Jamie Fehr

Today I was at my computer, which is pretty normal. I was doing some organizing of files and folders, which is also pretty normal. I was clearing files off of my desktop (there were only six, but that is six too many). and I the process I managed to completely remove 12 gigabytes of data from computer.

A quick googling got me to a page that told me I was pretty much done for if I didn’t have backups. Of course I didn’t have a backup, otherwise this wouldn’t have been a big deal. The folder was simply too big to fit into my regular backup schedule. Eventually I did find an application that claimed that it could restore my permanently deleted files. I didn’t have much faith in there claims but I downloaded it to see what they could do.

They crashed my computer.

It was now time for a damage assessment report, what did I really lose?

• 53 Episodes of the Simpsons
• 8 Feature Length Films (Pirate Copies, I mean backups of the local video stores movies.)
• The First season of Clone High
• A bunch of what I believe are refered to as viral videos

So far nothing irreplaceable has been destroyed, but missing from the list is every video that I have ever made. Arrrrrggggghhhhhh!!!! (Yes, that’s a word)

But wait!!! I have all my files backed up to a CD… right? A better term would be “had” I had everything backup to CD’s, but I threw them out a few months ago thinking “when am I ever going to need these?”

So accepting defeat, I get back to reorganizing some files, and lo and behold there in an obscured directory that was supposed to be destroyed reside about half of the important files, that I had just destroyed forever.

So the moral of the story is, operating a computer without backups is a bit like Australian Style Rappelling without the Rope, your probably going to fall hard.