Back It Up

Concerning the reliability of backups.

Friday, I was running late for my interview. The representative of the company had requested me to bring softcopies and as well as hardcopies of my work for the interview. But to my horror when I turned on my desktop computer to retrieve my work files, the computer failed to boot up. I frantically tried to resolve this issue. But I was running late for my interview.

I just grabbed my printed portfolio, my transcripts and two cds of my previous animations, Akiro and the Sassy Old Man, and left for the interview leaving my table in a huge mess.

Thursday, the day before, I took the time to troubleshoot my desktop computer. I reinstalled the OS, drivers and to transferred all my data from my laptop to the computer. The data was to serve as a backup. All was fine till Friday.

It is to be noted; I made a huge error in my judgment. After copying the files over I deleted the files just to save a few gigs of space on my laptop.

Had I not done this I would have simply burned all the data from my laptop rather and wasting my time trying to retrieve the files from my desktop computer.

Friday evening, coming back from my interview, I decided to troubleshoot my computer again. I realised that my RAM chip had overheated. I simply took it out and that resolved the issue. Sometimes I wonder if technology will ever be reliable.

Now I have learned an important lesson. Make multiple backups and do not put all your data into one place. And if you really need to put your backups in one location, make sure you do not erase your source files because you might never know when your backup might fail.

Life was so much fun and simpler before I met technology.