Once again, I find myself in the unenviable position of having to post my DD article a day early. I leave for a 3-day field exercise (just for my Weapons Squad) tomorrow through Wednesday, early in the AM, so I'm gonna hit the sack relatively early tonight and get some rest... I hope you all get a little something from my latest installment... Have a good week, everyone!

This past week, I got the chance to do my first review for PCApex. I was thrilled, honored, and humbled. I tried to make sure I had all my ducks in a row, so I would write up a good review, do the site and the product justice... Camera, check. Writing skills, well... The general format, got it.

The package arrived, and I started going through all the steps in my head before I even got started snapping pictures and writing up the review. I got so far as getting ready to hook up the hardware and testing it out, and something happened. I think it was my fault, I think I bumped a SATA drive cable or something, but my computer crashed, and HARD. All the text I had already typed up and saved was pretty much lost, as I frantically tried everything in my limited mental troubleshooting book to bring the box back to life... All to no avail.

I had to settle down and accept the fact that I was going to be late with the review. Work schedules this coming week are going to make it hard to not only get my own machine back up (thank goodness I made sure the wife has a decent one for herself), but to get the review done (Yes, I am working on it, GK and AntiM!). Make that VERY late with the review...

Then I started taking stock in everything that I lost with the crash. Pictures, of my family and friends, music, documents and whatnot, all gone in the blink of an eye. I can get the machine back up and running, but the items that I didn't back up in some form or other are GONE, forever, into the ether of electronics...

That got me to thinking about the old saying that "You don't know what you got until it's gone." In terms of the stuff I lost in the computer crash, there isn't really much at all that's irreplaceable. It's just ones and zeros, pixels and electrons and so on.

The really important things are the memories that we keep from day to day. Our loved ones, the times we get to spend together, the joys and sadness we share... A smile, a hug, a conversation...

My parents are coming to visit us the end of this week. I'll be on leave from work (thank goodness, not a moment too soon, either!), and I should be able to give them the time and attention they deserve. They're coming primarily to see their eldest granddaughter, I fully realize and understand that. They want to take her to the zoo, out for a picnic, all the fun stuff I wish I could have done more of with my own grandparents while they were around. I wish that I could have had more time with them, and actually appreciated the time I had back then...

They are my parents, though, so I also realize how precious what little time we still have together is. My father is up in his 70s, and Mom is close behind. He's had a triple bypass, and her hands shake so bad when she writes that I sometimes can't recognize her handwriting. It pains me to see them like that, but they are still so alive that I have a hard time believing that they'll ever be gone.

When it comes to your computers, make sure you back everything up regularly. You never know when you'll bump the wrong cable, and need to reformat and start over again.

When it comes to your families and loved ones, make sure you cherish every moment, every memory with them. Hug them when you get together, and tell them you love them when you part. You never know when they won't be around to come visit anymore...

excellent article bro... Thumbs up....

great DD GN72!!

Yeah just remember raid isnt always your friend, but having 3 backups can lead to good times when things go bad!

Great truth GN

Just rember to backup your data next time

Its so true, unfortunatley me and my parents don't get along so were at different ends of the country and try to ignore each other as best we can unless its absolutly nessaccary that we talk in which case its over and done with as quickly as possible.

Still at least I can back up my computer!

Quote: Originally Posted by Reza Its so true, unfortunatley me and my parents don't get along so were at different ends of the country and try to ignore each other as best we can unless its absolutly nessaccary that we talk in which case its over and done with as quickly as possible...

Isn't it amasing how you realize these huge truths from something so irritating as a crash, you know I called my father last night just to wish him a hppy fathers day, and we got to talking about all thing things in life but my father just kept hitting on how proud he was in me for serving my country and all I could think about was, its my job and I wouldn't trade if for the world.

But all of this just strikes a cord with me, my father, GPN's post, and just that thought that hangs with you as you get older that you need to spent as much time with your loved ones as possible because you never know how much longer you my have... thanks john, great post!

Reminds me of my father... we gave him a digicam for his birthday, so he could shoot pictures from his grandchildren... I must say, he keeps on shooting! Every time he 'fills up a memory card, he emptied it on
the hdd of his computer... the other day I asked him "did you make backups of those photo's, dad?"...
"yup", he said... "I put them on my hdd"... ......what followed were a few "training sessions" to make sure he
knew how to burn his photo collections on cd....and a whole lot more then those photo's!

As soon as he realized how devastated he would be if he lost all of those pictures... he now even goes as
far as making copies of those photo cd's to give to my sister... His remark on that... "now what if my house caught fire?"...

Guess he''ll continue to make backups...

TDR

That happened to me once, just once, but I had a crappy tape backup that only restored some of my stuff. It was then that I vowed I would never lose my data again. I tried RAID for a while but even that didn't provide enough safety for my precious data (right, GK?). I now image my drive to another in my PC and then use another external drive to copy that image out of the PC. That way even if my computer takes a catastrophic hit I will still have another image set aside elsewhere.

One option is to use an online backup site to store an image, but that wouldn't work for me since my backup has become so large. There are two times in recent memory when I lost everything but after a drive change and a reinstall of windows any my ghosting software, I was able to recover quite nicely and only lost about 5 days worth of data. Hell, I still have files on my drive that date back to 1995. I must be doing something right.

With the hundreds of pictures and children's early schoolwork that I have backed up on my system, I couldn't imagine losing it forever. Therefore, I won't.

Quote: Originally Posted by GrandpaNoob72 ... The really important things are the memories that we keep from day to day. Our loved ones, the times we get to spend together, the joys and sadness we share... A smile, a hug, a conversation... ...

Without a doubt man......and for a lot of us, especially myself, that's what gives us our daily motiviation

Quickie update... Got the machine back up and running, now it's downloading all the MS updates, all my fav little progs, and the like...

Dang, gonna be weird having to set up all my bookmarks all over again... Good thing I didn't delete all the account name/passwords emails from my Gmail account, or I'd be REALLY screwed...

That one hit home GPN, just something that happened earlier... thanks bro

Quote: Originally Posted by GrandpaNoob72 Quickie update... Got the machine back up and running, now it's downloading all the MS updates, all my fav little progs, and the like... Dang, gonna be weird having to set up all my bookmarks all over again... Good thing I didn't delete all the account name/passwords emails from my Gmail account, or I'd be REALLY screwed...

Thats a nice read man, I know what you mean with the grandparents i watchmine slowly get old,even as i spend nearly ever day with them

But will the drive load whatsoever, cause even as a secondary, you might be able to recover the files I really feel bad that you lost so much important to you, but there are some nice recovery programs and even if you can't see the files, if you format it in windows then recover files that may have been deleted