If you ask me whether I’m more of a KonMari person or a hoarder, I’m probably more of the latter. Almost everything ‘sparks joy’ for me and as a result, I keep everything that has sentimental value. This includes digital items such as pictures from trips and essays.
Last week, I briefly mentioned that my computer was giving me problems. Today, I managed to bring my computer to the computer shop, where I found out that the OS is corrupted (note to self: do not upgrade OS unless I absolutely have to) and that the hard drive couldn’t be mounted. Which explains why it’s been so slow and why I didn’t actually manage to open any documents – all I could use was Chrome on a maximum of two tabs.
The fix is relatively simple – I have to reinstall the Mac OS but that means that all my data from the past five years will be wiped. As you can imagine, that makes me more than a little teary. And it gave me a new perspective on the files I’ve been holding on to.
Forced with the prospect of a drastic digital purge, I realised that the only thing I care about would be the stories that I’ve written. Photos come in second, but the presence of Google photos and Facebook means that the loss would not hit me as hard. While I’ve never managed to delete any documents from school, I realised that I wouldn’t really be affected if they disappeared. It’d be sad, but I’d live.
My colleague recently mentioned a technique that she uses – she puts things she doesn’t use/rarely uses in a box and if she hasn’t touched the box in a year, she throws it away. I suppose what I’m facing could be a version of this technique – there are files that I definitely haven’t opened since graduation and the sensible thing would be to throw it away.
That said, I will be paying the computer shop to retrieve as much data from the computer as possible. While I can live without a majority of the data, I really do need the latest versions of my stories and the covers. And since the price they quoted is much less than the previous quote for my corrupted external HD, I’m just going to go for it and hope that they manage to salvage the most important data.
And while this is a valuable lesson, I doubt it’s going to cure my ‘keep everything of sentimental value’ habit – I’ve already made plans to get a cloud storage system and put a backup of everything there. Or at least, a backup of everything that’s important.
I am so bad about backing up my files. I have an external hard drive which I got after my computer was stolen 8 years ago. I was good about backing up for awhile, but not so much afterwards. I miss all those pictures most . . . That was before I had Google cloud or any outside source keeping them safe for me. I am glad the fix is relatively easy otherwise. I am just sorry for your losses. I hope the computer shop can save most, if not all of the documents!
I have an external hard drive too, but after my previous one unexpectedly broke, I stopped trusting them as much…
Thank you! Hopefully they can get the most important files out!
sorry to hear your point about your computer :/ (seems to be going round quite a bit lately) I hope they can recover most of your data. I also don’t back up a lot of stuff that I won’t be able to get back now, though fortunately I haven’t lost most of the important stuff.
I was at the shop and it seems like for mac users at least, a lot of woes are related to the new OS ):
This really makes me want to be more diligent about backing up my stuff!
I’m terrible about backing stuff up! I can’t remember the last time I backed up my phone. I was so glad when I discovered google photos because I’d been trying to store the 10000s of photos I had on my phone on my desktop and it just didn’t feel that safe to me.
Google photos was a lifesaver for me too! It makes backing up photos so much easier and there’s not much worry about losing the data (short of getting hacked)
OH no! Gotta backup your babies (stories). I used to only keep my digital stuff wherever it landed, but after the closure of a site called Storiesville years ago, it made me realize I needed to guard my stuff better. I had stories on it that I had only written/posted to the site. I had to backup those stories before it shut down. I even used the Wayback Machine on Archive.org a few years later and found a couple of stories I’d not saved. Sometime around there was when online storage options were coming up (Google Drive, Box, Dropbox, OnedDrive, etc). I backup stuff all over the place, but I try to avoid leaving the only copies of things on my local computer or external drives, those are like the most open to getting screwed up or having hardware fail.
And about digital hoarding. I definitely do that. Every year or so, I go through and try to better organize my stuff across my cloud storage options (yes, I use more than one). But I definitely have a hard time deleting anything.
I hope you can save some of your stuff from the hard drive. That would suck to lose drafts and covers. Jeez. My stomach churns at the thought.
I’m probably okay with losing the uni stuff (since I won’t need it), but it gives me chills to think of the covers and drafts (and editor’s revisions) being deleted. I heard from the shop yesterday and they say they should be able to recover most of the data, so fingers crossed!
And yes, looking into cloud storage platforms now! I’ve had hard drives fail on my before so I don’t trust them completely.
That’s awesome news! I really hope they do save a lot of it. And yes, I highly recommend using cloud for most stuff. Multiple clouds. Just to be safe. I’m anxious for you right now. UGH!!!! 🤢🤮
Fingers crossed!! 🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼