A misplaced zero

Way back when I first learned about computers, about 1’s and 0’s and bits and bytes (’cause we weren’t really into kilobytes or megabytes then, and a terabyte would still be something you’d only expect from a pterodactyl), back when we punched programs onto paper tapes before running them through phone lines to a distant mainframe, when there were no monitors, just paper output – way back then, when I learned that a single misplaced digit could ruin my afternoon, I wouldn’t have imagined that decades later it could ruin a lot more than that. A tiny little hard drive failure, not enough to cause the disk to completely fail but enough to make it unmountable – most likely just a little bit or byte out of place somewhere that I can’t find to correct – and my weekend and the beginning of my workweek are toast. My startup drive suddenly froze up on Friday, just after I’d saved a couple of documents I really didn’t want to lose. My pictures were safely off on another drive, and everything except that afternoon’s work was backed up, so it should have been the mildest of inconveniences – except that it’s the startup drive, so all the system data and mailboxes and preferences and everything else that keep my electronic life running smoothly are on there, and not on anything else in a bootable form, and so arrrrgggghhhhh.

That was just a week after another drive failed (again, having been faithfully backed up), and while the system disk didn’t owe me anything (installed in 2002), it is much more of a pain in the ass to lose.

While the periodic Revolt of the Appliances marched on, the toaster decided to throw in with this lot and see what came of it, but rather than causing agony and hand-wringing and careful planning for restoration, the toaster’s revolt was met with swift justice – out with it. A new one was procured, and one of the options had a digital read-out. For toast. At this point I’m not taking any chances on these devices getting together, so the analog choice came home with us and, by all accounts, makes toast.

Meanwhile, backups of backups as I reconfigure, reload, etc., and get a new set of drive arrangements in place. I need to decide whether I’m going the extra mile with the old drive to rescue a few files, but that decision will likely be made when the new drive arrives tomorrow, and it ends up taking its rightful place alongside the toaster.