[Personal_archives] Fwd: Starting off personal digital archives dialogue

Tue Apr 28 10:51:22 EDT 2009

Hello, all. I'm resending an earlier em that I sent to  Rod off-list about 
his hard drive crash as it appears that Rod's  original posting has indeed 
created some discussion about the role of the  ubiquitous computer crash and 
different reactions to "loss". 

Regards,

Rick 

____________________________________
 From: RICKBARRY
To: rgscarter at gmail.com
CC:  heather.dean at yale.edu
Sent: 4/27/2009 6:53:25 P.M. Eastern Daylight  Time
Subj: Re: [Personal_archives] Starting off personal digital archives  
dialogue

Not to diverge from the discussion at hand but more to come to the aid of  
a colleague in distress -- one familiar to me from several years ago and I'm 
 sure to many others.

Firstly, DON'T DO ANYTHING until you've thought it through  carefully. I 
know that sounds crazy, but you can make things worse by taking  the wrong 
option. With my own crash, I started out with a company that was  near my home 
and brought in my PC. It cost me $100 to find out that they  couldn't fix it 
with their software tools and that I'd need  to take it somewhere that had 
an authorized clean room to take the hard drive  apart. (Unless an 
authorized site, forget any PC warranties you  might have.) They sent me to On-Track 
that happened to have an office only a  bit further away. For the same price 
they would take the HD apart and diagnose  it and put a directory of the 
files in my PC that the could recover "online"  (in those days on an 
electronic "bulletin board") along with the cost of  recovering them. If I didn't 
accept the cost, they would return my  hard drive and the $100, The deal was 
that I couldn't open any of  the files but only see the directory/file names 
before deciding to go and  paying. To my amazement they listed over 75% of my 
files. They told me that  they probably could have recovered all of them, 
but by using a software first,  the operation of the software simply 
exercised the heads more and that had  destroyed some files in the process. Luckily, 
almost all of the files that  were lost were software programs, not my data 
directory, which didn't bother  me at all since I knew I'd have to reformat 
the computer and reinstall any  software I had put on myself anyway. So if 
you've brought it to someone who  doesn't have a clean room, try to 
intercept them until you can consider the  matter further. I don't know of other 
firms like OnTrack but there may be some  others. At the time OnTrack was the 
only one I could find and they were  outstanding. (They have customers who, 
if they revealed them to you, they'd  have to kill you.) 

I had paid $2200 for my PC. The cost of recovery was $2500. I complained  
that the recovery cost was more than I had paid for the PC. Of course I knew  
the answer, but I thought I'd try.And of course they reminded me that what 
we  have on our computers is usually much more valuable than the PC itself. 
I  sheepishly agreed and was very, very pleased to get those files back,  
including recently prepared workshop presentations (how about losing 300 PPT  
slides?), consulting client files, etc.

I don't know what the deal is today but based on my experience of that  
time 15 or so years ago, I'd suggest you look at their site 
_http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com_ (http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/)  and  especially for 
individual users: _http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/home-users/_ 
(http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/home-users/)    

An interesting aside, OnTrack has the below on its current site:

"Every day, we create and store more and more of our personal life  
electronically on computers- having a significant impact on one’s life. The  impact 
of data loss for situations in which the data can not  be easily recreated 
can be emotional - photos, personal financial records,  family documents, 
confidential and private information and more. All hope is  not lost."  Quite 
apropos to the purpose of the current discussion,  I'd say. 

And in future, of course.....You know. Backup in more than one media --  
old PC, CD, USB drive (they're getting bigger all the time), external hard  
drive (around $100), or rent space on the WWW, some of which are free for the  
first 2 gigs or so. 

When I was a naval aviator back in Vietnam days, while in training -- in  
those days, unlike with Air Force pilots, Navy pilots had to qualify as  
navigators also. While in nav training they told us: There are 2 kinds of  
pilots: those who have been lost and those who will become lost. It was true,  
including for me. I now say: their are 2 kinds of PC users: those who have  
crashed and those who are going to.

Good luck. I feel your pain. Oh, so I feel your pain... 

Regards,

Rick

In a message dated 4/27/2009 10:34:06 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
rgscarter at gmail.com writes:

Hello all, 
Suffering a potentially devastating crash of my work computer late  last 
week - I am still waiting for word on the status of my data,  fingers are 
crossed - I have been reflecting on some of the challenges,  issues and 
possibilities raised by Cathy's articles in a very concrete way.  I know I backed up 
the "important" work files, but am pretty sure I lost  most of the personal 
items that have accumulated on my cpu after 5 years, as  well as all my 
email which, for some strange reason, I never thought to  include in the 
backups. I keep thinking to myself, "was that kept? hmmm, it  was a work in 
progress and on the desktop so perhaps not. oh no..." Despite  thinking that I was 
rather on top of things, it seems I may have overlooked  a great deal of 
records, what Cathy calls "the countless items that are in  the middle, the 
quotidian artefacts of everyday life..." The music  collection, the articles 
saved to be read at a later point, the untold  amounts of notes, images and 
other things that I can't even recall having on  the computer at the moment 
but will no doubt go back one day to find it and  realize it is lost. And 
this experience has certainly made me think of the  limitations of my digital 
possessions at home. From the research Cathy  describes, it certainly sounds 
like I am not alone in having given  insufficient thought to my personal 
digital archive, but that doesn’t make  me feel much better about the work that 
needs to be done to safeguard  it. 
Already there are a few themes emerging that I hope we can  investigate 
this week - the idea of re-encountering which I find extremely  intriguing; the 
implications of benign neglect in the analogue and digital  worlds; 
decentralization of storages; and, as Catherine & Heather have  already flagged, 
the psychology behind the creation, use, and storage of  digital artefacts. I 
am looking forward to hearing the groups thoughts and  experiences as we 
traverse the "delicate tightrope between euphoria...and  uncertainty..." in the 
digital age. 
Rodney

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