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Jane Clark Blog - May 2nd/2007OH MY GOD! Ohmygod. My hard drive crashed. Now I know, I know - everyone says back it up. You have to back it up. (If you don't know..you DO have to back it up). I knew and I didn't. I kept thinking I'd get around to it, and I also think in the back of mymind I felt my Mac was invincible. I mean I paid a crap load for a G5 Tower (plus a lovely 23 inch monitor, which I am dying to pair with another 23 inch for editing purposes) and I couldn't imagine paying all that money for something that could fail thatmiserably. But I did and it did and here I am. There's not much you can do, really. You are at the mercy of the Mac pros who charge hefty feels to recover your data. All you can do is pull out the credit card and make yourself feel better byreassuring said self that you can write it off on taxes the following spring. The experience is interesting though, because while you are waiting to hear a) if the data can be recovered and b) if so, how much of it can be recovered, you find yourself doing mental inventory of the projects and documents contained on that hard drive. I found, in reevaluating the contents, that it is a little like moving. You realize you have collected a great deal of questionably valuable items. I mean do you really needto keep those textbooks from college that you haven't cracked open since the classes ended? Oh there are definitely things that would be a bitch to lose. Don't get me wrong. All my scripts (5 features and a new short,) all their accompanying budgets, schedules and business plans, one-sheets etc. The final cut version (or at least the compressedversions) of my three short films - that would be totally f'd up if I had to replace those. Then, of course, all the bootlegged software I had stored on there - losing that would require resorting to devious means to replace it or coughing up a bunch So I am looking at the experience as a big, expensive lesson and a grand opportunity. When I get my computer back, the first thing I am going to do is dump stuff off a spare external and back up my data like I should have been doing on a regular basis (and plan to do from now on.) That will address the expensive lessonissue. On the grand opportunity issue. I am going to go through everything and purge. That letter I wrote two years ago, the pictures I was saving, but haven't used.they're gone. I'm going to use the rule of thumb in cleaning out a closet. If I haven't used it in over a year, I don't need it anymore. And besides, unlike that cute shirt I gave to good will right before Ifound the perfect pair of pants to go with it, I'll have the excess data saved in the back up drive, just in case. So let my misfortune be a reminder to all. Back up your computer. Do it now. Because you never know when your expensive processor will decide to act like a possessed, used car and arbitrarily crap out and take you for a ride. Jane Clark 323/654-0115 W
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