Computer panic
Aug. 23rd, 2012 06:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyofastolatMy desktop computer won't switch on! When I press the power button, it begins doing its normal healthy "I am switching on!" whirring, but after a second, it whirs down to silence and all lights go off. Only a few days ago, I said guiltily how awful I am about backing anything up, but did I do anything about it? Of course not! I have loads and loads of stuff on that computer that isn't backed up anywhere else, including pretty much every photo I've even taken in the last 6 years or so (except for those I've posted on LJ) and several not-yet-posted stories.
And I'm due to leave for Summerfest in an hour, so can't take it to a nice heroic computer man for him to fix. If anyone wise in the ways of computers is able to say to me, "Don't worry! It sounds as if you just need to have the Technobabble replaced, and then it will work perfectly and you won't lose anything you've got saved!" this would be a very very reassuring thing to hear while I'm en route.
Last night, I slept very badly and managed to dream about 101 things that could go wrong with Summerfest and my journey there, which ranged from the plausible (forgetting train tickets, although this will no longer happen, since Action has been taken; hideous drench etc.) to the less plausible (missing the train on account of staying behind to clean the castle; Henry V's army turning up and eating all our bacon butties, etc.) but I didn't dream this one.
And I'm due to leave for Summerfest in an hour, so can't take it to a nice heroic computer man for him to fix. If anyone wise in the ways of computers is able to say to me, "Don't worry! It sounds as if you just need to have the Technobabble replaced, and then it will work perfectly and you won't lose anything you've got saved!" this would be a very very reassuring thing to hear while I'm en route.
Last night, I slept very badly and managed to dream about 101 things that could go wrong with Summerfest and my journey there, which ranged from the plausible (forgetting train tickets, although this will no longer happen, since Action has been taken; hideous drench etc.) to the less plausible (missing the train on account of staying behind to clean the castle; Henry V's army turning up and eating all our bacon butties, etc.) but I didn't dream this one.
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no subject
Date: 2012-08-23 05:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-23 08:41 am (UTC)In the meantime, and assuming you have another desktop PC to hand, you could plug the hard disk into another PC and copy important files off it.
After that, the next thing to do is set up some backup routine that backs up important files to somewhere else every night or every day. One of the cloud storage services perhaps. Or, if you have more data, a combination of cloud storage and local network storage with a nice little NAS box.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-23 08:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-23 12:02 pm (UTC)A little box which just contains hard disks and a simple system for managing files, that you administer remotely from another machine. We have our machines set to just copy everything over daily to ours.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-23 12:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-23 08:48 pm (UTC)