Sunday evening I was listening to a radio programme in Podcast with my laptop. At a certain point it froze. Nothing working. Hard shut down and straight to bed. The next day the horrible truth: starting the computer, black screen and just few lines:
Windows cannot be started: missing file in C:\windows\system32
I got it straight away: the hard disc was gone.
No problem for my work stuff, safely backed up. But my pictures, the SMartaBoys videos, the recent work files: bloody hell! The funny thing is that the last week I convinced my boss to buy a USB external hard disc for big back ups. The hard disc is coming, but a few days too late. I just felt that something would go wrong.
However, thanks to Mau‘s suggestions, I tried to run Linux from the CD-ROM: first I downloaded Ubuntu, but it was too unstable, then MEPIS solved most of my problems: I was able to mount the hard disc and recover most of my stuff. The only problem: when I tried to access a file placed on a broken part of the hard disc, everything froze and I had to restart. I think I’ve rebooted dozens of times.
One old geek’s suggestion: do back up regularly!!!
Backing up data is like writing to the old friend – there’s always time to do it, and you end up never doing it.
Better buy a set of spare guitar strings in sight of my wedding :o)
Sultano