angrykeyboarder

Thankfully I’ve never had a hard drive
crash on me.  But I’ve fucked them up a few times all by myself.  Not
in the damaging them sense, but the the just being careless file
deletion sense. 

I generally learn from those lessons and get better about this stuff.  But every so often, I forget again.

Thursday night was one of those times.

I’ve got an external hard drive
that I use for a storage of a combination of things like Documents,
Image Files, Videos, MP3s and Software.  I have this drive so that I
can easily get to my stuff regardless of whether I’m in Windows or
Linux (I’ve still yet to fully get that scheme worked out on the hard
drives in my computer)..

Anyway, I’ve repartitioned this drive a few times in the past with no trouble.  Thursday night I decided I needed to do that again*.

I used a partitioning utility
that permits you to do this without (supposedly) losing data**.  And
had I been a little slower to click "Yes" in a place or two, you’d not
be reading this.  In a matter of a few seconds I went from around 180GB
of data to zilch.

Thankfully the most valuable stuff (pix I took with my Digicam and -most of- the songs I bought from the iTunes music store) were backed up elsewhere***.

The
most recent $40-50.00 worth of Music is toast though.  I don’t own an
iPod so I only listen to it on my computer.  But at least I have most
of it otherwise (I did a backup in iTunes to a DVD-R a few months back).

The
other misc stuff I can live without.  I’m sure there are some documents
I’ll be pissed about losing a month or two from now, but I can’t recall
what they might be at the moment.

But anyway this whole thing
pissed me off and has added to my latest uber-depressed state.  My Mom
is being a particular pain lately and that’s also contributing.

Anyway,
after the hard drive mess, I tried fixing it but got nowhere.  I
figured I might have better luck trying it in Windows with Partition Magic.  At this particular time I don’t happen to have Partition Magic installed (I’ve been running the Windows Vista betas and I never bothered trying to see if Partition Magic would work with it or not).

So
I figured I’d just plug the drive into my Mom’s computer (which
-otherwise unfortunately- is 8 feet from where my computer is)..

So
I unplugged the cables from the drive and got down on my hands and
knees and crawled under by desk to unplug the power cord.   The problem
is, I had no fucking clue which of the 235 cords went to the drive and
pulling on a few I guessed at accomplished nothing.

What
I needed was daylight which makes it much easier to see under there.
Alas daylight came and went and I did nothing.  I’m fat, OK?  And
getting down on my hands and knees and crawling around on the floor is
not my idea of a party.  So procrastinator that I am, I put it off.

I’ll
pay someone $20.00 to come do this for me (just find the cord, unplug
it and hand it to me, I’ll take care of the rest).

So once I
get that done, I’ll plug in into my Mom’s computer and see if there is
any possible way to recover the data.  In addition to the stuff I
bought from the iTunes Music store, I also had approximently 40-50GB of
mp3s that I ripped from my CDs that I’ll have to rip again, and the
carefully crafted playlists are gone as well.

Oh well, it’s not as if I’m dying to listen to anything. It’s been a while anyway.  But it would be nice to get all the data back.  I suspect I won’t thiough.

I
tried to label the drive and that somehow wiped out all the data on it.
I had the drive in two partitions and was going to add another**.

I’ve
repartitioned hard drives without destroying/erasing data many times
without incident. I guess I wasn’t paying attention this time.

Oh well…..

Speaking
of lost data.  I thought I’d lost years worth of bookmarks/favorites
for good a number of months ago when I erased them by accident.  As
luck would have it, I’d copied them to my Mom’s computer months ago
(I’ve got a user account on her computer).  I was using it briefly the
other day and noticed they were there.  I was a happy camper.

*.
I had two partitions one formatted in NTFS and the other in FAT32.  I
wanted to shrink those so I could add a third partition which I’d
format in EXT3.  I’ve had this setup in the past. But I thought I
didn’t want EXT3 anymore.  I changed my mind.

**. I used
QTParted which I’ve used in the past with succesas.  However, Windows
still has Linux beat when it comes to capabilities in Partitioning
Software.  I used to use Partition Magic in Windows.  I now use Acronis
Disk Director.  Both are better than any Linux offerings. I will say
though, for the price that the Linux stuff is pretty good (I’ve also
used the GParted front end as well).

***. I leave the pictures
on the Memory card.  The first picture I ever took (December 2004) is
still on it. It’s a 2GB memory card and I’ve taken less than 150
pictures.  I’m good.

    I used the backup facility in iTunes to back up my files to a DVD-R.

  Whitney’s prerogative: (Finally!) Divorcing Bobby Brown

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — Whitney Houston has filed for
divorce from her husband, Bobby Brown, her publicist told The
Associated Press on Wednesday.

[click here for more]

I
just noticed I that I originally posted the wrong link. It kind of
killed the subject line (although, if anybody noticed, they kept quiet
about it).

The “wrong link” was related to a Best Buy stunt and not Home Depot (it still was funny though).

So now you get a “bonus” of another hysterically funny story (unless
of course you’ve bookmarked or subscribed to the site and read
everything there already. ;->).

In any event….

This has got to be the funniest stunt I’ve seen in a long time.

Clicky Clicky