“Oh my god. Oh my god. Come on, come back. What is this? Why is this happening?”
You would think after seeing the infamous “Sad Mac” episode of Sex and the City about a thousand and one times, I would have been even slightly encouraged to back up my work. But no. Instead, I went through the heart stopping, stomaching sinking and bargaining with Satan phases of trying to recover all of my sure to be lost work.
I wiped the smudges off my computer screen and rushed her to the UNH Computer Store. The whole while, her blank screen stared up at me, not recognizing my face at all. It will be okay! I reassured my little baby, and myself.
“There was a mean little man who popped up and he had ex’s where his eyes should be and his tongue was hanging out the side of his mouth.”
Okay, that didn’t exactly happen. That was the old Mac style of letting you know your computer was dead. But the entire time I was explaining what had happened to the technician, that description was playing through my head. She told me they would have to keep her for a couple of days. She then asked the foreboding question. Did I back up?
“You know, no one talks about backing up, you’ve never used this expression with me before ever but apparently everyone is secretly running home at night and backing up their work.”
Seriously, who rushes home and immediately backs up all of their work at the end of a 15 hour day in the library? And at the end of the semester? Forget about it! I’m just happy its over. So now here I am with a dead computer in one hand and an expensive repair bill in the other. Thank goodness Carrie Bradshaw, a much stronger and savvier woman than I, went through this crisis before me, because I would have felt like the loneliest girl in the world without her emotional sympathies.
This article is not an entry into my sad and pathetic diary. It is a warning. If this can happen to me in the real world and in the fabulous fictional world of SATC, it can happen to you too. The good news is there are numerous ways to save your work from being deleted into nothing. And doing so will save you hours of trying to recover what little infromation you can get back. So don’t get caught ripping out your gorgeous head of thick curly hair and stay in that constant state of Carrie-esque perfection!
Here are the top five online backup options:
-myPCBackup.com
Cost: Free
Storage: Unlimited
-justcloud.com
Cost: $2.95
Storage: Unlimited
-BackupGenie
Cost: $4.95
Storage: 250GB
-Carbonite.com
Cost: $4.91
Storage: Unlimited
– Zip Cloud
Cost: $4.95
Storage: 250GB
(Oh, and while you’re at it, back up you’re IPhones before you go through the update process and save yourself from that nightmare too.)