computer shit

recently. a couple weeks back. i was checking my email as i do before i get ready for work. i clicked on a link to a friend’s blog. and the computer started to slow down. took a while for the page to load, the mouse started disappearing and glitching out. i heard a couple clicks from somewhere inside my computer’s case. and then… bios. the bios screen. this is basically the mother board settings screen. you can get to it before the computer starts up, or if you don’t have an operating system installed whatsoever. this didn’t look good.

i tried starting up the computer again, but it made three clicks and then a high pitched whine. kind of a reeeeeee sound. click click click. like drumsticks counting off a song. click click click… reeeeeee. and the xp start up screen with the little blue progress bar loading infinitely. not good. couldn’t start into safe mode. couldn’t start in regular mode. all i could get to was the bios screen.

i shut it down. got ready and went to work. called a friend, who said, yeah that sounds like it’s yr hard drive. like it physically crashed. all yr data’s prolly gone.

fuck. i felt sick. panicked. angry. freaked out. scared. what about all the music files for all the recording i’ve done. the ones that i wasn’t done with. the ones that i still needed to finish up the last rories record. or the ones of other friend’s bands that i was still working with. and all the zine files and photos and layouts, etc. fucking hell.

this happened on a wednesday. i sent emails and made calls to friends to see if anyone had had this happen or knew of someone else and if they had any recommendations on where to take the hard drive to. i looked into how much it would cost to crack the fucker open and physically remove data, if a software extraction didn’t work. fbi stylee. at least a thousand.

then it was off to new jersey to visit h’s family for four days. i did my best to relax. to not worry about it. to not think about it. to come to grips with it. to be at peace with the fact that all that info, all those files, all the stuff i was working on, was gone. i was able to resign myself to the fact and relax. it was a good visit out there. and beautiful weather. and my first hoagie from wawa. and first water ice. yes water ice. like italian ice, but slushier.

when we got back, h helped me find some places to take the hard drive to. and to make this long story short. the place i went with, was able to get everything except for like 20 gigs off of it. hooray! i don’t know how i got so lucky that the physical damage occurred where there wasn’t crucial data stored. but i don’t care. i’m just stoked that i’ve got back the files i need to work with.

so now i’m all about backing shit up. two internal hard drives set up so that they are basically mirrored clones of each other. an external hard drive to back up again. and prolly a second exernal hard drive to make further back up. never again! hopefully! or maybe less catastrophic in the future!

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