Using Utensils

Troll in the Computer Case

Scared the crap out of me

Sometimes the knocking was so loud it sounded like a troll was trying to get out of the computer case, but I had problems with the case’s fans in the past so I just smacked the side and the knocking stopped.

For a couple days the troll sporadically tried getting out of the case, but by the time I realized that it wasn’t the fans my hard drive was dead. That hard drive had years of my design work and I don’t know how many years of miscellaneous saved files on it.

It was at that point I remember thinking, “What the hell am I going to do now. All of those files are on a non-backedup brick of a hard drive.”

Slammed on the table

When I asked my friends Bryan and Jay what I should do I tired to remain as calm as I could, but I’m sure they knew I was freaking out on the inside.

After running a battery of tests on the drive on multiple platforms the drive kept knocking and would lock up each time. We were officially running out of options.

…non-backedup brick of a hard drive.

Nervously looking at me Bryan said, “We can’t make it any worse.” as he took my hard drive and slammed it against the table. When he plugged it back in the drive suddenly worked and only made a quiet clicking noise, but I still kept my fingers crossed until all of the files were transferred to another drive. Thankfully a few hours later, we were able to retrieve 98% of the data.

Backup and more backup

That data saving slam was a few years ago now, but ever since then I’ve been trying to minimize the risk as much as possible. So now I have a RAID 0 setup for all of important files and I just added an external hard drive for weekly backups. The RAID 0 setup gives me a constant backup because all information is written on two hard drives so if one fails I still have the other drive. The external drive I keep off site in case of fire or burglary.

Now this may sound a little paranoid, but at this point I have 12+ years of files on those drives, well over 8,000 pictures, tons of digital music, and more man-hours than I care to add up.

I definitely think it’s worth it.