What do you get when you subtract mindfulness from confidence? A recipe for a disaster. In my case it came in the form of losing data created between May 2017 and May 2018.
How did I manage to lose my data? Simply by being too confident in my computer skills and over-diligent while removing personal data from my laptop before dropping it off for the warranty repair.
As I recall the steps that resulted in losing data, I have to admit that no matter how many years of computer use you’ve had, handling one’s data should never be conducted absentmindedly. There’s nothing funny in losing a year worth of writings, ideas and work-related concepts. So, I share this as a cautionary tale, hoping that others can learn from my mistakes.
Privacy or Stupidity?
I’ve been having some problems with the HDMI port of my laptop lately. With the warranty about to expire at the beginning of June, I’ve decided it was time to address this issue. To get my computer ready before dropping it off at the service place, I did all the right steps. I copied my files to the external drive (by drag-and-drop) and after that checked whether the folders had been copied and the files opened properly. They did.
Then, I proceeded to delete the original files from my laptop, emptied the recycle bin and ran a disk cleaner. The last step stems from my mild paranoia around privacy issues – after all, I write all my personal stuff on this machine. Once all the steps were done, I unplugged the external drive, packed the laptop and drove to the service place. I felt quite proud of my being so computer savvy.
Upon returning home, I plugged the external drive into my old computer and went to open one of the files I’ve been working on. It was time to finish it as there was a deadline attached to that task.
The file wasn’t there. I started searching for it frantically, with no luck. When I realized the source of my mistake – see below – my heart had literally sunk.
It’s All Gone (Pete Tong)
What I took for the folders on the backup drive, it was in fact only the shortcuts. For as long as the external drive was plugged in to the laptop, accessing the files was possible by grabbing the information needed from the source – my laptop’s hard drive. But as soon as I unplugged the disk, all I was left with was a useless map to the land that I had so diligently destroyed. Had I unplugged the disk and checked whether I could open the files on the other computer before deleting the files from my laptop, I would have discovered my mistake before it was irreversible.
all I was left with was a useless map to the land that I had so diligently destroyed
A quick inventory of what’s lost made me sick to my stomach. Gone were all the writings I did over the last year – the last major backup was done in May 2017.
Among them was the big project I was a part of for six months and the first three chapters of the book I had just started writing. Gone were the editorial calendar for my blog and a handful of almost completed posts. And finally, a year’s worth of journaling. The loss of that specific file felt particularly painful, as I had been keeping a computer-based journal for two decades now. To say I felt a profound sense of loss would have been an understatement – I was in a full-blown mourning mode.
Help Me, Please!
Looking for help, I turned to Uncle Google. He has reassured me that losing data is rarely final. I’d be able to recover the data if no changes were made to the disk. So, I called the service and begged them not to touch the disk. They stated that they didn’t plan on doing so as the repair was hardware- not software-related. I felt a glimpse of hope.
Then, I started educating myself on the ways of un-losing data (aka: recovering lost data), even though my friends lobbied for using one of the legitimate data recovery places. I called one of them and sought their advice. Sure, they’d be able to help, they said. The colours of the world appeared more vibrant.
Two days later I picked up my laptop from the service. I was so eager to run the first data recovery software that I failed to notice that the laptop had been restored to its original settings. So much for “no changes made to the hard drive” assurance. I decided to let it go.
The results of the scan using the free software showed an impressive number of files found on the hard drive. Yet, I couldn’t open any of them. Not wanting to risk any further damage, I decided to seek professional help. Nice guys working at the data recovery place assured me that their software is more sophisticated than the free one I had been using and therefore they should be able to recover more data.
Praying for a Miracle
Maybe that was true in most of the cases these guys handle, but their software wasn’t powerful enough to recover my data. They couldn’t retrieve anything and – as per their policy: no data, no payment – returned my laptop. Never in my life have I felt more upset about receiving a free service.
With the vision of losing data slowly creeping up on me, I wasn’t going to leave no stone unturned. So, I contacted a highly regarded data recovery place located downtown. I outlined the steps I had done so far and also told about the diagnosis received at the other place. A nice man listened sympathetically to my ramblings. At the mentioning of running a disk cleaning software he let a loud sigh. That extra step had sealed the deal. It was a great move to protect my data but a terrible one for a potential recovery.
“If I insist on bringing my laptop in, they’d run their software,” he said, but he didn’t sound optimistic about the results. “If the other place couldn’t recover the files, it means they were gone for good,” he said. Apparently, my data was like a bunch of polaroids, pretty and easily accessible while intact, but highly flammable. I happened to set them on fire (more on that in my next post). With such a powerful image all I had to do was to accept the reality – I’m not going to recover anything from my laptop.
Losing Data, Gaining Data
With such a powerful image all I had to do was to accept my defeat and come to terms with the reality of losing data. Knowing that the hard drive was not going to give me anything, I embarked on my own recovery journey.
There must have been records of me sharing some of the files with others, I recalled. All I needed to do was to sift through the folders in my various email accounts and recover the files. Piece of cake, right? Hardly. This pretty straightforward process turned out to be a tedious task, albeit worth my time. Surprisingly, I was able to recover quite an impressive number of files! Not the journal, though.
With the recovered files safely stored on two devices, I ran a proper backup and even set a regular schedule for backups for the future. That was one of the lessons I’ve learned from this event. There are four more, so stay tuned!