Back Up Your Hard Drive

Without warning, my three year old hard drive gave out.  The computer wouldn't boot up and I tried everything I knew to find a fix or a work around, including whining for help to my teenage son and geeky Mac friend (Hi, John!).  Off it went to a computer repair shop and the word came back that the hard drive was inoperable and no data could be recovered from it.

There was a half hour where I thought the back up drive was also toast.  The tech called and said he could find no personal data on the external drive but finally agreed to look again.  He found my music and pictures but restoring to a particular date was somehow not something he could do. Why not? His explanation sounded like this to me: "Right click blah blah blah control A blah blah blah Windows security system blah blah blah."

I now have a new hard drive and pretty much all of my photos back.  My iTunes and music are still scattered between the iPod, the external drive and the new drive.  Never having looked at the files on the external drive, I was surprised to learn that the filing system of storing the data there involves breaking it up into small packages and cramming it all into vast numbers of compartments, scattered throughout time and space.

But it is better than nothing.  Back up your hard drive today.