TECHNOLOGY
When Hard Drives Go Soft
The end of my world, as I knew it, began with a question mark. A big “Huh?”
An interrogative at the beginning of the day. Not a good thing, so much curiosity
on any given morning. And this particular morning, it was even worse. Mr.
Curious, you see, was my computer. My computer was flashing a question mark
at me.
Usually, my little iBook starts with a friendly Mac smile. Today, no smile, no frown, no face icon of any kind. Just that scary question mark. And, for good measure, the question mark was blinking. As if it didn’t already have my attention, it had to turn itself on and off, just to be sure I’d notice.
Instantly, I was worried. Was everything lost? Would I have to send my computer to Cupertino for an overhaul? When was the last time I backed up? Oh, yeah, before my Zip drive disappeared. When was that, exactly? Three months ago? Maybe four?
Suddenly, I felt like that teenage girl in Poltergeist who returns home to find that the house she’s grown up in is sinking into the ground as undead souls circle above it. “What is haaaaappeniiiiing?” she screams.
I screamed these very words. But silently. I sat in my little office, staring at the computer screen that didn’t know what question to ask—because that question was lost somewhere in its innards. It flashed its question mark as an SOS. If the computer doesn't know what to do, how in the hell do I?
I found myself picking up the phone and calling the company IT guy. I called him without a conscious thought. Crazy how the mind works, isn’t it? One of part of my brain was ready to take the bridge while another was flipping through the Rolodex of possibilities to find someone who could bring order to the sudden chaos of my world.
“Dave,” I said, “I’ve got a malicious question mark flashing furiously at me.”
“Can’t find the hard drive,” he answered, a little too matter-of-factly.
Can’t find the hard drive. Can’t find the hard drive? It is the end of my world. All the phone numbers, all the addresses, all that writing—hell, all those recipes—they’re all on that hard drive that can’t be found. Is my head pounding? Is my stomach churning? Should I breathe into a paper bag?
Dave sensed my panic and, very calmly, instructed me to “bring it over here and we’ll see what we can do.”
“Dave,” I began. “My world is—“
But he didn’t let me finish the sentence. “I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to recover most everything.”
Ah, I thought. Recovery. I breathed a sigh of relief. Then, I instantly dissected the sentence he had just uttered. The word “most” stood out. What’s "the rest" of everything”that he’ll lose?
“Don’t worry,” Dave said, but I swear I heard him catch himself before adding “yet.” Don’t worry yet, he was going to say. Well, it was too late, Dave. I was worrying, “Bring it over.”
I like Dave, always have. Known him for years. But his calm, as I stood in front of him with my blueberry iBook in hand, was disconcerting. My world was on the hard drive of this four-year-old laptop and all he could say was “Let’s see what we have here.” My world, Dave, that’s what we have here.
He put a disk in the drive (that itself had been replaced just
a few months ago) and tried to use the track pad. I pulled the mouse out of
my bag.
“Track pad’s dead, Dave.” He plugged the mouse in and went
at it.
I don’t know what hocus pocus he was using but the hard drive opened. There were no exclamation points to herald this but there weren’t any question marks either. When I saw the contents of my hard drive listed, the first of a million “Thank yous” spilled from my mouth.
Dave asked me what programs I needed to keep—he was going to save the contents of the hard drive to several Zip disks—so I sat on a metal silver chair in the corner of his cluttered office (what is it about IT guys and clutter?) to clear my mind. I had to concentrate on what I needed to save. Things like Apple Works, no, but Movie Magic Budgeting, absolutely. I listed everything silently, even the personal programs I’d put on this company computer. Then, I ticked them off aloud as Dave wrote them down. “Okay,” he said, confidently. “Let me save these. Then, I’ll re-format your hard drive and upgrade your operating system.”
Pshew. Crisis averted.
Fast forward to the following morning. Morning Edition, as usual, woke me. Lying snugly in bed, I contemplated (once again) calling in sick. But I need to work, I told myself, I need the money. Need the money to pay bills. To pay the bills on Quicken. Quicken! I forgot to tell Dave to save Quicken! I had thought of all the programs and documents I needed for work but I didn’t think of Quicken because I don’t use it at work. Not Quicken. Quicken can’t be gone.
I stood in front of Dave’s desk as he basked in the glow of his many monitors. Without waiting for me to speak, he proudly announced, “You’ve been upgraded and everything’s back on your hard drive.”
I got that sinking feeling.
“Dave,” I started and he perceived something wrong.
“Quicken,” is all I could get out.
Dave glanced at his list. “You didn’t say Quicken."
Something guttural rose from my throat, a noise I would have sworn was a death rattle.
“The drive has been re-formatted. Anything that was there is gone.”
Silence everywhere. Except in my head, where high-pitched screeches of ghost-children echoed endlessly.
My Quicken is gone. Six years of financial records are gone. All that stuff that makes taxes easier. My check registry. All those colorful graphs that showed my net worth as a horrible joke. The list of paid off credit card accounts. Gone, all gone.
“I’m sorry,” Dave said, quietly. I knew it was heartfelt. His “I’m sorry” became his mantra that day. I didn’t count how many times he said it—I was too busy counting the receipts in my head that I would have to re-enter into the Quicken program that I would have to re-install on my computer. And, screw them, I wasn’t going to upgrade. I was going to re-install the 2002 version.
I stood in front of Dave as he offered the umpteenth apology and I sighed. I reassured him that he was not to blame and that I knew, clearly, who was. I hadn’t backed it up, after all. He apologized again, offering it as a goodbye as I left his office with my little blue and gray laptop swinging in my hand. It was as happy as could be, my laptop, what with its reformatted hard drive and all.
I carried my world out into the bigger world and looked at the people bustling about with no clue of my dilemma. I comforted myself with the knowledge that all my other irreplaceable files had been recovered and that there were worse things than having to spend a few weekends shuffling through reams of paper and re-entering countless numbers. There were, there really were.
Ah, the beginning of a new world, as I know it.