It's been an interesting experience to begin to rebuild my files after the hard drive crash. I realized, during the initial period of relief that I could again indulge my computer addiction, that I had lost everything that was in my old hard drive: sermons dating back several years, ceremony templates, downloads of software, etc. I do have many of the older files saved on a disk, but not the new stuff. Some of it will have to be retyped in and reinstalled.
It's kind of like having your house burn down and losing all your belongings. The task becomes deciding what to replace. In this case, do I replace the old Appleworks word processing program that I had saved from an elderly eMac? Or do I invest in the new iWorks from Apple? I already have Word for Mac, but I prefer an Apple product.
Whatever I decide to do, it means getting used to something new after years of being comfortable with a computer loaded with just what I liked to use. The new iWorks, which I have on trial for 30 days, is remarkably similar in its design to the Word for Mac, with formatting procedures which are unfamiliar and will take getting used to.
Some life changes are easy and enjoyable. Some are tougher. I'm a little self-conscious about the fact that adjusting to new computer designs is harder for me than some of life's other challenges! Who knew, when we were all revelling in the wonders of computer abilities, that this machine would come to be so important in our lives? Not me!
10 comments:
Good luck. I always see in the computer reviews that Macs need fewer repairs than other computers, and have stuck with PCs for other reasons. I have only once lost a HD contents, and had a mildly outdated backup; I continue to pray for more of the same.
LinguistFriend
Something I've taken to doing is to mail my manuscripts to myself and leave them in the inbox of my email account- that way, all I have to do to reload them in case of crash is to download them from email! Even the free email services allow a huge amount of storage if it's text- pictures gobble it up quickly, though.
What Joel said, plus I make a backup every so often to DVD-ROM and mail it to my parents a thousand miles away. In case of fire or other disaster.
I do what Joel and Scott do. And if you open a gmail account, it's big enough that you can email everything to yourself regularly and just about never come close to filling up the account.
Last July, I lost tons of interviews with people about spirituality and the workplace and the draft of the first three chapters of my spirituality and the workplace book in July. And, now this is a little sick of me...I found it hugely freeing. It wasn't going in the right direction anyway.
I do the same think Joel does, too.
When I'm working on serious writing, which isn't often enough.
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Those are terrific ideas, friends! Thanks so much for your counsel.
PS. Actually, Ms. T., I am finding this pretty freeing as well---think of all the stuff I don't have to search for any more. It's all gone and I know it!
Oh, agh! This happened to me in December, but we could recover a lot of the data. I found it just really disorienting to learn my way around a new desktop -- things were either not there or in a different place.
Good luck with the adjustment. I bought a little zip drive that I download everything onto every six months or so and leave hanging on my bookcase.
Have you asked your techno-geek son about the crash? I'm given to understand that unless you've actually managed to melt the thing in a fire, it should be possible to retrieve whatever information is on it. (Whether that's cost-effective or not is another matter.)
Ms. Theologian, your advice about Gmail sounds good, but I would be wary after losing a bunch of notes for a novel in Google Docs. (And after I had reconstructed it once from a laptop my three-year-old Visigoth destroyed!) I know it's not quite the same thing, but if Google Docs can leave you high and dry, Gmail probably can too. Place not your faith in free online services...
I burn everything to DVD-ROM about every six months at work. That usually works well enough.
The Mac guys told me that the hard drive was too fried to retrieve anything, so that's that, as far as old stuff goes. I do have one backup CD with some stuff on it, but till I get an Apple word processing program, I can't do much with it. I did just order the iWorks this afternoon.
Thanks for all the good suggestions, everyone. It feels so good to be reconnected.
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