Tales of (Computer) Woe
May. 10th, 2016 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaceyBack up your computer. Now. Go! Do it.
Right?
Done it?
If not, why not?
Luckily something someone said a couple of weeks ago caused me to do just that because I'm generally not very good at reembering to do it. So at least (most) of my work files are pretty much backed up. Good job I did because on Friday - after being sluggish for a couple of weeks - I went to reboot my 22 month old Lenovo laptop - my main machine - and it wouldn't. Just wouldn't. Nothing I could do would persuade it to bypass the Lenovo recovery screen - and the Lenovo Recovery screen just led it in a circle back to--you guessed it--the Lenovo Recovery Screen.
So I did what any sane and sensible person does when faced with a computer problem. I yelled for Best Beloved.
BB does not claim to be a computer expert, but he's built several machines from the motherboard up, so has a lot more experience than I have when it comes to persuading misbehaving machines to toe the line, however his dire prognostication was simply: It's broken, i.e. hardware failure of some kind.
And that's when I realised that simply backing up work files isn't enough. There's a whole load of stuff on files other than in my work directories. Such as my email address book and stored emails and my passwords (heavily disguised). I have an older version of my password reminder file, but the emails and addressbook? Sadly no. I could blame Windows7 because on previous machines I've stored my email in my work directory but Win7 uses 'Libraries' and I allowed it to store my email in the default place (i.e. not in the libraries). Silly me.
So, having realised how vulnerable my whole work/work balance is with both my day jobs (the writing and the music agency) stored on one vulnerable computer with a outboard drive for backups I've been and ordered a new desktop machine. It's another Lenovo BB has one that hasn't let him down after 22 months). It runs Win7pro and it's got 16 g of memory, a 1 tb hard drive and an i7 processor - a bit of an upgrade on my laptop which has the 1 tb memory but only 8 g of memory and an i5 processor. The monster machine is available for collection on Wednesday and one we get it home, strip out all the bloatware and re-load all the essential programmes (Lotus Smart Suite, Office, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Scrivener) we can try loading the backup files that BB managed to drag off the horribly corrupted hard drive using an Acronis boot up disk. I'll also discover whether the large number of photographs that I scanned and sorted after the last backup need to be scanned again.
At that point I'll discover whether the email address book with twenty years' worth of contacts is viable or not amd whether I can recover my password file. Thank goodness my bank passwords are in my head not on the machine.
Right?
Done it?
If not, why not?
Luckily something someone said a couple of weeks ago caused me to do just that because I'm generally not very good at reembering to do it. So at least (most) of my work files are pretty much backed up. Good job I did because on Friday - after being sluggish for a couple of weeks - I went to reboot my 22 month old Lenovo laptop - my main machine - and it wouldn't. Just wouldn't. Nothing I could do would persuade it to bypass the Lenovo recovery screen - and the Lenovo Recovery screen just led it in a circle back to--you guessed it--the Lenovo Recovery Screen.
So I did what any sane and sensible person does when faced with a computer problem. I yelled for Best Beloved.
BB does not claim to be a computer expert, but he's built several machines from the motherboard up, so has a lot more experience than I have when it comes to persuading misbehaving machines to toe the line, however his dire prognostication was simply: It's broken, i.e. hardware failure of some kind.
And that's when I realised that simply backing up work files isn't enough. There's a whole load of stuff on files other than in my work directories. Such as my email address book and stored emails and my passwords (heavily disguised). I have an older version of my password reminder file, but the emails and addressbook? Sadly no. I could blame Windows7 because on previous machines I've stored my email in my work directory but Win7 uses 'Libraries' and I allowed it to store my email in the default place (i.e. not in the libraries). Silly me.
So, having realised how vulnerable my whole work/work balance is with both my day jobs (the writing and the music agency) stored on one vulnerable computer with a outboard drive for backups I've been and ordered a new desktop machine. It's another Lenovo BB has one that hasn't let him down after 22 months). It runs Win7pro and it's got 16 g of memory, a 1 tb hard drive and an i7 processor - a bit of an upgrade on my laptop which has the 1 tb memory but only 8 g of memory and an i5 processor. The monster machine is available for collection on Wednesday and one we get it home, strip out all the bloatware and re-load all the essential programmes (Lotus Smart Suite, Office, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Scrivener) we can try loading the backup files that BB managed to drag off the horribly corrupted hard drive using an Acronis boot up disk. I'll also discover whether the large number of photographs that I scanned and sorted after the last backup need to be scanned again.
At that point I'll discover whether the email address book with twenty years' worth of contacts is viable or not amd whether I can recover my password file. Thank goodness my bank passwords are in my head not on the machine.
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no subject
Date: May. 10th, 2016 02:23 pm (UTC)I also store some stuff (not confidential) on Google docs for the same reason. I'm probably less likely to lose it, and I can access it away from home.
I do need to back up my other stuff though...
no subject
Date: May. 10th, 2016 03:03 pm (UTC)So thanks for the warning. You have prompted me to make a backup of my emails and address list. I do have all my files (documents and photos) backed up on an external hard drive, but like you I had forgotten about emails.
no subject
Date: May. 10th, 2016 06:55 pm (UTC)