I knew how the commander at Pearl Harbor felt that fateful morning in December when my auxiliary hard drive crashed.

I loved my first laptop and, as memory cost dropped, bought an auxiliary drive to hang off it, my “back up”. But let’s face it, the laptop was like a thimble, the aux drive a bucket. I’d couldn’t have a one-to-one data ratio. Furthermore, there was stuff I didn’t want to carry around day-to-day on the portable. So into this basket went all my eggs: photos, freelance work, model railroad reference information, everything.

And then, after years of storing things, it crashed.

“This is not a drill! Not a drill!”

I felt sick.

Over the next few days I felt sicker and sicker as I realized how much I’d committed without backup. Fortunately my novels were all on floppy but that was it. A lot of stuff sank that day. And yes, I’m in IT. I should have known better.

My drive manufacture’s site recommended several groups including Gilware. It cost a pretty penny to have the drive cracked open in a clean room, all that “Bionic man” stuff, but it was worth it. Today they sent me a file list and there’s all my stuff, recovered.

Yes, I’ll be looking into auxiliary storage (i.e. offsite) in the very near future.