Day three of no computer. Arggh!

Thursday evening I walked into the dinning room, where my iMac lives, to start writing. I was full of optimism, I’d just embarked on a new project and was keen to start fleshing out the sample chapters I’d already sketched out, this was going to be good.

I stopped half way noticing that the screen saver was wrong. Instead of the slowly rotating album covers from my iTunes collection there were multi-coloured, electric strands, lazily twisting across the screen, something was not quite right. I tapped the key board only to be greeted with a white screen and a grey folder, with a question mark upon it, flashing in the centre. Oh bugger, this looked bad.

It was only the day or so before that I’d thought I really should back the computer up as I hadn’t done it in a while. I needed a bigger drive and had been putting off forking out on 1TB of safety, fool!

I pleaded for help on twitter and facebook and a number of friends came up with avenues to explore, everything would be ok, I just needed to repair the disk – if only. I booted up from the installation disk and went through the process of checking the drive and repairing it, not once but three times. No joy, the funking thing was dead.

So where is it now? It’s up the road in Moseley with Mr Bad Apples, he’s slowly extracting what data he can and no doubt preparing a hefty bill for me. If only I’d have backed up it would have been a hell of a lot simpler, just fit a new drive then copy the stuff over.

So the moral of this tale? Obvious really, don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today, don’t skimp on paying out if it can save you money in the long run and don’t be stupid like me. Back up dammit.

Heed my advice or forever bang your head against walls.