now I am going to try and do it on at least a monthly basis. ;)
This post just prompted me to get up , walk out to the office, open the safe and get out our external hard drive and back my shit up (though that sounds horribly inappropriate). Why? Cause I had the same thing happen to me- lost my hard drive full of photos, including the first year of my daughters life. SUCKTASTIC!
Wait wait wait...RETROACTIVELY dropped your doctors!?!? WTF? And they just told you? WWWTTTFFF??????
I friggin' love Snood.
Just a thought about data recovery - but if your hard drive can be inserted in another computer you might try a cheaper option before forking out thousands on data recovery... http://www.getdata.com/ try "recover my files". I think you can preveiw whether its going to work before you pay for the product... not sure if they have a mac version, but it worked great for my pc.
I. Know.
I lost a year and a half of baby videos. First Birthday. First Christmas.
And not because I didn't have cool little external hard drive that I'd been using to back files up, but because I was certain I had ALREADY backed those videos up so when I was doing a backup before wiping my hard drive I DELIBERATELY chose not to do those files: because they were videos and it would take too long and I was in a hurry to wipe my hard drive and get back to the fucking Internet.
Not backed up. Hard drive wiped. Broken hearts everywhere.
My MAC hard drive died a few months ago and I still get teary eyed thinking about it. I lost every photo of my son's first 21 months. It stinks, I kick myself everyday for not backing up. Sorry, for your loss.
All I have to say in response to any of that is:
RETROFUCKINGACTIVELY?
As if you didn't hate them enough already. Also, pardon me while I go quadruple-backup everything in existence.
This will make you feel better. My dog was so late for his check up the vet had to right me a letter like hey, neglectful dog owner, bring your dog in, he needs shots. We can call animal welfare or something. But my excuse is he was due the same time my son had his preschool accident and I was dealing with that nonsense.
And I'm the same way. I'm great in a real crises. But yesterday, my check engine light came on in my car and I burst into tears. My son rushed from pre school in an ambulance, totally fine.
hey amy -- just wanted to put a possibility out there. you might not need to send your laptop out for data recovery at all, instead, here's a do it yourself version that might cost a grand total of $10. just enlist the help of a techie friend. this should work, unless the hard drive is making clicky noises.
figure out what type of hard drive you have, meaning what width. if i remember right, laptop harddrives are 2.5", and i'm sure macs are the same. Get an external hard drive enclosure that is of that size. online, this can cost about $10. take your hard drive out of the mac, put in a replacement hard drive put the old one in the hard drive enclosure, and plug it into your computer as if it were an external hard drive. voila! access to all your files!
i did this with 100% success on my dell this summer. it took approximately ten seconds. the longest part was getting the enclosure shipped to my house. if you can do this, hope it works!
One, I wasn't aware your insurance company could do such a thing. Is that even legal?
And, having owned nothing but Apple computers as a home computer since the first one's were available lo these many years ago, I can say this with authority. When they die, they die spectacularly. No I must go back up everything. Since my entire life is on this computer. I don't even want to think about it dying.
Well that just blows. We have Time Machine and an external hard drive for our iMac but I haven't even thought about backing anything up on my Macbook, which is only two weeks old and already home to a frajillion pictures. I'm so sorry this happened.
Now I have to go watch Steel Magnolia's.
Omg SNOOD!!! I totally forgot about that game...well, if nothing else you have that back. And that made me smile! Sorry about all that other shit...I have no advice as I too have been a "hard drive crash victim", but I hope it all works out.
Two words. Time Machine. Handy little Apple device that automatically and wirelessly backs up all your files at least once a day. You just set it up and then forget about it. It's a little pricey, but totally worth the peace of mind.
Good luck with the data recovery!
UGH. Insurance companies can be such a pain in the ass... we wrote at least 4 letters when we found out (via a bill) that the NICU docs on call at delivery were out of network even though they were at an in-network hospital. That's some bullshit.
OK. Backing up pictures and other things I cannot live without tonight. I can't deal with the 4am tossing and turning, crying and kicking myself if I ignored your warning.
fight the man. FIGHT HIM.
I feel for you. I've been there myself. Lost all my pictures for about 2 years of my first precious baby's life, vacation pics, bithdays, holidays, everything. My tech guy husband tried everything he could think of to save it. Nothing worked. Short of that number with the commas-which we're totally not capable of right now, at least for that purpose at the moment, we're having to make due with the old fashioned, and I mean REALLY old fashioned kind of memories... the ones in our brains.
Assvice you may not want, but: Data recovery is ridiculously expensive (as you obv know). Do you have a university near you? A lot of university IT people outsource their skillz. I work at a university, so it was my first stop, but I paid the Mac guy $100 and bought a new hard-drive for $75, and he somehow found my data and replaced the hard-drive (the exact same thing that happened to yours happened to mine, except the battery died AFTER it crashed.)
However, if you do pay the pros, most likely you WILL get your data back. They have all kinds of tricks up their sleeves, and you'll sure as hell be paying for them. Good luck!
Also, I think you're hanging in there pretty well considering all you're dealing with in your life right now. My friends and I always say "the moon must be in retrograde" when we just can't seem to break a run of bad luck. Here's hoping your moon's OUT of retrograde really soon.
Assvice you may not want, but: Data recovery is ridiculously expensive (as you obv know). Do you have a university near you? A lot of university IT people outsource their skillz. I work at a university, so it was my first stop, but I paid the Mac guy $100 and bought a new hard-drive for $75, and he somehow found my data and replaced the hard-drive (the exact same thing that happened to yours happened to mine, except the battery died AFTER it crashed.)
However, if you do pay the pros, most likely you WILL get your data back. They have all kinds of tricks up their sleeves, and you'll sure as hell be paying for them. Good luck!
Also, I think you're hanging in there pretty well considering all you're dealing with in your life right now. My friends and I always say "the moon must be in retrograde" when we just can't seem to break a run of bad luck. Here's hoping your moon's OUT of retrograde really soon.
Well, smug little me backed up all my files because my operating system was being upgraded which went swimmingly and all of my pictures and videos of my preshus preshus child were safely stored on thumb drives WHICH I CANNOT FIND AND DAMMIT I CAN'T BELIEVE I CAN'T FIND THE STOOPID BACKUP DRIVES I HOPE THEY DIDN'T GET LEFT ANYWHERE...
I feel better now...
...or not.
My external hard drive, with ALL of my pictures, and my Microsoft Money data files, died. And I hadn't thought to back up it up. Duh. Anyway, my brother is a tech support guy, and he pronounced it dead. Pictures...all gone. Then he said he was going to try one more thing. He put the drive (which was out of the case) into a ziploc bag and put it into the freezer. It worked. Honest to God. All of my pictures are back. Made we wonder if that's what the data backup guys do...charge hundreds of dollars and put the sucker in the freezer. Now I'm going to get an external hard drive to back up my new external hard drive.
Oh, I am so sorry. I am such a novice with technology that we just changed to a digital camera a couple of years ago. And I just realized that all our pictures are on the computer's hard drive. It never occured to me that you ought to have an external hard drive; now I have been sufficiently warned. I am backing up all pictures somewhere right away.
I'm so sorry for all the other shit too. I think I'm normally a pretty easygoing person, but the other night, my 5-year-old dropped a bath towel into the open, non-flushed toilet. I didn't realize it had fallen in and scooped it up, spraying its urine-soaked goodness all over the bathroom, myself, and all three kids. I completely lost it and started yelling "I AM COVERED IN YOUR PEE!" Not my finest hour (though he's been a better flusher since then). So I understand things piling up. That was just the last thing I could take that day.
I can't believe all the shit you've been putting up with. I hope things improve soon.
I am so sorry about the pictures. I hope they're able to save them!
And, can you fight that insurance thing? You must be able to; changing things retroactively is RIDICULOUS.
Oh, Amers (that's what they call me, do they call you that?). That sucks, but if you can't get them back the story will eventually suffice. Sending virtual wine and cheese. Expensive wine...why hot? Not that I think you're whining, I sure as hell would!
Ugh. That's why NOT, on the expensive virtual wine. I wish I was one of those that could not go back and read it, just trust that the people will understand. Duh! ;-).
Exact same thing happened to my Mac last year, and it totally, completely sucked. I feel for you, and I'm glad Jason has figured out the silent, reassuring back rub thing.
oh crap - thanks for the reminder. every photo of my little one is unbackedup on my laptop too.
here's hoping your able to retrieve all those precious photos and that the the littlest numbers are in front of the comma.
I'm so sorry to hear of your problems! It's probably no consolation, but you did inspire me to finally start backing up my own photos, something I've been meaning to get around to, well, forever.
I am so sorry about your computer. Also, your babies are prettier than mine. I have been meaning to tell you this for some time and now seems like the moment.
That sucks. Glad it is salvageable, though.
Oh Amy! The Universe really needs to give you a break.
My husband the PC Support guy says the putting the hard drive in a ziploc bag in the freezer could work, it's worth a try.
That insurance thing? If they can really get away with it, that sucks more than just about anything has ever sucked ever before.
Should I SuperPoke you with a virtual cocktail on Facebook? :)
You've scared me into backing things up. I was using Kodak Gallery for this purpose, but they're being all cheap now and have started to charge for large-sized accounts if you don't buy anything. I knew they'd find me out. . .
Also, late-night back-rubs? You are lucky!!
Wow. That really, really sucks.
I am now going to backup all my files. Thank you for the kick in the ass reminder!
I had the same thing happen to me. I hope you have good luck with the data recovery.
This was me, last fall. This is me, now, with carbonite.com backing up all the things that I nearly lost last year. It's pretty cheap, and just runs in the background. And it works - we found out in January.
Carbonite.com. Or some other on-line based storage. Worth every dime.
That would have sent me into a melt down too. {{{Hugs}}}