Perserving Your Memories

Does Not Compute

Have you ever booted your computer and found out that all your files have somehow been erased. It is the worse feeling in the world. Some of the thoughts that run through your mind are: Man, how did this happen, why me, or even I had all my work on this thing. Sometimes there is a reason for the loss of data and sometimes computers just stop working.

I remember last year while I was in college, my laptop came on and read: 

Your System Did Not Shutdown Properly, Would You Like To:

• Run Windows
• Run Windows in Safe Mode
• Run Windows in Safe Mode with Networking

Since this screen comes up so many times with no problems, I just continued with running windows like I always do and then BAM!! The next screen I would see is: Your Hard drive has failed and no back-up protocols were found, Please replace hard drive. When I saw that I almost cried literally. My computer was my life and I had school files, sensitive information, books, articles, and most importantly photos and videos. My entire childhood and high school career was embedded in that computer and it was all gone.

Long story short, I figured out a way to restore my files to a previous point in "time" and recovered my files. The system restore was my life saver because I was in the middle of the Spring semester and school doesn't stop because of computer issues. After I calmed down, I realized that my Anti-virus software had been compromised and infested my system so I swiftly changed to a more reliable anti-virus software like Norton.

The moral of this story is to always, always, always have a back up some where. Whether it is on an external hard drive, massive flash drive, or a file hosting website. The widely used service is Dropbox. Dropbox is a web service geared to holding your files for a rainy day or as an extra storage spot. The maximum storage available on the free version is 2GB. However, the service I use is Google Drive. Google drive is available to all Gmail account users and allows you to store up to 5GB. I like Google Drive better because I can upload more photos, music, and video and still have room for .pdf and doc. files. Both are easy and accessible worldwide, the only difference is their capacity. So pick your poison and keep your valuable data safe.

Note: invest in a trusted and reliable Anti-Virus software to make sure that nothing and no one compromises your system.