Computer Crash

“To go forward, you must backup.” — Cardinal rule of computing.

Monday morning I turned on my computer only to be greeted with a black screen and a message saying “cannot find hard drive.” Not the most auspicious way to start the week

Initially, I didn’t realize I should panic. I simply spoke to the screen in a calm voice and said, “I’m sure it’s in there somewhere, please look again.” When that produced no results, I pressed the power button, counted to ten and tried again. The same message appeared. I walked out of the room and asked my husband, Kim, what the message meant.

His response was, “Uh-oh.”

Now that sort of response from someone who normally loves a computer challenge worried me a bit. Still I believed all would be okay.

He put down the newspaper Sudoku puzzle and went to take a look. A few minutes later, he returned. “It’s dead,” he said sadly.

“But you can fix it, right?”

He shook his head.

“What am I supposed to do now?” I gasped, feeling as though I suddenly lost the use of a vital organ. “And what about the work I’ve done on my second novel?”

“We have two choices, take it somewhere to be repaired or buy a new one. You can use the memory stick you back up your work on with my laptop, so that’s not a problem.”

“Yeah, that is a problem. I’ve been meaning to back up my writing stuff but I keep forgetting. Should I just shoot myself now and be done with it?”

He assured me, that drastic measures were not needed because we have Carbonite as an off-site backup.

I resumed breathing.

We decided a six to seven-year-old computer wasn’t worth repairing. By Monday afternoon, our files were being down loaded via Carbonite onto my new laptop, including all our music and photos, which otherwise would have been lost. Because we have so many files and because Carbonite does them in alphabetical order, my writing file has still not been reloaded on the new computer. But I can rest easy knowing it will happen.

I brought up the services of companies like Carbonite in my blog about the Lightning Capital of the World. But now that I have experienced the trauma of a dead computer for myself, I think it’s important to mention again. If you have files you can’t live with out, you may want to act now to safeguard them.

If you would like to recommend other off-site computer companies, tell computer horror stories of your own, or simply comment on this blog, feel free to leave your remarks in the comment section.

For those of you who have read The Ride, I’d love to hear what you thought—good or bad. My email is jane@janesutton.com. For those that haven’t read the book yet, you can order it now from Amazon.

Thanks for stopping by. See you next week.


Tags: The Ride, Sudoku, carbonite, lightning capital of the world, hard drive, laptop, Amazon, memory stick

Lightning Capital of the World

While the mention of Florida brings thoughts of sunshine, alligators, Disney World, hurricanes and retirees zipping around in golf carts, the state also has the distinction of being the lightning capital of the world.

Recently, I attended a meeting of the Gulf Coast Writers Association (http://www.gulfwriters.org/ ) and heard this horrifying story. A fellow writer's home was zapped by lightning the previous evening. He didn't seem too upset about the TV's or appliances that were rendered useless by the bolt, but his fried computer devastated him. “I think I’ve backed up most everything,” he’d said sadly digging though a stack of papers. “And, I’m hoping I at least printed the recently written five-page synopsis of my manuscript.”

Although I have run across one or two writers that use the ancient method of longhand to record their thoughts, most of us use computers and the above scenario is enough to cause nightmares of epic proportions. I have been paranoid of losing my writing files since living in Taiwan using a knockoff of one of the first Apple computers, and hitting the delete key that was stupidly placed above the enter key, wiping out a letter (the best one I’d ever written, I’m sure) that I’d spent hours composing.

I boohooed to my husband, Kim, as if I had just erased a tome equivalent to The Illiad. From that point he has done everything he can to prevent seeing me in that crazed state again, including backups of my backups.

Recently he discovered another automatic backup option that I thought I’d share with all of you who’d like a safe method of preserving photos, music, manuscripts or other treasured bits on your computer. There are companies (type “online backup” in a Google Search for a long list) that back up any or all files on your computer. Kim selected Carbonite (http://www.carbonite.com/). Their $50.00 fee seems a small price to pay for peace of mind. Click here to see how it works (http://www.carbonite.com/howitworks.aspx ).

Now I can sit back and enjoy the lightning shows with confidence that even if my computer melts to a little grease spot, my writing efforts are preserved.

Once again I have nothing to report on the progress of The Ride. Sigh. So I’ll see you next week.

Jane Kennedy Sutton
Author of The Ride (to be released by ArcheBooks Publishing)
janekennedysutton@gmail.com
http://janekennedysutton.googlepages.com/


Tags: The Ride, Archebooks, Carbonite, online backup, Gulf Writers, Gulf Coast Writer’s Association, Florida, lightning