Computer Crashed!

As some of you may have read on twitter or facebook, our desktop computer crashed. We have the black screen of death and some type of clicking noise. This was our “main” computer we used for storing pictures, music, spreadsheets, etc. Fortunately, most of my pictures I had either on disk, uploaded online, or stored on the laptop. I may have lost some that were taken in the past couple of weeks, which some people may be happy about – including myself – some very unflattering pictures of me from Steph’s 40th Birthday Bash – ha ha.

I did lose our music, all my digital scrap elements, Adobe Photo Shop (I purchased online and downloaded and I can’t figure out how to download onto another machine since they have a newer version out), all my button files, header files, fonts I downloaded, my 2008 Grocery Savings Tracker Spreadsheet, etc.

We are having a computer guy try to retrieve any data he can off the computer. But I’m still mad at myself, I knew better and knew I should back up more of my files. I have been wanting to get an external hard drive FOREVER but never followed through. So please use this as a warning for yourself. Spend a little time and make sure everything is backed up. Another reason some of our stuff wasn’t backed up on disk was our CD writer went kapaut a few months back.

Tonight, I bit the bullet and purchased an external portable drive. Western Digital My Passport Essential 320 GB in fun orange, which should be plenty to back up everything. For $94, in the case of a hard drive loss, worth the money as it will probably cost us around $100 for data retrieval or if we had it all backed up online and wanted to make an archival CD(s) could run around $100 or more. The Western Digital My Passport Essential has great customer reviews on Amazon.

Our computer guy is also going to use this if he is able to retrieve any data from the drive. One thing I liked about this is it is portable and can be synched with another computer. So I can synch with a couple of computers, have it stored on the backup drive in case of any other kind of hardware failure. If I store this somewhere handy, it might be easy to grab this in case of an emergency evacuation like a fire so we don’t lose those precious memories.

We don’t plan on replacing the desktop computer right now as we do have our laptop. The desktop is almost 5 years old and probably not cost efficient to rebuild it as it needs more than just the hard drive.  No need to spend that extra $ right this second. Eventually, I’m sure we will replace it because sometimes it is nice to sit down with a desktop computer. We will eventually find the right deal! :)

More good news, you know the zero weather the midwest is having, our furnace went out in the middle of the night one of those nights. Luckily, we have some connections to get it fixed. At this time it looks like the main problem is pretty simple – we need a new thermostat. I’m just waiting to see what breaks, fails, etc. next. (I think I also lost my zoobook my mom bought for my birthday. Yep, that is a real tragedy. I know I put it somewhere special. Just can’t remember. I’ll probably find it 1-1-10 when the coupons are expired.)