On the Subject of (Not) Learning From Past Mistakes

If past mistakes had taught me anything, I would know this: Back up your data. Often. And make sure it finishes transfer. Having worked in IT for 4 years, and being a Web Developer, I’ve counseled at least high tens, if not hundreds about “Save Early, Save Often,” backing up data, etc. But it seems I can’t take my own advice.

So, I own a Mac. Newer Macs (ones running Leopard or Snow Leopard) have this awesome Time Machine function that backs up your Mac on a daily or hourly basis whenever the external drive is connected the computer. Even cooler is that you can buy a Time Capsule that does it over WiFi. Now, I don’t have anything that fancy, but I do have an external for Time Machine to use, yet, I still just lost about 6 months of data. Why? Because I’m lazy and don’t take my own advice.

The First Time

Two and a half years ago, right after I graduated college, my hard drive died. In some ways, I was happy it wasn’t while I was finishing my last semester, but then again, while I was in college I had anything important for school backed up on the server space they provided. Fresh out of college, working for barely over $9/hr, I had been putting off buying an external in favor of things like food, and paying rent. So, when my hard drive failed as that generation of MacBook’s were wont to do (search the ’net. It was a big to do), I ended up losing about 4 months of data: pictures, final projects, the yearbook (I was editor and essentially only member. Somehow the work had gotten pushed to the summer, rather than during my senior year), etc. See, some old stuff was backed up on an older, full drive, but the newer stuff just wasn’t transferred.

And boy, did it fail miserably, with really bad platter scratching noises. No hope of recovery.

The next night, after I partially recovered from being stunned, I ordered a new external and a replacement drive for the laptop.

This Time

But evidently, I didn’t learn from my mistake. I haven’t been diligent about backing up my data. I did it once a month or so at most. But I was also sharing the new external with Carl, so we maxed out the space pretty quickly. When it came time to reimage my laptop in hopes of solving some issues, and to upgrade to Snow Leopard, I was forced to delete most of my backups, save the very last one, which was a few months old, and then transfer over everything for safe keeping while I restored the machine.

Once the new install was up and running, I transferred everything back, and had to delete most of it from the external to make room for the new backups. Then, I set up Time Machine and let it backup the new system. Or so I thought.

My drive failed last week. I had a bit of a breakdown. Not because I lost data, because here I was thinking that I had a two week old backup of everything (and nothing new really in the mean time). Mostly just because it was the icing on the cake of computer problems recently, and I’m on this new “no more debt, pay for everything in cash” kick, and initially thought the whole computer had died, or that this was fate saying I needed a new computer anyway, and that just wasn’t happening while I’m funneling most of my disposable income paying for past stupid spending mistakes (*take a breath* see, sometimes I do learn). But I got over it, priced out some new drives (a replacement with more space seems to be in the budget, as prices have dropped. I couldn’t even find a 160GB in brick-and-mortar stores), and looked into the warranty on the dead one¹, and am using Carl’s personal laptop while I wait for a new drive.

So, while I wait, I have been working on getting some stuff done, like printing photos from Christmas, etc. I plugged in the external to grab those photos, and it was like my own personal horror show: my last backup of my complete new system didn’t actually backup!!!!!!!!!!! (Yes, those exclamation points are needed. For my sanity. Just humor me here.) Luckily, I hadn’t gotten around to deleting everything from my reboot backup, just the folder containing 80% of my personal data and projects. Somehow, the photos and personal Web projects survived, but everything else is gone. Again. The last full backup I have was from August. Thank every deity ever worshiped that I’ve been taking a bit of a break from freelancing and didn’t lose any recent client data. All of that survived in the last backups/on my thumb drive. (Potential clients: I do back up your data in multiple places).

So, the moral of my story is: it’s great to give good advice to other people who need it, but remember to stop for a second and take your own advice. Really, if it’s good enough to give, it’s good enough to practice, right? I really need to remember that in the future.

As for a resolution to my issue, I’m working on that. The drive was under warranty, so I’m doing an RMA there. However Hitachi, the manufacturer, claims that the order will be processed within 14 working days of receiving the defective drive, if the replacement is in stock. So, if the replacement drive is in stock, worst case scenario it could take more than three weeks with processing and shipping times to get a new drive, best case is at least a week and a half. I’m thinking of reworking my budget just a bit and ordering a new drive in the mean time, and selling the RMAed drive once I get it to recoup some of the cost. Still trying to decide what I want to do there. Back to article