Oh no! I lost my list! :(

[jeremy]

So, my laptop crashed over the weekend. It was the same one that my parents bought me during high school, I've had it for about 6 years now... so it was basically a dinosaur. I guess I probably should have upgraded a long time ago, but that's not what I'm frustrated over.

I had been keeping a record of what chicks and hatching eggs I wanted to order next spring and of course I didn't back up said list anywhere...
So now it's gone. I had breeder's names, websites, etc. all saved and cataloged by breed.

I remember a lot of what I had wrote down but I'm worried that now I'll forget something, or I won't be able to find a specific breeder that I had tracked down.

Now I have to start all over.

Any suggestions...

 

[X2Farm]

Any chance you can go back onto the computer, in safe mode, to recover anything like photos and files? I can't for the life of me remember HOW to do it, but I was able to save a ton of pictures and files from a laptop that went to our laptop boneyard (currently at 4 and counting

)

 

[thaiturkey]

Take the machine to a repairer. Your data is probably still there. While he is fixing it buy an external hard drive and write a note to stick on your monitor that says. 'I must back up every day'.

 

[jeremy]

Quote:
Well I took it to a repair place (I'm not cheap, just frugal. Why buy a new one if there's a chance it could be saved?

) They said they might be able to back up some of the files, if nothing was "melted" on the inside. It literally got like burning hot before it died, the computer guys said a lot of older computers have an overheating problem.

Anyways, it would suck to lose all the photos I had and music, and of course that chicken list! Thankfully a lot of my chicken pictures are saved online to photobucket.

 

[jeremy]

Quote:
*Makes a mental note...* Good advice!

 

[StupidBird]

FYI, memory sticks (those little things that stick into the USB ports) have come down drastically in price and gone up fantastically in memory. I think a couple weeks ago I bought 4 gigs for $15. Lots less bulky and lots less breakable than that massive external drive I bought a few years back. I dropped it, broke the power source thingie; so the family geek took it apart and slaved the hard drive to his frankenstein desktop computer.

The family archivist (really, works as a state archivist) constantly implores me to not only back up constantly, but to place back ups and hard copies of EVERYTHING in a safe deposit box, ideally an out-of-town box - she deals with lots of disaster recovery.

 

[mylittlezoo]

I had the same thing happen to me, never backed up, lost everything. EVERYTHING.

I knew I had to start backing up, but I am SO forgetful and feared I'd miss a day and that would be that.

DH signed me up for Carbonite, does it all for you, in the background of your computer. Seem to remember it was about $60 for a year. Seems like a bargain to me.

I hope they can recover your info....

 

[JetBlack]

When you get your new computer,

1. take the old hard drive (from the old laptop) and put it in the new one.

2. Back up the old drive to a 10 gig thumb drive,

3. replace the old drive with the new one and restore, from the thumb drive.