Today is not a good day.

Yesterday my hard drive crashed. I took it to IAIT and they said I’d have to come back the next morning. So I left it. When I got back this morning I was told that nothing was saved. I lost everything on my hard drive.

Losing your hard drive is like having your old dog die and getting a new puppy. You have trained your old dog and he is exactly what you want. You know him, he knows you. He does what you tell him and he treats you like he should. When he dies you think about all the things you will miss about him. On the other hand he is old and doesn’t run around as much as he used to. And then you get a new puppy. He knows nothing and you have to train him. You expect him to act like your old dog, but he doesn’t. You have to teach him everything. You can’t even remember all that you need to. What did you teach your old dog so long ago that you forget now? A new dog has oppurtunity. You can teach him whatever you want, and any bad habits your old dog had, your new dog doesn’t. He is a clean slate and you have endless oppurtunities.

It is the same way with a computer. You lose your old hard drive and you lose everything you had put on there. Not only software, but data. You lose papers and projects. You lose pictures. You lose your windows settings. This is an overlooked but important one. I now have to download and install everything I had. There are things I won’t reinstall, and this will keep my new hard drive cleaner. I lost all my music. I will have to re-rip all my CD’s.

The biggest problem is, I know I’ve lost stuff. I’ve lost my bookmarks, documents, backgrounds. But I know I’ve lost stuff that I can’t remember what it is. I imagine it’s like losing your memory. You know you can’t remember something you want to remember, but you can’t remember what it is. Is this a better state than remembeing something you desperately want? That is what makes me the saddest. I’ve lost stuff I knew I wanted, but I don’t know what it is.

Most of the stuff I’ve I could find again. Most of my bookmarks I could find. But what about my CS projects? Those are gone. 90% of them were small projects I don’t care about. But I used them from time to time to figure out how I’d done something.

But I now have a fresh install. I have to reconfigure windows. I can’t seem to make my folders look the way they should. Something is odd about them. My control panel is not the way I like it, but I can’t remember how to change it. These are things you change once a year when you have to reinstall windows.

I joke about losing my hard drive. Actually, I joked about it last night when it was only a possibility. I dont feel like joking anymore.