11 February 2009

The "C" word

This weekend the dreaded "C" word happened to my laptop, it crashed.

We decided to spend the weekend at Cape St Francis and on Saturday afternoon I decided to do a post. I put of a new CD I had bought,with some of my all time favourite Elvis songs and was just getting into it, when there was something like a power surge. Elvis started to splutter and the screen started to display a kaleidoscope of colours. Then it was black quiet and I thought, "I wonder if it does not like Elvis?"

My blood understandably ran cold. My life is in that computer and I had not backed up for a few months, in spite of my good intentions to do so.

I rebooted and hey presto it was working, but all I got was what looked like an over developed negative. No problem I thought, I will just reboot. This time it came on as normal. I quickly put it into hibernation mode and resolved to do without it for the rest of the weekend and backup as soon as we got home.

The backup went smoothly and the virus check was clear, but when I turned it on at work on Monday morning, the screen resolution was something like 60x80.

"No problem," said the guy from IT, very cheerfully, "I will have it sorted out soon."

Two hours later I asked him if I was sorted out and in the same cheerful voice he announced, "No, it has crashed."

More cold shivers.

It seems like it was a motherboard problem so all my data and pictures are still safe on the hard drive and have been backed up by the IT guy as well. Hopefully I will get it back with new innards today. I say hopefully, because that is what they said yesterday.
The moral of this story is clear. You never know when the "C" word might happen, so do regular backups. This is my first crash in eight years and I came out unscathed - I could have lost my last four months work and photos.

As soon as I get it back I will be blogging as usual.

11 comments:

bodaat said...

Phew!! Glad that everything got backed up. My fear is that one day my external hard drive will crash. That won't be good!

Katney said...

Something similar happened to my desktop a couple of months ago.

Yes, I will back up my photos. I will do it now.

myonlyphoto said...

Oh boy I better do my back up soon too, my laptop been making funny noises for a while now, lol. Hopefully it will work out for you. Anna :)

Firefly the Travel Guy said...

Holy smoke. That was a close call. I better make a plan and do some backups as well.

Ordinarylife said...

which reminds me....... Thanks

Sabrina said...

Makes my skin crawl thinking about it! YIKES!!! Good for you...

Anonymous said...

Well, I wasn't so lucky. I didn't back up any of my photos (or tax docs) for abotu a year and the dreaded "C" happened to me. No good - wont even recognize my OS anymore. Im saving the laptop aside for the day that I can shell out 500 bucks to see if I can recover my stuff. I cried. Glad yours worked out better.

Eileen Mariane aka Marmsk said...

I go into a cold sweat just thinking about it. Eileen

SAPhotographs (Joan) said...

Oh no Max!! What an awful thing to have happened. I am so sorry to hear this. I bought a second internal drive just for my photographs in case this ever happened to me.

John F said...

Hi Max,
can you help trace two graves in the Jewish cemetery. My friend Morris Kolman's parents are buried there. He has no idea of the gravesite or plot No. We are calling in to PE for one day on the Sun Princess cruise ship and although we have booked a tour he may be able to find time to visit the graves if we have time.

regards John F

Max-e said...

Hi John F
The Jewish Cemetary is situated at the North End cemetary. It is about 5.5 kms from the harbour. We visited the cemetary recently and is very well maintained. There is also an office situated there, but I do not know what the opening times are.
Let me know when the Sun Princess will be calling into Port Elizabeth and I will see what I can find out for you.