My virtual life flashed before my eyes.
I mean, it’s a bad thing, when you get a BSOD and a message that says “UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME,” right?
Holy hell.
No booting for me, ha-ha. After about 15-20 minutes trying to get my PC working again, I turned it over to the experts, our PC tech group. Their hysterical laughter didn’t calm my nerves.
After watching them try what I’d been trying, I shuffled back to my office, and start organizing the mess on my desk. What else was there to do, other than give in to a panic attack.
I immediately started thinking about my backup strategy, which is about as well-considered (and successful) as, say, the strategy behind the War on Drugs: occasional self-satisfied gloating over some minor accomplishment, but don’t press for a full accounting of whether anything substantial is occurring.
Like, say, having to actually restore my machine.
The problem is, it’s not just my work machine. It’s my home machine, too. So it’s not a matter of letting the PC techs reformat the hard drive and restore a standard image. Just to reinstall all the software — even discounting the stuff I don’t use any more — would take at least a full day. Assuming I could find it, and remember it. Like an amnesiac rebuilding his life, it would be a very uncomfortable month or two, constantly running into reminders of stuff I’d forgotten.
Let’s not talk about the data, either.
So. Home e-mail gets backed up weekly. That’s actually not too bad. Check.
My blog and wiki are up on my web site, so that’s cool. Except the files to rebuild things or old versions of data and web pages are … on my hard drive.
My Documents folder … hmmm, I did a full-blown backup of that to CD a few months ago, I think. Except for the My Music folder, which … well, I still have all those CDs (sob).
That leaves off the Downloads folder, sitting under my desktop (which is probably a bad place for it). That hasn’t been backed up in several months.
And then there’s applications that keep their data in their own folders. And the aps themselves, which would need to be reinstalled (from CD, or from that aforementioned Downloads folder).
Okay, and what aps are those? Start writing them down. Big office aps. Minor aps. Utilities. Things I won’t remember until I go to run them and they’re gone … lots, and lots and lots of aps …
Wonderfully depressing.
And then … glee!
The tech (thanks, Gerald) took out the hard drive, slaved it to another XT machine, it said, “Hey, whoa, probs there, little buddy. Let me CHKDSK that puppy for you.” And a couple of small CHKDSK glitches later …
… the machine boots! Cue Hallelujah Chorus, flights of angels, release of doves …
The tech still wants to back up the data, reformat the hard drive to make sure all’s copacetic on the hardware level, but he doesn’t think it’s absolutely necessary. And given the thought exercises I’ve just been through, I’d really rather not reinstall and reconfigure everything, if I can avoid it.
But, boy, am I going to start thinking about better backup strategies …