Failure is Imminent

Hard drive failure, that is. Oh yes, I get to go through that again.

Thankfully, this time I had 1. forewarning, 2. a back up of the bad sectors, and 3. a valid warranty.

It all started when I tried to open my family pics folder...and it wouldn't open. It just hung and then tried to tell me that the drive wasn't formatted. Um, yes it is...the other folders worked just fine, too. Well, except for the friends pics folder. On the whole drive, those are the only sections I haven't been able to access. Good thing all those files are backed up on my external!!

I ran a diagnostic test on the drive. Or tried to. It stopped itself and said there were too many bad sectors to continue.

At that point, I looked into warranty info and thankfully it's still covered. Yay! So I get a replacement drive for free! Ish...I have to pay to ship the bad one to them. But $5 in shipping is a lot cheaper than buying a new 500 GB hard drive...

And then I backed up everything that wasn't already backed up. Thankfully most of my files were already backed up on my external. Phew! No data loss for me!

I'm also glad that if I have to lose a drive that it's my pics and digiscrap drive - as long as I've got everything backed up, that is. Which I do. I'm glad I don't have to reinstall Windows or Photoshop or any of my other programs. All those are on my main drive. I'll still have a functional computer while I wait for my replacement.

I'm not exactly thrilled that I have to go through the whole RMA process and wait for my new drive. But considering what could have happened, it's not so bad. Just a minor inconvenience. I have to pull out the bad drive, put it in an anti-static bag, wrap it up in bubble wrap, find a box, slap my shipping label on it, slather it with my RMA number, and ship it out. Annoying, but certainly not the end of the world. Nowhere near as awful as losing all my files (been there done that, it sucked) or being without a computer for awhile. Or having to *gasp* actually pay for my replacement drive. With money I don't have, of course. So glad it's free!

In the meantime, I'll be scrapping off my external hard drive! I should reorganize my files while I'm at it; it'll make the transition from back up to new drive much smoother. Ha - if I can find the time to do it! I've got a billion things to do in the next 3 weeks before my due date! Sorting through 5 months of files isn't exactly my favorite activity...;) But it needs to be done. It's just not the highest thing on my priority list at the moment. Packing my hospital bag is much higher on that [extremely long] list and I haven't even started yet. I've still got time, right? ;)