[X] My Assistant

[ElkGroveDan]

So here's the flip side of the story that we heard from Ted last year (it was Ted wasn't it?) Ted don't read this, you will hate me.

I had an automatic backup system set up on my home computer -- dual 60 G hard drives that took turns creating a backup image of one on the other. The E: drive had the OS and programs and most data, and the D: drive was mostly archived files and the main backup site. At some point the automatic backup program had stopped creating updates and it became one of those things "I need to get around to fixing." As it turns out it hadn't done a full backup since last February!

So a few weeks ago I encountered a great deal on a 120G portable USB hard drive and decided it would be good to keep a backup of my system in my briefcase in the event the house burned down or a lightning bolt hit my machine. I kept putting it off until yesterday morning when I was hanging around the house feeling lazy and reading UMSF. Ted reminded me in a private disussion about his lost data. That made me think about my system and its need for a recent backup. So I plugged in the portable drive and ran a backup of both hard drives. I checked it out and both backups were good. So I put the portable drive away and didn't think much more of it.

Later in the evening my wife called me in and said, "I don't know what happened. I didn't touch anything. I was just checking my email". And there sat the dreaded blue screen with the message UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME. After several attempts at diagnosing the problem I have reached the conclusion that my main drive is in fact as dead as MGS.

Fortunately, the wireless network still works for my wife's laptop so I've been able to to some trouble shooting research this am. Also its one of those semi-holidays here that mainly government employees have off (of which I am one) so I'll have the time to put in a new larger hard drive and the computer stores should be open and uncrowded.

With this kind of luck, I feel the need to go buy a lottery ticket or something like that.

Take this as another lesson everyone. Backup your data if you haven't done so lately. Do it today.

[Nix]

Exactly the same laptop I'm after Doug -hopefully in a few weeks (the 15" version)

Nico