RIP Portable Hard Drive

Last week I experienced a loss -- my wonderful little Simple Tech portable hard drive.  I don't know what happened -- but -- when I plugged the USB cord unto my laptop I got a message that I hope to never see again; "drive is unreadable or corrupt."  

Nice.

So I took the device downstairs to the office -- to the desk top -- and hoped it was a flukey thing.

I got the same message.  Very nice.  So after trying it in yet another computer in the house and getting the third strike -- I figured it was cooked.  What did it -- who knows?  It had worked well just the day before and I had been using it for months with no problems at all.  But...it is toast.

Good news is that my iTunes library and any document on that drive is on my laptop and/or desk top.  Also any photo that I love is also in another place.  What I lost are all of the sort of daily photo files from last March through this past February.  If there were photos in the files that I had planned to revisit -- well -- I won't be visiting now.

Most of my computer lessons I learn the hard way -- this is no exception.  I always back up items of importance.  But what about everything else?  I used to save it some place once -- not twice.  The event of last Thursday made me purchase two new items.  Another small portable hard drive -- because I like to have things like that handy for a class if I need it.  But I want a second back up to insure if my first back up fails I have the data.  I do not like to leave countless photo files on the desk  top and lap top.  So I bought a larger external hard drive.  My husband, who also has his own business, and I will share the space on this hard drive.  Each of us have the small portable hard drives and now will have a second back up.

Since my incident I have seen news stories on backing up files on a couple of the 24-hour news channels.  It is funny to hear them talk about backing up all of your files to a second hard drive.  Nice if that works for you -- it did not for me.  (Although at this point I guess I need to acknowledge that is may not truly be a back up if I delete it from the main computer after saving it off to the hard drive.)  

My game plan now is to store my photos from both of my computers on the portable hard drive. The true, by definition of, back up is on the larger, not portable hard drive.  If the portable fails -- I have it on the big one.  If, by some odd thing, the big one fails; then it is on the portable.