Recovered!

Last month, I woke up to a minor nightmare.  My desktop computer died.  It wouldn’t have been such a big problem, but I had been lazy and not backed up my latest work documents, in months!  All of the files for the latest anthology I’m working on (Forbidden!) were lost, along with the digital copies of my latest IRS Tax Return, the royalty reports from January for Martinus Publishing, and pretty much anything that happened in 2018.  On top of that, I don’t know where any of my photo back-ups are (it’s like they fell into a black hole or something).  So I seemingly lost almost every single family photo from the past 8 years, as well as the digital scans of many old pictures I’ve painstakingly archived over the years.  Needless to say, I was upset.

I will admit that I am no tech guru.  I muddle through with technology, being clever enough to figure out what I need to learn to make it work.  Yet, when it comes to the finer points of computer sciences, I am not an IT professional.  Unfortunately, I am rather poor, and lack the financial means to pay a real tech guy to fix my problems, hence the muddling through part of my existence.

So, I began by going on ebay and getting a used desktop.  I wasn’t in the position to buy a new one at the time, but I found a refurbished tower that was the same model as the one that had died on me.  It even had a fresh Windows 10 install.  After ordering that, and going over a few tutorials on how to slave a hard drive, I purchased an adapter to do just that.  Then, I waited.

The desktop arrived first, so I got that set up and added what files I had backed up, giving me head start.  Finally, today, the adapter came, and I was finally able to try it out.  Initial connection seemed good, but try as I might, I could not get into my files.  Sure, I could access some of the Windows operating system files, but my pictures and writing were all hidden.  The computer couldn’t detect any of my important files, no matter what I tried.  I was fearful that I had failed, and my laziness may have cost me so many irreplaceable files.

Then I did a little more research, and ran across a software retrieval program at easyus.com.  I downloaded the trial software and gave it a shot.  Lo and behold, my files appeared, waiting to be retrieved.  The only catch was I had to buy the full version of the software.  $73 dollars later, I finally had the program I needed to get my lost files off the corrupted hard drive and onto my new system.

Overall, this was a harrowing experience, one that should never have happened.  I know better than to go any amount of time without backing up my data, as soon as the rest of the files get transferred to my new computer (they are still downloading as I write this), I will be putting everything onto fresh SD cards.  I have a Kingston 128gig card that should fit most of the content, though the pictures will suck up most of it.  I’ll grab a few more once I have the money, and keep several copies of everything, just like I used to.  Really, after all I’ve been through in the past few years, I am finally learning to get back into the habits that I had been accustomed to for so long.  Sometimes, you need a wakeup call to remind you of why you should do certain things.  I’m really glad I was able to retrieve all that I might have lost.