your hard disk... your life....

On laptop....

No signs of damage, no blue-screen-of-death, no error messages, my laptop went dead few months ago. Black screen saying system files couldn't be found, and i couldn't even get pass windows. It was a nightmare!!! After trying to self-diagnose my laptop, going to local shop, and even going to MDR Data Recovery center. I got the final result..... My hard disk... the hard disk that contains all my pictures, songs, old emails, old journal entries are gone!!!! The hard disk is beyond repair. Apparently there is a big scratch on the surface of the hard disk. MDR tech guy said there are two reasons for this to happen. First, it could be a manufacturer defect, which he said couldnt be the problem since I've been using the laptop for years now. Second is because of shock ( i'm not sure whether physical shock or electrostatic shock or could be others)...... So the data couldn't be read, or maybe even if they could, the data would be meaningless since the hard disk sector itself it's corrupted.

So I'm stuck to the only option, get a new hard disk, and saying goodbye to my old data... Too bad ibm doesn't give the recovery cd, ibm machines store recovery files in the hard disk itself. So once your hard disk is corrupted, the option is either to get a new recovery cd from ibm which costs rm226 or go to ibm office to borrow the recovery cd(foc!). But going there is such a hassle for me because i would have to travel all the way to kl to get that one done.

Luckily, being a paranoid tht i am, I have an external hard disk, so most of my pictures are safely backed up in it. In addition to that, I started burning my pictures on DVD since it's a passive data storage. Hard disk itself is a mechanical machine: Accessing, deleting data, or dropping could lead to loss of data.

So for those who have valuable,precious, important data in your hard disk. Please start backing up.. because you don't know what could happen. You can schedule a data synchronization between your laptop/pc and your external hard disk weekly(or daily if you're paranoid!) so that you don't lose anything important.

What are you waiting for... go back up your files!!!