Last night the external hard drive I use crashed. Yep, my school one. While most would think losing everything on your computer is not good - for me it's near catastrophic. You see that hard drive houses every single document for Chets for the past 14 years. Just sit quietly and allow that to sink in for a minute. Every Connection, Memo, Letter, Form, Photo, Graphic, Agenda, Schedule, Sign, Survey, Data Chart, Powerpoint, etc - the entire electronic history of our school. It was my worst nightmare. I am proud to report that I have remained uncharacteristically mature about it, I have thrown no hissy fit...yet. :) My crisis management mode took over and I started immediately to try and identify allies who could help me attempt to fix it. Thank goodness there are people out there smart enough to do that kind of magical work. Right now all the data on the drive is being imaged - it'll take 9 hours - before they start trying to extract it. Hopefully, they'll be able to recover it all and at least if they can't there is an electronic "picture" of all 20,000+ items. A special thank you to Jim C., my hero, who is attempting to save the world as we Creekers know it! Stay tuned...
Friday, January 14, 2011
It's Not the End of the World...But Almost
Last night the external hard drive I use crashed. Yep, my school one. While most would think losing everything on your computer is not good - for me it's near catastrophic. You see that hard drive houses every single document for Chets for the past 14 years. Just sit quietly and allow that to sink in for a minute. Every Connection, Memo, Letter, Form, Photo, Graphic, Agenda, Schedule, Sign, Survey, Data Chart, Powerpoint, etc - the entire electronic history of our school. It was my worst nightmare. I am proud to report that I have remained uncharacteristically mature about it, I have thrown no hissy fit...yet. :) My crisis management mode took over and I started immediately to try and identify allies who could help me attempt to fix it. Thank goodness there are people out there smart enough to do that kind of magical work. Right now all the data on the drive is being imaged - it'll take 9 hours - before they start trying to extract it. Hopefully, they'll be able to recover it all and at least if they can't there is an electronic "picture" of all 20,000+ items. A special thank you to Jim C., my hero, who is attempting to save the world as we Creekers know it! Stay tuned...
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9 comments:
Oh my goodness! All 14 years of histroy...poof...gone. I would think the Creek has grown people in the past 14 years that can make this happen. Thank Goodness for Jim - if he's the same guy that made our second grade diagnostic spreadsheet - then he can do anything.
Miracles do happen...
-Karen Morris
Oh my... I feel your pain. A few months ago I opened my home external hard drive to add current pictures of my daughter to it. When I attempted to open the file, it said it was corrupt!! That folder contained EVERY picture of my daughter since she was born! Of course I did not have those pictures saved anywhere else, so I about had a heart attack. Luckily, my husband was able to go image by image and get them back. Thanks to him (and higher powers!) we have all of the pictures back and have them backed up also on DVDs. My thoughts are with you while you wait on word of your external. :)
Susan....been there...the pain is terrible. One year I our computer crashed and I lost a whole year of digital pictures and a ton of school stuff. Couldn't get them back. We bought a back up hard drive and save everything to that. Plus, I end up putting the most important things on discs too. I hope they can recover most of it....I'll keep you in my thoughts!
Debbie Harbour
This is the cut we get from being on the edge! I experienced a "crash" on the hard-drive of my school computer. Same thing...every document I had ever produced at Chets Creek...lost, I feared. Thank goodness, Melanie had warned us about backing up data on an external hard drive. I took her advice but was never sure I had done it right. To my amazement, there it was! Now she warns to have 2 external backups. Your story has convinced me to set that plan into action!
I admire your ability to remain calm. When I lost my drive, I initially freaked out a bit. However, while recovering the lost materials, I relaized that much of the "precious data" was totally outdated, and I ended up purging a ton of files. It was like a forced spring cleaning.
I know that CCE data really is precious, and I am happy that it is being recovered.
Have you thought about Carbonite or other online data storage dot coms? Just a thought.
Peace,
T-Cubed
My "calm" and "relaxed" weekend mode changed to instant anxiety as I read your technology nightmare! It is amazing how one piece of machinery can work miracles in making your life easier, more organized, and can facilitate instant communication, yet can be so difficult, destroy everything that was created, and leave you speechless! Now we see why Christy married the genius she did...Jim to your rescue...and to the rescue of other Creekers whose Diagnostic Scores he made come to life with his ingenious programming. I hope we see a satisfying smile on your face Monday morning letting us know all went well.
My fingers are crossed,
Dorry
Jim Culbert is king of the internet and universe with his powers of digital recovery.
OMG! 14 YEARS! I knew you had hardware issues but I didn't realize it was so much data. You just trumped any past experience I've had with failed hardware. It did make almost paranoid about storing information in multiple places. Kind of goes with that whole idea of not putting all of your eggs in one basket (hey, an idiom - lol). I think it's about time for me to schedule another hard drive back up. :-)
Hoping and praying for a speedy recovery of your external hardware.
Have you thought of using a cloud storage option as your additional backup?
Basically it like having an extra "external hard drive" available anywhere.
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