Never Ignore Your Mother (Board)

Well.  This has been a really, really expensive week for me.  Thankfully, I had the exact right person nearby to  dig me out of the Abyssal Depths of Computer Crash in less than 24 hours flat.  But it wasn't cheap, and I'm now in the red on my budget.  But I have all my files.

Here's what happened.  I sailed away from Ocean Isle in early July, KNOWING that there were odd little hang-ups and burps going on with my computer that I use here in NC.  I didn't worry too much, because I had never been on the Internet with this unit, so I thought it was safe.  Thought that I had just loaded too much into the memory.  But there were enough hiccups that I was concerned.  I had even told my computer guru that I was going to drop it by on my way out of town and let him take a look at it.  But I didn't.  I just left it here in the hot old basement.

Which apparently pushed the Old Guy over the edge.  When I arrived back here after a month and pushed his Belly Button, he just sat there in grumpy silence.  Nothing.  Perplexed, I tried the CTRL-ALT-DELETE thing, and Nothing.  Unplugged, replugged.  Silence.  Next day, I hauled his frumpy little ass over to the tech, and a couple hours later, the tech called and gave me the bad news.

The Mother Board was fried, gone, kaput.  Who knows why, but that's it.  He advised biting the bullet and getting a new computer.  And By The Way - Hurry Up, because he was leaving town for two weeks, very much wanted to help me, but was on a rigid timeline.  As in, You've Got One Hour, then I'm outta here!  I needed him because he could transfer all my files over from the old computer.  I blazed a trail to Office Depot in Shallotte.  Exactly 23 minutes later, I was speeding down Village Road...

HP Pavilion p7 - 1020

With this computer...

Life's Good Flatron E2360 Monitor.

and this monitor. 

And thinking about the fact that I was over $800.00 in the hole, and STILL had to pay my tech to move my files.  If I could get there in time.  And if I didn't, I was down until I could bring my backup from Atlanta.  I made it with 7 minutes to spare.

This morning, I picked up  my new unit from Shane.  He had carefully combed my old drive, and had picked up every file for me and moved it to my new computer.  Cheerfully.  Before he left for California this afternoon.  What a guy.

Now here is the Moral and Lesson to the Story...because I KNEW something was going on in there, I had backed up every single file to an external drive before I left.  And took the backup to Atlanta so I would have a current version for the new computer there.  The glitch here is that I left that drive in Atlanta, so I had no backup, no files, nothing in North Carolina to work on.  

BUT, even if Shane had not been able to move my files over - if he had airline reservations for early this morning...I would not have lost a thing.  Because I backed up.  Externally.  I would've lost time, but not hard-earned files.  Now here's the good part.  Knowing how I move back and forth, Shane advised that I start using a virtual backup, otherwise know as Cloud Storage.  Like Carbonite, Acronis, or better yet, one of many that are freeware.  That way, I can access all my files - no matter where I am.  How amazing is that?  How Secure is that??!!

So that's the lesson:  Never, Ever, Ignore Your Motherboard's vapors and swooning.  It's a precursor to Utter Doom.  Back up, back up, back up!  And do it virtually, on a daily basis.

Here are some links:

Carbonite Virtual Backup

A Drive (Free)

Freeware Cloud Storage

That's it for now, I'm off to reload software!