Monday, December 13, 2010

Computer Blues

I got home from visiting my family a couple of weeks ago to discover that my computer had died; it just would not come on when I pushed the "start" button. I only slightly panicked, and David and I made a quick trip to Dallas to buy a new computer (braving the weekend-after-Thanksgiving traffic!)
I have an online backup service, so one of the first things I did was try to get all my files restored to my new computer; there were a few glitches, but for the most part, it worked well. The things I was most concerned about (my patterns and my pictures) were restored. If anything is missing, I haven't discovered it yet.
But I have been thinking about how much of my life is on this computer; every bit of my work for the last 6 years! I don't even have hard copies of most of my patterns. So, my early New Year's resolution is to get all my patterns backed up in another way (in addition to the online service) and to print out all of my patterns and put them in binders.
And I can't help but be struck by the contrast of my old fashioned crochet designs and modern day technology; this is where two worlds collide!
Hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas season!

10 comments:

Faith said...

Glad your back up and running..and that you have back up. Is is carbonite..back it up and get it back? I have heard their ads. Have a sunshiny day where you are, we are in the big snow globe today..delays,and closings..we are are tucked away inside the bungalow
today, and that is where I'm staying..would like to move the hook some.

Ann said...

Yes, it is Carbonite, Faith. I had a few issues, but for the most part it worked well.
Stay warm, and I hope you get to enjoy some crochet time!

Cindy said...

I'm so happy that you were able to retrieve all of your files! Unfortunately my computer crashed a couple of weeks ago and I didn't have anything backed up. Ick I lost everything but I won't do that again.

Hugs XX
Barbara

Sheltie Times said...

I am so glad you were able to retrieve your patterns and pictures.

Barbara we went through the same mistake. Originally I wasn't worried because I thought we had most of our stuff backed up to our lap top. I never realized we have moved so many of our pictures to digital and those were not back uped. Some are on my blog so I have those. I also had to recreate some of our budget info, etc.

Sadly, I still have not convinced DH of the necessity of an outside backup system.

I am thinking something like Carbonite would be useful.

paula said...

At one time I would burn discs with every thing I didn't want to lose every 6 months. I've gotten lax in doing this and should get it done again.

Thanks for the reminder.

Ana Luisa said...

I agree with everyone, it's a good thing you had the back-up system on-line. My computer crashed a couple of years ago, and not only did I lose a lot of my newer charts and patterns, but also my photos of the trip I made to the UK and Swizterland. They're gone for good, so now my photos are on a CD, all nicely organized. And I sitll need to burn more patterns/charts onto my CD's.....argh!!
Have a good week!

Richard Rose said...

Thank you for reminding me, I should do some backing up myself. It seems to be the one thing that gets neglected in our busy lives.

crochethuahua said...

Glad you're back up and running but that must have been a pain to back up all those records. I need to burn mine in a CD.

jonamc said...

As you know I had a similar problem last week. How did you get your files restored, might I ask? Did you use a specific software program? Fortunately, alot of my files I have saved to an external harddrive and cds.

Ann said...

I had to do 2 separate restores from Carbonite, Jona. The first one was not complete, so I had to do it again, but finally they were all restored. I had planned to take my old computer to a shop to see if they could recover my pictures if I couldn't get them any other way; I am such a dummy when it comes to computers!