Last weekend, i decided to backup the downloads i had acquired over the few months i last did a back up. I also intended to rummage through my 25,000+ mp3 music files in response to a request. Less than half way through my backups, my 1.5 TeraByte Western Digital External Hard Drive suddenly spluttered and went belly up – just like that!
It was a surreal experience, it was like a dream. Try as i could, the drive suddenly became invisible to my laptop, it could not recognize the drive.
The least of my problem was the US$110+ that i paid for the drive at BestBuy, my problem was the years of downloads and backups that i had stashed into the hard drive that had suddenly gone up in smoke. Over 25,000 Mp3 songs, softwares, ISO images of DVDs and Video tutorials, tons of ebooks, the list is endless. In the face of such a catastrophic and monumental disaster, it is funny how i remained calm.
Still in a trance, i quietly packed up the drive and stored it away. I definitely was not in a right frame of mind to attempt any recovery of the data on the hard drive.
Thankfully, my movies were not in the crashed drive, they were safely stashed away in yet another Western Digital 500GB External Drive.
Looking back at it all, i can not help but wonder if it is worth it, accumulating all those digital files, not sure how long it would last. Yes, i could sync to the clouds and i did so but not 1.5 Terabytes (1,500 Giga Byte) of data!
I have turned philosophical, licking my wounds. A particular verse in the Bible aptly comes to mind:
Mathew 6:19
“Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal.
4 comments
Harry Echemco
That’s so unfortunate. 32GB is not in any way comparable to 1.5TB, but I guess I have an idea what it feels like because my 32GB memory card crashed on me early this year but I was less worried by media files but more worried by important personal files and other files tied to some apps and ever since then, I started embracing online backup of all those very important files. And no, I don’t have any business backing up media files i.e. pictures, music and videos online for such will be impractical here in Nigeria, I still rely on external hard disk for such backup and I’m sure I can bear it should there be a disk crash and I may even be able to recover those by getting them from people around me or downloading them from the internet but that’s not the case with personal files.
spacyzuma
My first external hard disk crashed in November 2009. LG model, 256GB. I was never able to recover any of the files on it, and I still feel sad pangs when I remember all the programs and codes I lost in it.
Now, I’m always careful about the types of ExHDD that I buy. I never buy the latest models with largest sizes. I’d rather buy a model with a size that is no longer viewed as impressive, as I feel such are tried and tested. Like, I will not buy anyone with a size > 2TB, but I will buy one that’s 1TB.
My last 2 ExHDDs have been Samsung and Seagate, and I’m satisfied with their performance. 🙂
Afewgoodmen
I bet you not up to 1GB of those files were absolutely needed. Most times we just store more than we really need.
Wale Falade
I agree. Even multiple copies of same files abound.