Data loss and the 5 stages of grief

Hildr · Bit-Junkie Joined: 08 Feb 2011 Posts: 175 Location: Canada

So recently I tried to boot my laptop and it did nothing, just sat there.

I panicked and took it to a lovely repair shop and just got it back today. Data extraction was no problem, everything is safe.

the main source of panic was the possibility of data loss, in that I would be fucked if I lost the data I filed away because I'm a researcher for a university. I research people who think they are honest to god vampires. Every vampire's data is in my laptop, and soon will be in an external hard drive.

In the agonizing wait between the day it died and today, I realized my primary source of panic was how much I stood to lose.

What really bothered me was losing my pictures, I only got the laptop in 2009 so all older files are on CDs somewhere in my files.

But what would have killed me would be losing the pictures of my kitten when I first got her, and she could fit in the palm of my hand, all the friends I've made from fighting and all the adventures we've had. Pictures of my friend's ink, and my ink in all stages of healing.

So I pose this to my nakama- if you've lost your phone, laptop, PC etc, what part of the loss hurt you the most?

And for those fortunate enough to have never experienced this agony, what hurt you the most? Possible data loss? Monumental repair bills?
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Wiggett · More Machine Than Man Joined: 06 May 2007 Posts: 2100

Data loss most definitely. I have stuff from my first pc still, mostly documents and perhaps a few family photos. I've clouded most of my film script stuff, so I guess losing my edited videos and graphics I work up for them would be my main concern. I still haven't deleted the ex photos but I don't think I'll be filled with great sorrow over those.
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kikaruu · Cyberjunkie Joined: 08 Feb 2011 Posts: 226

Loss, for sure. I can repair my computers and flash drives (man that vid is old) easily enough, but I can't create most of the stuff I have, since it's mostly downloaded stuff.

As an example, a couple of years ago I dropped my laptop fending off a vicious and deadly spiderweb. Within a week, the drive gave that familiar death rattle and I lost everything. Music, videos, books, manga... projects, desktops, old software, master copies... It took me the better part of a few months to re-download most of the stuff (which was all FOSS, CC, or similar). the worst things were modified system files, like my Xorg and conky setups. Bookmarks were with Xmarks, so that was fine, but I hadn't synced addons yet, so that was a trouble.

As far as master copies go, I wasn't too worried. I can always regenerate WAV files from Renoise project files. I'd be more worried if I lost those project files, which has nearly happened a few times.

So, yeah. Losing stuff is a big deal for me, likely because I spend so much time archiving stuff.

I had a folder full of cute Caturday photos. It was beautiful; I've never owned a cat, although I'd love to.

As for phone, no big deal; all of my contacts live within the city, so I can always find a way to grab those easily.

I finally bought a PSP last year... and lost it this year. Custom firmware, nostalgic SNES games, a sizeable music collection. Gone. At least that's all replaceable, yeah?

(the only good thing about failing hard drives are the security benefits. I don't have to worry about worrying about explaining why the disk was wiped with a magnet to a court in case I'm arrested for something. After all, it had already crashed, right?)
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m_bishop · Bit-Junkie Joined: 09 Jul 2010 Posts: 194

I have an external drive on my desk where important files are backed up, and I keep an off-site subversion tree for code, so that even if my house burns down, I won't lose any code.

I've lost thousands of lines of code, months of work, from dropping a laptop once. Now I'm ultra-paranoid about it.

750 · Net-Daemon Joined: 13 Dec 2010 Posts: 686

Ah, the data loss. Know that one. Especially nasty when it comes from a personal oops.

Really need to work on my backup setup...

ZaidaZadkiel · Lithium Pirate Joined: 26 Feb 2007 Posts: 1263

I've lost everything, literally, about 3 times now. It hurts quite a lot.
My first loss was the most painful one, since I had all my creations, code, art, texts and everything which I cannot re-create again. It was from since I was like 15 till I was like 20, so it was really precious.

the second loss was a very very stupid one, because the laptop has an option to automatically reset the system to factory settings, erasing the hard disk. I lend the computar to a friend, who wondered what that option would do.
I lost a few months of work, like 2 gb of porn and 10 gb of hand-picked music. It didn't hurt as much as the 1st one.

the third loss was thanks to another friend, who somehow managed to erase everything, although I suspect malice. I didn't loss much then, and it was easy to shrug it off.

So now I upload everything I create somewhere. I find, nothing is safe in this world. Even the most precious, stable things.

Father is dying slowly, but he remains strong. He will one day just lay down and never get up again. I feel I'm prepared for it, but I'm not, nothing can prepare you for a real loss.

I've come to appreciate the temporary permanence of things in my life. For many reasons, I seem to never have stability in where I am, the things I do and everything. So in a way, I've come to "desire" loss, for each loss is a new beginning.

It all is very strange and very emotional.
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Gunhead

I'm going through hard drive failure myself, I feel your pain Hildr. Hopefully I'll be able to clone all my stuff, but you never know...
20 gigs of porn, several precious pirated albums, an irreplacably esoteric collection of assorted images and wallpapers, tons of my writings and artwork, and my bookmarks which I can never seem to properly remember.
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tonehog

I'm planning on buying a NAS unit for this very reason. I currently have an eSATA external HDD enclosure, but it has no active cooling and it's one drive.

NAS units, sometimes bundled already with WD drives, are really affordable now; just like uninterruptible power supplies, which long ago was upgraded to "required" status in my hardware checklist. NAS unit will likely be the same after I get one.

I'll probably just get a 2-HDD RAID 1 configuration NAS unit.
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750 · Net-Daemon Joined: 13 Dec 2010 Posts: 686

Synology gets a fair bit of lover regarding their hybrid-raid NAS system.

http://forum.synology.com/wiki/index.php/What_is_Synology_Hybrid_RAID%3F

tonehog

I'm thinking ZFS or BTRFS for the NAS, possibly.
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m_bishop · Bit-Junkie Joined: 09 Jul 2010 Posts: 194

Anyone using any of the new 'cloud' storage solutions? I was invited to use one that starts you off with something like 5GB (probably enough for irreplaceable files) for free. I never got around to it, though.

tonehog

I use MediaFire for some things, and DropBox for others. MediaFire doesn't mirror files on your computer, whereas DropBox does, so acts a bit like SVN, Mercurial, GIT, etc., without versions.

NAS boxen have been called "cloud storage," though I disagree with the use of the term in that case, as most NAS units are just one unit, and are on one's LAN. Yes, clouds can be on-site, but most consumers dont' have a cloud or grid computing setup in their house (though I would love to, myself).
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G4sM4sk · Disposable Assassin Joined: 02 Feb 2010 Posts: 1471

Gunhead

Kovacs

I’ve lost stuff on my hard drives a bunch of times. Very rarely has it ‘hurt’; in one case my system was wonky and I send my editor friend a specific warning that he was the only backup of the footage we had.

My last drive that toasted was a Tb drive that dies six months ago. While it falls under warranty I didn’t want the computer store folks to have access to the data, so I’m hanging onto it. Mainly because it’s got risqué photos of my ex and, though our current relationship is sour, I still don’t want those pics ending up online somewhere.

What HAS hurt was when the phot sharing site Petridish.com when down. Before facebook my friends an I used that to store photos of our various adventures, particularly the behind the scenes filmmaking ones. That was like 3-4 years of history pfft, gone.