Get S.M.A.R.T.

Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology.

That’s a backronym if I’ve ever heard one.

Basically, my laptop’s hard drive is dead.

It came suddenly and tragically.  Fortunately, I make backups often.  Unfortunately, the most recent backup was from two weeks ago, so you would think from me saying that that I’ve lost all of the projects that I’ve worked on over the last two weeks.

But one more fortunately: Fortunately, I’m still able to access the drive in a recovery terminal and copy files off of it (actually, copy them straight on to a network store. Nifty, huh?).  I’ve completely secured all of my project files and I’m able to open and work on them on my Windows PC.  I’m also backing up everything I can off that drive while I still can just in case my other backups don’t work.

I’ve ordered a new hard drive for the Mac, and it will be getting here Saturday (yay Amazon Prime!).

Overall, this whole experience wasn’t super stressful.  Worst case is that I would have lost an album I purchased last week and the schematic for the persistence of vision toy as well as a work-in progress that I started last Sunday afternoon.  Let this serve as a reminder to BACK UP YOUR SHIT NOW.  Seriously, a 1TB drive costs like $90.  There is no excuse not to.