Yesterday I went to the electronics store and bought myself an external hard drive. While in the States my brother had suggested that I buy a flash drive and at least save my pictures (which I've never done) or else someday I'd be sad. One of his computers crashed a few months ago and they lost many of their old pictures. So taking my brother's advice I bought a 16 gigabyte flash drive. Of course I didn't really know how to use that but my brother did download my pictures into it for me.
Good. My problem is finished... Except that the flash drive seemed very small and it was more likely that I'd lose that before my laptop crashed. Takumi then stepped in the picture and said what I ought to do is buy an external drive.
"I have no idea what you are talking about and I haven't even gotten the steps in my head about how to backup pictures on the flash drive like you uncle just explained to me."
Still, Takumi seemed to think an external hard disk that would sit on the desk and not get moved around would be best (and hold more stuff.)
A few days later when Leiya and I were visiting Takumi she needed some data from his computer transferred to hers (I guess) and both children suggested that I give up my newly made flash drive so that they could use it,
"because you're going to buy an external hard drive anyway when you get back to Japan."
So I came back to Japan without having any of my pictures (from 9 years previous!) backed up. And wouldn't you know when I got back to Japan my computer froze on me (changing routers? interrupted security service?) and I spent a couple of frazzled hours trying to get my computer functioning again. Yes, I really need to back up my computer!I discussed the external hard drive with the boy in the electronic shop. He assured me that it was very easy to use. No installation required, just plug in and go. I explained how I do not like having to read instructions in Japanese. Shouldn't be a problem. I got home. Plugged things in and lots of windows started popping up and different dialog boxes began blinking. Tanya, you can do this... Somewhere along the line the external hard drive let me know it was backing up my entire computer.
"Oh. That's nice of you. I didn't know you were going to do that but that might make my job easier."
Unfortunately though I started at 3:00 pm, it was still backing things up at 10:30 when I went to bed.
This morning I come to my computer and can find no trace of anything backed or even a way to back things up. As far as my external drive is concerned we are meeting for the first time.
"Starting initial computer backup. This will take a few hours..."
"No! Wait. You did all that yesterday!"
I'm taking the external drive AND the computer to the shop today. I sure hope someone will be able to explain it to me.
9 comments:
Ah...things are never as easy as they should be. I was surprised at how easy it's been to move to my new Windows 7 laptop. So far I've only found one program that doesn't work on it. It easily found & installed the printer connected to my home network and found the other computers as well. Still don't know if the other computers can find it. Must try that one of these days.
Hmmm...mine doesn't back up automatically, I just click and drag things to it after I open it. Maybe an older model? I don't know why technology has to be so difficult! I hope you get it figured out, Tanya, it's a really good idea to do a backup once a month. At least. I store my pics at flickr, so at least I have them online...and I use an online email, so I don't lose those.
Salut!!!My name is bogdan from Romania!!!
We can be friends ???
http://bogdanstelistul.blogspot.com/
I never knew the meaning of the phrase 'a love/hate relationship' until I got a computer! I think taking it all to the shop sounds like a good idea.
When my motherboard died recently, it was luckily still under warranty, and my friend was able to get things sorted out when she replaced it with the new one. She asked me to promise her I would back up my blog regularly. I am still wondering how I am going to achieve this!
Good luck with it all Tanya.
Oh Tanya, I share your pain at the odd ways of computers. But you're right that backing up is important, you've inspired me to do something about it.
I've been thinking about trying to backup my computer and now with your blog, have decided that I should. Now I just have to try and find out how. Thanks for the push that I needed.
cindy
I have an external hard drive and it is a wonderful thing to have. I think that sometimes all the things they do to make things easy (like the automatic backup) seems to cause more problems, because we don't know what it is trying to do automatically. My daughter did the initial setup thing (which didn't take hours), but I can imagine that the first time, it would take a while to backup everything, (I don't backup program files, just the data to save time), but afterwards, it doesn't take as long, because it is only saving the new stuff.
That made me laugh so hard, but only because I just survived my own data backup disaster. Or rather - non-backup. What brand is your external hard drive? Please say it's not IO Data! They seem to mysteriously expire almost exactly as soon as the warranty goes out. :(
And of course all the data stored on them expires as well.
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