RIP: My Computer
On the flight to Chicago I got the Pinwheel of Death on my laptop and then it refused to boot up. I love how the little rainbow pinwheel is the harbinger of death. Look it’s a pinwheel RUN FOR YOU LIVES OH MY GOD. Turns out, my hard drive is dead. My computer was only two. TWO YEARS OLD how is that possible? Of course, I hadn’t backed up in a while so I lost a bunch of stuff. What’s kind of funny is that this just happened to Doretta so it’s like we really are the same person as everyone had suspected. I am just a little behind her. Like she lives in the future. And she tried to warn me, Annie, she said, you must back up, your computer will die in just a short time. But did I listen to her? Of course not. Because I was living in the past where people are really stupid.
Anyway I’m having a horrible week. I have to decide if I want to spend $1,000 to “recover my data.” Like I have to put a price on my stuff. How much is it worth to me? I don’t know. But I kind of want to die right now.
But, hello, from Chicago. I like Chicago. Everyone is very nice. The city is very nice. The weather is pretty nice. But you know what’s not nice? MY COMPUTER.
Bummer, I’m sorry. I have two failed hard drives full of recording sessions I’m pretending I’ll recover one day.
annie–
I feel for you. my hard drive broke down last year, and I wanted to die. yes, I didn’t back up, either. What happened to me was that I went to the apple store on 5th ave, and this guy said, your hard drive is so dead, there is nothing we can do, so I cried cried and cried. I also called a data recovery place and they said it would be $3000 to get my files back. And then I took my laptop to the apple store in soho and this true mac genius said, your files are fine, so all I had to do was getting a new hard drive and all my files were okay. So maybe you can get a second opinion somewhere and you can get your files back…
I didn’t learn to back up, but I learned that people have no sympathy for people who do not back up. We live in such a cruel world. No wonder we don’t have world peace.
Before dropping $1000, try a demo version of recovery software to see if your data is at all recoverable.
Try this one: http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue_info.php
Were you able to boot from an OSX CD and use its Disk Utility?
Whatever happens, to prevent future losses get a small bus powered external hard drive (bus powered means it gets power directly from the USB or Firewire cable) and start using SuperDuper.
Hey Annie!
In my experience, computers, like cats, are very temperamental…..give it a couple days & it might come around……or if it’s like that devil-cat you were taking care of, it may not……
I saved a lot of money by just employing one of my computer-savvy friends to take apart my computer and saved the data off my old hard drive while I bought a new one. Much cheaper that way. But if you do that I still recommend you have the Geek Squad or whomever install the new hard drive with Windows and all the crap that goes with it…I was cheap and used an illegal copy of Windows. As a result, I can’t install several programs because they need a legit copy.
You wanna talk about bad computer luck: first my computer crashed…then I dropped my printer on it…then the hard drive died. Hence, the being cheap the third time around! So do it right the first time
WTF? 1k is a goddamn new notebook, not to have some social retard in between his sessions of World of Warcraft dick around ribbon cables trying to recover data from a fried HD. Yeah, you insist on using a Mac and therefore what they charge is highway robbery. Generally for that kind of treasure I figure somebody at their marketing dep’t must have done bank robberies.
Alright not all is lost. First off Macs these days use peripherals/parts that are more or less the same with their Wintel counterparts. That’s to be expected since Steve Jobs is Bill Gates bitch. So get a new HD and load up a copy of whatever Mac OS you can beg borrow and steal and start searching left and right for your favorite software. I strongly suggest you have that crap burned on a CD or DVD w/ the reg codes.
Hell maybe order an external HDD since they’re all USB 2.0 and for than less than 150.00 you can have another 120 gigs of space. yes it will be slower than old people fucking but it’s USB not 10k SCSI drives (and not even Macs use Scuzzy any more).
For data recovery it might be little bit iffy since Mac apps work so differently. I mean normally I would suggest you Ghost the image but Ghost is generally Windoze/PC only so I dunno about Mac equivalent.
My advice is shop around- I understand if this data is work critical but 1000 for data recovery sounds like the fucker who quoted you that figure should put down the crack pipe.
$1000 might be reasonable if you, like, lost your computer down the gravity well of a dying star. If you can stand the lecture about backing up he’s going to give you, J. Randall might be the person to talk to. If I still existed, I’d do it for you, without the lecture. Contact me via the usual channels if you require further assistance.
Micah: Yeah it’ll cost like a million dollars. Do you have a million dollars I can borrow? Cool thanks, mail me the check. Word.
Sujin: I know it’s so awful!!! I guess it’s worth getting the data back. At least your story had a happy ending though. I can’t imagine loosing your stuff, I’d probably cry.
Nathan: Hard drive doesn’t even SPIN ugh.
Megaron: Nope. Tried that too. It’s truly a DOA situation. And SOL for that matter.
Jess: OH man everyone has a similar story, which doesn’t actually mjake me feel better. I’m just thinking, dude I KNEW people’s hard drives died, why don’t I back up more often????
Mike: Yeah everyone knows they have you by the short and curlies so they want the cashish.
Mr. Pony: John Randall was on it and said no dice. So now I have to spend the monies.
The future is not a nice place to be. I have currently fucked up my documents folder on my computer trying to back shit up. I do not understand this Mac business. It is hard for a PC user to switch.
I shed a tear for your hard drive.
[...] Cautionary tale: Annie’s hard drive died at her hotel the night before she was to give a big presentation. Ouch. Having a bootable backup on hand would have made this a minor inconvenience. Instead she endured a nightmare of finding an available Apple Store Genius Bar in a strange city. [...]