COMPUTERS: Back up. NOW!

I have a morning routine. Part of that routine is checking out www.CrooksAndLiars.com, the liberal American political site. It links to many clips from shows, saving me the time visiting each of the host sites. Friday, I clicked a video to watch and then did something REALLY STUPID. I moved the video window from my left screen to the right one (I have two monitors). Half way across the digital divide, the machine froze. Hard. A little fiddling around left me with no option but the reset button. And when the computer returned from its boot up screen, I was staring at the infamous Blue Screen of Death.

And nothing I could do, or Patrick could do, in the next 30 hours could change that fact. The C:\ drive was toast for booting purposes, although I COULD access it, if I didn't do anything high-handed like actually start Windows (XP if you have to know). Eventually, I declared it time to resort to my backup. My last backup of the C: Drive had taken place about three weeks ago. This isn't the tragedy that some of you might otherwise suspect. I do NOT install anything I can avoid doing so, onto that C: Drive. Everything is installed in an apps folder residing on D:, E:, F: or X:. Outside of an XP patching utility and programs that give me no choice, all of C: is devoted to Windows and cache files, both temporary and all-too-permanent.

Oh yah, and some settings. Hate programs that do that.

Once I recovered using the disks created in Acronis True Image, I rebooted to a very familiar screen. The cursor was something I'd tried and discarded. I had to throw it out again. And Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus was absolutely sure I was horrendously out of date in my virus signature data (twas true enough). The massive overhaul I had made in my newsgroup handler last week was gone, which is and will be a pain until I remember to do it again. And Firefox's bookmarks were back to the way they were before I made a large re-organization of them, ten days ago. Not trifling, but nothing traffic-stopping.

I was back in business. Because I'd made a backup.

Actually, I could have recovered in about 20 minutes Friday if I hadn't been so curious as to what happened and how to fix it AND how to prevent it recurring. Patrick's curiousity was similarly piqued. So, it wasn't until Saturday at the supper hour that I was back up and running.

You KNOW you should be making a backup. I know I should be making BETTER backups (and will). And yet, the majority of you reading this will smile and pray/hope you never see the Blue Screen of Death. Lotsa luck. I had more stress this weekend deciding on what to eat for supper, then I had seeing that Blue Screen of Death ... because I had a backup. You might enjoy the stress. Knowing your sole source of income and/or entertainment has gone belly up might be something you can laugh off, or enjoy coping with. If you aren't amongst that incredibly small minority, I have only one phrase for you.

Back up, NOW!