Our weekend was going pretty well until Saturday morning. At that point, my computer stopped working. More specifically, one of my hard drives - the one that contains the operating system - stopped working. Now, a reasonable person might, at that point, decide to go and replace the hard drive. Fortunately, I know how to fix computers. Also, I'm not a reasonable person.
There were two possibilities: Either the drive was totally dead or it was just
mostly dead. The difference is that if it was mostly dead and I could repair the file system, I just might be able to get my data back. I've got three hard drives in there - when I upgrade to a new computer, I keep the old computer's drives. I keep my data distributed across all three drives. That way, if something happens to any one of them I'm bound to lose *something* important. It was, of course, the largest and newest of the drives that failed.
This reminded me of things, like the portable backup drive that I got two weeks ago. I decided - against my wife's suggestion - not to open it, so it'd be a "Christmas present". In retrospect, this was not a wise decision.
So the BIOS saw that the drive existed, just that it had 0 MB. I tried a set of known good cables - same thing. Cable failure is vanishingly rare, but it's a good idea to try the easiest solution first. I commandeered Isabel's computer, hooked the drive to it. After several hours - including time in the freezer - I was able to get it working and copy some of the files off. That lasted about 30 minutes before it stopped responding again.
I spent most of Sunday trying to get it working again. By the end of it, the computer wasn't even acknowledging that the drive exists. Every couple minutes, it'd start clicking. I'd spent about twenty hours working on it.
THAT was when I decided to go and replace the hard drive.
But it's not that simple. The computer came with Windows Vista. Instead of a CD, it kept the recovery information on a partition on the hard drive. The now-defunct hard drive. I had tried to burn it to DVD a few times, but it wouldn't cooperate. I had a retail copy of Windows XP, but the disc was scuffed and unreadable.
Windows 8 is heavily discounted right now. It makes your computer behave like a smartphone. I don't even like it when my smartphone behaves like a smartphone, so that's not the OS for me.
So I had to get a hard drive. I had to get an OS. I'd have to reinstall all of my software. I could either do that on a computer that was four years old and at the end of its upgrade path, or I could replace it. Isabel suggested I replace it. She's been suggesting that for a while, actually. I just hadn't wanted to have to reinstall all my stuff, earlier.
I got the thing rebuilt at around 1 AM Sunday/Monday. I've reloaded most of the software that I remember using. If I had other programs that I never remember to use again, I'm probably better off without them.
What does this mean to you, the reader? No comic-related data was lost. That's backed up in many, many places. We lost a lot of comic-related time, however. I'm still trying to get this thing working the way it ought to work.
What does it mean for me? Firstly, that I need to back things up better. Secondly, that I should always listen to Isabel. At least when she's right.