When Backing Up Bites You in the Ass

I thought I would do the responsible thing and back up my files. It’s not something I do religiously but do every so often once I’ve accumulated things worth backing up. So I started to transfer some files and had some error messages (that I admit barely looked at), and this was an ominous precursor to the unwelcome appearance of the spinning beach ball of death. Unable to force quit and with the gleefully spinning beach ball mocking me I turned off my computer and disconnected my external hard drive (which I know is bad).

When my computer was up and running again, I once again tried to transfer the files that had caused me problems before but the folder was gone. It wasn’t on my computer or my external hard drive. I blankly stared at my computer, somewhat disbelieving that my files were actually gone and then reality set in. They were gone. So I cursed my computer. I blamed it for eating my files. I cussed at it for being stupid and inept and just plain mean. And when I finished, I yelled at it again. It made me feel slightly better…slightly…for about ten seconds.

It was disappointing to lose those files. Luckily there wasn’t anything irreplaceable; I’d lost a folder of images I’d created. There were some images that if I really wanted, I’d have to draw them again in Illustrator, but most of the necessary images were hand drawings that I just had to scan, alter, crop and relink all over again. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it that irked me, it was the fact that I’d already done it once; it’s just such a waste of time and energy to redo something that was already done.

But complaining about it wouldn’t get my images replaced any faster. You just have to suck it up and do it and know that it blows. [Sigh.] I suppose it could have been worse—I could have lost something that truly was irreplaceable or a folder with vast amounts of information that would take forever to replace. So I guess in the grand scheme of things it sucked—but just mildly. [Half hearted: Yay.]