March 8, 2010
I Lost All My Computer Files and Lived to Tell
Last week I was doing a bit of travel for my day job when disaster struck. I don’t know about you, but I see these new checked baggage fees as a CHALLENGE. As God as my witness, I will NEVER pay a fee for my checked bag. No, no I will not.
And it was exactly this stubbornness that set me up for the Great Baggage Robbery of 2010. There I was at the airport with several bags when the woman at check-in explained that I could only check one bag for free. I quickly crammed what I could into my luggage–including my work laptop and my digital camera–and condensed everything else into my carry-on bag. Voila.
It wasn’t until I arrived back home at 1am and began to blearily unpack my luggage when I found the first clue: an empty digital camera case. I turned to the Mr. and said, “Was my camera stolen?” But just as soon as I got that sentence out, an even scarier thought hit me. WHO CARES ABOUT THE CAMERA! YOUR WORK LAPTOP WAS IN THERE!!!!!!
Yup. Gone. Probably at this moment it’s found a new owner via Ebay. I took the news fairly well at first. The Mr. convinced me that I’d be able to access my work email folders and would probably be able to recover most of my documents. He also assured me I wasn’t going to be fired–which had definitely crossed my mind.
The next day I went to work with my tail tucked between my legs and confessed my sins to my boss. He was very cool about it and told me to work on the loaner laptop until my new one arrived. We both agreed that it was very fortunate that my job gave me zero access to important docs and he lectured me about never, ever packing my work laptop in my check baggage again.
I sat down and logged into my email, feeling mostly better. But the funny thing was, all my email folders were gone. Well, this must be a mistake, I told myself. I called the IT department and they told me that no, it wasn’t. Apparently my email folders were not saved on the server. They were saved on my actual laptop. They were gone. Forever. In fact, all of my files were gone, never to return.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hang up and begin sobbing at my desk. I now only had the emails in my inbox and Sent items–and those folders only go back about a month. I’ve been at my company a long, long time. I save and file every single document ever. I’m a nut for organized digital folders. And all of it was gone in the blink of an eye. And no, thank you for asking, I never backed up.
The rest of the week was one of the most disorienting periods of my life. I kept telling people, It feels like I moved and none of my boxes showed up. Or, It almost feels like my house burned to the ground. Whoever saw me walking around like some shattered person immediately stopped what they were doing and backed up their computer.
The next few days are a blur, and that crying incident referenced above did not prove to be an isolated one. But slowly I recovered. I had people send me files I had sent them. I was able to re-create an alarming amount of data from memory. And eventually my new work laptop arrived.
Now that I have some distance from the incident, it has started to make me think. Obviously no one died and I didn’t lose my job. There are much, much worse things that could happen to me. And yet the pain of this incident was very real to me. It’s hard to describe how disorienting it is to lose access to documents you created, to the records you carefully saved for a rainy day. It’s a very strange modern-day anguish.
My sweet husband assured me that my reaction was not out of proportion. In fact, he informed me, there are therapists now who specialize in helping people cope with a massive loss of digital data. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but I can tell you it might have been good for me to talk to a trained professional.
The feeling of loss was so acute at the time, and yet now I’m fine. What I’m discovering is about 99% of what I had, I didn’t really need. Knowing that those documents were there gave me a strange sense of security but I never really used them. The 1% I lost and could not recover–that was painful. But 1% is the kind of thing you can deal with.
I don’t think ever in our human history we’ve kept such detailed records of our lives. I almost never talk on the phone anymore. I just email my friends and family, and all the while Gmail is saving every last letter of it. Better still, should I want access to these conversations, I can just search for a keyword and they’ll pop right up. And perhaps this makes us feel a little less temporary, a little safer about our time here on Earth. When all my records disappeared, it was the thought of them being gone that disturbed me. It’s not like I really needed them for some pressing task. Well, most of them anyway.
I’m not completely sure I’ve fully digested exactly what my reaction to this event meant, but the one thing I definitely learned was: back up your computer. For the love of all that is sacred, stop what you’re doing right now and back it up. Someday you’ll thank me.
May
You just described, in accurate detail, my worst nightmare!
While I’m here on this earth, I like to have everything organized and accessable. Then, when I’m on my death bed, I’m going to pull a Charles Dickens and burn everything that’s personal. All they’ll have of me is the books I’ve written that made it to publication and my heirs (providing I ever marry and produce offspring)and their children…
I’m so sorry that happened to you! How awful. I can imagine that it would be traumatizing.
And I HATE crying at work. Even if nobody sees.
Bless your heart! This is terrible, and I totally understand your reaction. I’d have wept, too!
And, now I feel much less paranoid about taking my laptop in my carry-on, a back-up drive in my packed luggage, and a back-up drive at home in my desk when I flew to Denver last month.
Oh man, what a terrible experience! I’ve had that happen before and it was awful. I’m glad you were able to recoup some files though.
I never backup my laptop but only because everything important is on my jump drive or on the internet.
What a nightmare. I’m sorry! Is the airline doing anything to help you guys out?
I ave every file too, and never delete emails. Which makes the IT guys at my job crazy. But the times that they’ve forced me to go through and delete things, I always find that I then need them for some reason. The good news? If someone sent it to me, they almost always have a copy too. So while it’s annoying to have to go back and ask them to resend, they are usually happy to oblige.
One time, I packed jewelry in my checked baggage on an international flight. It was, of course, gone when I got home. Family heirlooms, gone. It was stupid to pack it, I know that now. But that didn’t make it any easier to lose it.
So. Many. Emotions. I feel awful for you and I totally agree with the Mister that your reaction was totally appropriate. But I also have an overwhelming sadness that we live in a world like this. It should be safe to check baggage, darn it, and it sort of infuriates me that it’s not.
i’m so paranoid about losing everything the way you have that i backup twice - i bought a 1.5TB external USB drive to back up all my computers (work laptop, the wife’s laptop, my desktop), then i subscribed to http://www.carbonite.com - they had a deal back in december for half off - subscribed for three years and paid around $65 for unlimited backup space. i’m really impressed with the service, except for a couple little things here and there.
with the price of external drives continuing to drop, picking up a 1 or 2TB drive for $100 or so is easy to do.
and i’d be lying if i said i never lost a heartbreaking amount of digital data - i really do feel your pain!
btw - there’s an awesome, tiny, free program called Allway Sync that you can use to sync drives (harddrives, USB, etc) - http://allwaysync.com/
Your IT guys should be shot. Seriously.
I worked closely with IT in my last job and the cardinal rule was that everything was backed up. TWICE. In two secure locations in different parts of the country. Admittedly we were extra cautious with our data but it’s IT management 101 to back everything up in an offsite server.
Dear Lord. Laptops are portable devices. They get stolen, they blue screen of death you for no apparent reason, they get dropped and accidentally trod on or a glass of wine tipped on them.
That your IT guys didn’t have an automatic process every time you logged on to the system automatically backing up everything you’d done to a server is insane.
March upstairs or down the hall or whatever and tell your boss that you don’t have IT guys, you have cowboys who happen to know how to talk geek talk.
What if your company was subjected to a massive power surge that killed all your computers? What if your building caught fire and your offices burnt down? What if you had a disgruntled ex employee who went through the building and smashed up senior management’s hard drives?
I repeat. Your IT guys should be shot.
Kara, you are cracking me up! I shall tell my boss!
And no, so far the airline has said, Since the TSA recommends that you not pack anything of value in your checked luggage, we do not reimburse for misplaced or stolen items.
REALLY?!
Grrrr…
But this fight is not over yet. I don’t tend to take these things lying down.
However, note to self. Don’t pack anything remotely interesting in your luggage.
Thanks for all the sympathy guys!
May, this same thing happened to me when IT came and replaced our work PCs a couple of weeks ago. I’m missing a pst folder with e-mail from the last four years. We resorted to scrounging through a pile of the old hard drives, but alas - I think it has been junked.
I don’t allow myself to think about it much. That seems to help.
Gah! This is EXACTLY why I keep bugging my husband to order a drive so we can back up our home files (and before anyone asks me why I don’t, trust me, I would, but he has some secret special place he likes to get computer equipment from).
Might I recommend using a master password on your computer? You can even leave it somewhere obvious, like in a drawer, because in theory someone who stole your computer wouldn’t be aware enough to scrounge around for passwords.
What a trauma! Not earth-shattering, no, but definitely the kind of thing that can wreck your week.
I totally understand your feeling of loss, but I am with Kara, your IT guys are irresponsible.