Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

disaster averted

Given how much of my life seems to run through my laptop, it’s amazing that my personal mantra isn’t “backup. backup. backup.” I keep meaning to do comprehensive backups of all my documents, photos and music files on a regular basis, but it’s such a pain, to the point where the only time I have done a full backup was when I upgraded my computer to Tiger and wiped my hard drive. That backup, now two months old, still lives on Rob’s external hard drive.

That said, I don’t want to think about what might happen if my hard drive decided to go south. (::furiously knocks on wood in the hopes that such a thing never happens::) Data recovery is a big business, and companies that specialize in that service can charge big bucks from desperate people who intensely regret their lack of backup procedures. A recent article in the New York Times tries to paint a picture of that desperation:

DriveSavers employs Kelly Chessen, a former suicide-prevention counselor, to calm distraught customers.

“You get nervousness, anger, crying,” Ms. Chessen said. “People fear they’ll lose their jobs” if the data is not recovered. And at times they say that life will no longer be worth living. “I ask them if they’re really thinking about committing suicide,” she said. Fortunately, no one has.

(“E.R. for Hard Drives” - 07/14/05)

It seems comical to think of suicide hotline tactics applied to desperate tech customers … but perhaps not all that surprising. There’s nothing quite like that sinking feeling, alongside a skyrocketing feeling of panic, when something bad and potentially unfixable happens to one’s computer.