There are two types of people in this world, those who do back up and those who don’t back up. I’m one of those laid back ‘It’ll be grand, don’t worry about it.’ kind of people who doesn’t back things up. If you, like me, don’t back things up then I will offer you some of the best advice you will ever hear! wait for it! Back-up everything on your computer now.
Let me tell you why, allow me to be blunt for a second, something will fall on your computer and totally mangle your hard drive making it completely useless. There, I said it.
Dave you sound like your speaking from personal experience
That’s a very astute observation, my friend. Let me tell you a story that dates back to the 20th of June 2005.
It was about 3pm on a mild Monday afternoon; Dave was just putting the finishing touches on his brand spanking new website and preparing it for upload which was planned to take place later in that same evening. Dave was feeling proud; proud that his effort had finally paid off; proud that as of the next morning davejeffery.com would be officially launched; proud that he could chat up girls by saying ‘I have a website!’ and not feel like dirty, lying scum after it. Ah yes, this was to be Dave’s finest hour, he even had 4 pre-written blog posts that he could post in the first week of his new blog, just so he could be a proper smart-ass.
But then something terrible happened
The shelf above Dave’s beautiful computer buckled. Dave turned his head to see what was happening and then like a ten tonne anvil dropping off the side of a building, Dave’s massive 60-watt speakers fell off of the shelf.
Nooo!
The speakers decided to land themselves directly on Dave’s lovely computer, a blue screen flashed up on Dave’s monitor. Dave frantically searched for an edit->undo menu and repeatedly hit ctrl+z, in the hope that his speakers would magically place themselves back on the shelf and the big dent on Dave’s lovely computer would disappear, but alas, no. He coolly looked at the massive dent on the computer case and inspected the damage. Dave thought, ‘It’s only external, I’ll hit the reset button and everything will be a-ok!? But it wasn’t, when Dave restarted the computer the hard-drive started beeping like one of those tamagotchis when you haven’t cleaned up their shit for a few days. It was gone … everything was gone. Pirated copies of all the latest film releases … gone. 10’s of gigs of porn sorted alphabetically, categorically and by year of release … gone. Some of the less important stuff like college projects, my drafted portfolio, all the stuff I’d done in illustrator, flash, fireworks, a few php scripts, some HTML/CSS templates that I made and this very website … all gone.
So what’s the moral of the story
Back up everything that is of any value to you as often as you can. It’s pretty unlikely that a 60-watt speaker will fall on your beautiful computational machine but hard drives can fail for a number of different reasons. I know that there are dumbasses like me out there that don?t bother backing things up, remember Murphy’s Law is very real and it’s a mother fucking bitch.
Like a phoenix rising from the ashes
Although it was a pain in the ass to re-create this site from scratch after I had already completed it, I am doing it and very soon you will be able to see the outcome. In reality this is very similar to the original version of the website but with twice the blood, sweat and tears. Take it from me, it feels a lot more painful the second time around. Re-doing a website after you’ve just poured your energy into creating it and then to see it destroyed is a very bitter pill to swallow.