Not fun

So, we got back from vacation on Thursday, as mentioned below. Fed the cats, had dinner with the b/f's father, then I sat down at the computer. Blogged a little, then started catching up on email. That's when I heard it--the Click of Death. My hard drive decided to give up the ghost.

Fortunately, I did a full backup just two days before leaving for sun & sand, so I didn't lose any critical data. But, G-d help me, recovery has not been fun. On Friday I installed Windows on a new hard drive, the restored from backup. The restore took 5 hours. On Saturday I discovered about half the programs weren't working (Office claimed it wasn't installed). Spent a little time trying to straighten that out, but not much. I have been meaning to wipe my computer clean & do a fresh install of everything for a while, so I decided now was the time. On Saturday & Sunday I bounced between working on the PC & studying for an upcoming test. Monday was more installing & searching frantically for a file that wasn't stored where it should have been. A file containing critical data that would be an absolute bitch to recreate. Finally found it & put it where I could find it.

I'm not done installing programs yet, but the ones I use to do my job are going, so I can continue to feed myself.

I have made a couple of decisions as a result of all this.

1. While Microsoft Backup is fine for data, I will no longer use it for my boot partition (which is also where my programs are installed). I know that it sometimes does a better (although not great) job than my experience, but there is no way I am going through this again.

2. I will use Ghost to back up my boot partition. I know it will get me back in working order relatively quickly, without having to reinstall my operating system first.

Amen.