AAAAAAACK!!!

[texchan]

OK, so I got up this morning thinking I would try and work on uploading things to the new cel gallery since my daughter is sitting in here with me watching Playhouse Disney as she eats her breakfast. It's really hard to write with Micky and Co. (or whatever) in the background. Particularly when kids' shows are, of course, cheerful, and what I'm writing is so very ... well, not. >.O

But I turned on my PC only to have it make a horrible squealing/alarm sort of noise and do ... nothing.

O_O

I think my darling old-faithful PC has finally cratered. I'm sitting here trying not to think it. And trying not to panic or anything. But still ... WAAAAAAH!!! I love that computer. Love, love, love it. And everything is still on there. All my writing files. My photos. My website stuff -- all my art images. I haven't transferred anything over to the other computer yet, partly because I've been busy and partly because I was going from PC to Mac, and I wasn't sure exactly how the transfer would work. It's stupid, but still ... sometimes the brain shies away from something that seems too complicated and sticky. Particularly when surrounded with the mundane problems of daily life, like sick dogs, sick kids, plumbing that needs to be fixed, household chores that have to be done, a hubby that travels, and yadda, yadda, yadda. Luckily, I backed things up not that long ago. I know I have backups of all my art image files, so that's a good thing. I don't think I would want to try to scan all of those again.

But now I'm panicking because I'm not sure if my latest photographs were backed up or not. I had some really pretty pictures of my daughter in a dress my aunt sent ... and I may have lost those. Among others. The photographs, if I can't get them off that computer, are gone for good. That's the horrible part of digital photography. *cries*

Just ... AAAAAAAAAACK!!! *flails around*

Comments

[skyrat13.livejournal.com]

Oh noes, I hope you're able to recover them!!! Will your aunt be able to re-send you the photos of your daughter?

I had similar panic back in March when my laptop went on the fritz. Luckily I was able to buy an external harddrive and dump everything there before it totally died and I had to wipe everything off of it.

Good luck??

[tex-chan.livejournal.com]

Sadly, if they were gone, they would be totally gone. The files from my camera are really big, so I size them way down when I email them. It's great for emailing -- because the huge files, of course, wouldn't go through at all. But it's awful for trying to make prints. I could probably make a 3x5 or a 4x6 from the sized down files, but I could not go any larger than that with them.

But (!!) the good news is that it looks like the photos I thought might be lost really were backed up after all. I had backed up my computer less than a month ago, because my hard drive has been making a grinding noise for a while. Let's face it -- it's old and very well-used. *pets poor hard drive* My hubby got the computer to boot up and ran the diagnostics on it. It said the problem was with the RAM, which could mean it's wearing out or something. Either way, it's running now, so I'm making a new back up of the hard drive. Just to be safe.

We're hoping we can clone the hard drive that's about to go kaput and then put that new, cloned hard drive back into the machine. Just so I can keep it limping along until I can manage to find the time to put everything over onto the Mac. If this is a RAM problem, though ... I'm not sure what we can do. Because I'm not sure we can even buy RAM for this computer any more. *sigh*

All in all ... what a pain! >.O

I'm so glad you were able to save the stuff from your laptop! It is really terrifying when you think about losing stuff. I never realize just how much of my life is on the computer until something like this happens and it seems like I'll lose it all. And then ... panic panic panic!!! o_o

[lucidscreamer.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Muy sympathy. Hope you can recover everything! :HUGS:

[tex-chan.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much! I totally need the sympathy, as I'm feeling really whiny about the whole thing. (LOL)

So far, though, things look pretty positive. I was able to get the computer running so that I could do another back-up of my (failing) hard drive. I had backed it up more recently than I originally thought, so I wasn't in danger of losing anything, even without the newest backup. But I figured better safe than sorry. After that, we cloned the problematic drive. Now it's just a matter of putting the new/cloned drive into the machine to see if that will fix the problem. Unfortunately, that's something hubby will do for me ... so I kind of have to wait until he has the time to do it. Hopefully this weekend. >.O