I’m kind of freaking out right now because I believe that my laptop has died. As in, I can’t even turn it on. I’m using my daughter’s computer for now, which is a short-term solution for the bigger problem of losing the one thing that is critical to my doing business. All the woulda-coulda-shoulda’s are echoing through my brain right now, with the most ironic one of all being that a company offered me a computer backup system for review purposes just last week and I hadn’t gotten back to them yet.
You know, every Monday I dread going through that dang inbox full of emails. Now, I don’t know who or what needs to be responded to, because my last email backup was more than 2 weeks ago. My passwords, neatly organized on a spreadsheet, can’t be accessed because this machine doesn’t have Excel installed (and my software was ruined in our flood). I have most of my archives on jump drives, but quite honestly, I didn’t have a backup plan in place if I lost access to everything on my work computer.
This is the kind of thing I should have written a linkbait-y type article on to ensure this kind of home business disaster doesn’t happen to you. I know I can be hard on myself but today I feel like a moron.
So, what am I going to do?
1 - Be grateful that I have all of my passwords, bookmarks, out-of-date email archives and a daughter with a laptop. 
This may not be much compared to what I lost, but these things are the most important ones, and I’m glad I had the foresight to keep semi up-to-date copies of this information.
2 - Research my data recovery options (anyone want to chime in here?!).
3 - Buy a used desktop from a family friend as a temporary home and more permanent place to backup my stuff from this day forward.
4 - Call around to computer repair services to determine if the short circuit in my laptop is indeed lethal, or to find a glimmer of hope for repair. But if I need parts, I’m probably screwed, because I own a Sharp Actius, which I wonder if Sharp even knows it once made, because you can’t even find a battery for it anymore. 
5 - Figure out how to get my hands on a new laptop.
So, I’m not feeling very motivated this Monday, but I will do three more things today to keep myself sane:
1 - I will meditate.
2 - I will go out and get myself the largest latte Starbucks sells, with an extra shot of espresso.
3 - Ask for your help. So please chime in with your own experiences with fried-out computers, and how you recovered from their demise.
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I write about this several times a year, hoping I prevent someone from going through what you are going through. I highly recommend using an online remote backup service. In addition, backup your Firefox settings/bookmarks/passwords/etc, with FEBE.
I was dumb enough to not do this through several computer crashes. I’m no longer dumb.
Hm. I’m interested in this, mostly because I have too many CDs, DVDs and flash drives kicking about with various months of backups on them.
You know what I’d like? An online, web-based service that backs up my files for me and stores them. In the event of a crash or the need to recover a document, I could log in and grab what I needed. Kind of like Gmail’s “never lose an email again” theory.
James Chartrand - Web Content Writer Tips’s last blog post..Ground: The Way Of Writing - Part 2 of 6
Oh no! Okay . . . I am getting out my external hard drive NOW!
If it makes you feel any better, I posted your profile this morning.
As for the coulda, woulda, shoulda issues - you’ve kicked yourself enough.
Data recovery IS an option, although it depends on what actually went kaput - died isn’t very descriptive when it comes to describing problems, it might be the power supply, motherboard, processor, hard drive anything, try removing the battery and plugging it in direct, does anything come on screen.
If your lucky then your hard drive might be intact, in which case the simplest solution is to remove the hard drive and put it in an external USB caddy (you can get ones for 2.5″ laptop drives from ebay fairly cheaply), if it still works, just plug it into a new machine and bingo all your data is intact.
Local retailers etc will be able to better advise on low level data recovery but I’d be wary of who you send it to because your basically asking them to recover ALL your sensitive data (passwords, CC numbers etc) and not look at them - or am I just too cynical…
Drop me an email if you need anymore advice…
Jon…
PS. Thanks for the blog, I find it a great daily read.
Wendy - so sorry to hear you have to deal with that!!! I have a SmartDisk 160GB FireLite Drive that I swear by as my back up. I can plug it in to any computer in the house as needed.
Hope you are back up and running soon.
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Hey Wendy
It never happened to be with my home computer but it happened to my computer at the church when I worked there. It was heart breaking… all of our desktop publishing, bookkeeping, etc was on that computer.
We sent our hard drive out to a special lab and they pulled as much as they could off of it for $1800… actually they gave it to us for $1200 since it was a church.
They got a lot of stuff, but we lost a lot too.
After that we set up our desktop with a dual hard drive so that all content was written to two disks.
Now, at home I just signed up for Mosy and it’s doing automatic updates regularly. I fell much more secure now
GREAT input everyone - Jon, you’re suggestions were particularly helpful. The problem is a short circuit. I have two perfectly good power cords - when you plug either of them in to the wall, the indicator light goes on. But when I plug the other ends into the computer, the light goes off and they both make a weird chirping noise.
Also, a spark flew out of it a few times when we tried plugging it in. It looks like at best the plug on the computer is fried, but replacing that doesn’t make a ton of sense, as t would likely cost as much as at least half of a new system, and this laptop is at least 3-4 years old.
Not sure if that sheds any light on anything, but I am off to go pick up my kindergartener and head over to Best Buy or Office Depot to see what they have in stock that might help!
Glad to be of help, obviously I don’t know the make or model of your laptop but most usually have a plate screwed on the bottom for getting at the hard drive, just open the screws, remove the plate and unplug the connectors. If it’s not easily accessible then you may have to dismantle the case (not as scary as it sounds) to get to the drive - relax it’s not as if you have to worry about breaking anything - hard drives are usually pretty resiliant, plugging it in to an external caddy is also a piece of cake, if you’ve done it right Windows XP (and Vista) will just detect it as a new mass storeage device when you plug the USB cable in, if not you may have to change one of the jumper settings (a little bit of plastic that connects two pins together on the back), again don’t worry as you won’t damage anything if you connect the wrong ones and the data / power cables are made to only fit one way, if you do have to change the jumper settings remember to unplug the power first as the settings are usually only checked when the device is first powered up.
A laptop of that age is probably too dated and the battery is probably shot too - if you do remove the hard drive, you can always sell what’s left for spares on eBay or Craigs list and put it towards a new one - I’ve just brought one of the ASUS EeePC’s for my wife and she loves it.
BTW - The one thing to remember about backup solutions is that they are not infallible. Be sure to check out how easy it is to actually recover data from a backup AND make a regular habbit of trying because it’s bad enough to suffer a data loss, but it’s even worse to realise that the last five years of backups didn’t actually do what you thought (or wanted them) to do!
Jon…
Wendy- I just did a post in response to your nightmare. Your situation is one of the biggest reasons I moved to the Mac computer over 4 years ago.
Grant D. Griiffiths’s last blog post..Making Sure Your Data is Safe
I just wrote a couple of articles about backups. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Mozy for continuous automatic backups. And the best part is, it’s free. My second article was about the fact that you archive files differently than you backup your constantly changing working files. Like your email. Don’t get so paralyzed by the thought of the massive archiving you need to do that you fail to backup your working files.
Mozy won’t help you now, unfortunately, but if you set it up as soon as you can, it can’t hurt, and may save you from this pain again.
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Wendy, Sorry to hear about you’re “nightmare”. As a Mac user I have to go with Grant on this one. You can also run all your PC software from the Mac at native speed. If you decide to go that route at some point I would be happy to help with the switchover issues. I’ve been using Macs since 84. Keep us posted on how things are going.
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I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve never had a computer fail. I had the cat knock one of my EHDs onto the floor and break it, but all of my computers have lived long, productive lives and only moved on as software became too advanced to work on our existing system. One of our current computers is 8 years old and still working!
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Wendy-
You can use google docs to open the excel file, or you can download open office, which will also open office files.
This is exactly what I faced about 2 months ago, when my laptop fried on the road.
I feel ya.
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ACK, how horrible, Wendy!!! Let me know (carrier pigeon?) if I can help at all.
Erika Jurney, Plain Jane Mom’s last blog post..Of course, now I smell like a drunk hippie
Thanks again everyone - very helpful again.
I went and got a hard drive enclosure, and it turns out I don’t have a standard 2.5″ hard drive, though it is easy to remove (from my Sharp Actius PC RD10).
I talked to the guy at the store, and he suggested that perhaps the power plug on my system has become unsoldered. This would make sense, because my son accidentally yanked my cord out to the side a few weeks ago. So getting it re-soldered might be an option.
I still need to find a hard drive enclosure so that I can access old files. Does anyone know how I can figure out what kind of hard drive I do have and how to find the right enclosure for it?
Thanks again everyone!
(and to all you MAC lovers, I have to say I’ve used them quite a bit in the past, and I vastly prefer PCs. I guess I’m totally uncool.
)
Scratch that, DouglasKarr on Twitter just sent me a link to a place that I called. Turns out there was an extra casing on my hard drive and I do indeed have a 2.5″ drive.
Now I just need to get it out of the casing, but it isn’t cooperating.
I don’t really have any helpful, solid information for you (other than that I use an external USB drive for my own backups, even if I don’t back-up QUITE as often as I should . . . although I did on Friday, so I’m actually pretty current). I did want to extend my sympathies, though! It sounds like you’ve got some really helpful suggestions, here, so here’s hoping that they solve the problem!
–Deb’s last blog post..MM: Negating Negativity
Ah - the irony of using Google Docs - would require me to know my password for my Google account.
Guess I’ll start a new one!
So that’s what that scream was! LOL.
Seriously, thanks for the reminder to get my backup USB drive hooked up. I got it for $100 for a 500 GB drive on New Year’s at Fry’s Electronics. The backup drive is bigger than my computer’s hard drive and my husband’s computer’s hard drive put together, so I just have to figure out how to have it take good care of both machines.
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I haven’t read through all the comments, so I don’t know if this has been mentioned: For backing up my personal computer, I use http://www.datadepositbox.com . You tell it which folders to back up and it runs in the background. You can access your back up files online — it looks just like your computer’s folders/directories.
For my server, I use http://www.servertune.com for back-ups. You do back up your server, right?? (I hope so!)
Suzanne
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Yikes, been there, and I feel your pain! I’m a little late to the party, and it looks like everyone has already helped you handle the current hardware situation. However, for the future I’d recommend using Carbonite (I didn’t see it mentioned here). I love that service, and have recommended it to clients. It’s automatic, online, hands off and at only about $50 per year I sure feel better about the back ups. (I also backup to an external hard drive occasionally just to be safe.)
Sorry you’re having all this trouble, but looks like we’ve all got your back!
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Wendy, I’m sorry. I’ll send positive energy your way.
Ria Kennedy’s last blog post..Urban Jazz
It looks like your page rank went up to 5 — not such a bad day today after all
Erika Jurney, Plain Jane Mom’s last blog post..Of course, now I smell like a drunk hippie
That’s too bad. For once I was expecting a Monday Motivation post. =P
As for the files you have, you might be able to read them even without the original software. For example, Excel spreadsheets can be opened in many different things. There’s the Microsoft Excel reader. It’s a free download. You can’t change the document but you would be able to read the contents. You can also convert it so some other format. Something like OpenOffice should do the trick. You can also convert it to a Google Spreadsheet, if having this file on someone else’s server doesn’t bother you. It’s good that you still have the files. It’s far easier to get back access to the contents of these files than to actually get the computer fixed.
As for the email, I don’t know if your mail server keeps a copy. I’ve always used web-based email so I never have local copies and it’s impossible to lose them… unless something happened to the mail provider’s server and their many back-ups.
Good luck on resolving all the issues!
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I’d suggest that you buy a copy of SpinRite (www.grc.com) and try that. If you can attach the dead hard drive to another computer on which you run SpinRite, there’s a chance that it will get your data back.
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I just went through this last week! I feel for you. Luckily I had two hard drives and it was the master that died, so the slave is still usable and it had the majority of my information on it, including photos of my kids . . . something I really can´t lose!
I usually backup to a DVD, but haven´t done that in a month. Kicking myself, too!
BTW, thanks for your help with the hacker issue on Twitter. I wrote the guy and he actually returned my account! :O
Wendy, I just added a permanent link to your blog on my page. Hope it cheers you up.
Ria Kennedy’s last blog post..Urban Jazz
UPDATE == I HAVE MY DATA!
Jon’s comment above led me to go out and buy a hard drive enclosure, which I didn’t even know existed (and would have bought long ago after my last laptop died!). I pulled my drive out of the old computer and it is now acting as an external drive for this computer. This leaves me with the problem of having to buy a new system, which is a much easier task to get done.
You can bet I will have a bomb-proof backup system shortly (thanks to all of the other suggestions below) and that linkbait-y post on everything I learn is on it’s way.
THANKS to all of you for your help and support!
I’m so glad to hear you were able to recover your data! And now you have an experience good for several useful blog postings
I’m a fan of web backups, but I’m curious to hear what other backup software you are supposed to be evaluating.
Lynn Glessner’s last blog post..School District Closures and Delays
Oh I feel for you, has happened to me.
Des’s laptop had to go to the computer doctor last week, he was fortunate it was the motherboard and under warranty. he was so lost for a week, using the old PC.
We now have 2 new hard drives,wd MY Book that on a PC will also back up all your google stuff and with My nor quite so intuitive MAC and the time machine I should never lose anything again
I am also checking out FEBE
So many of us have been there, promising this will never happen again!
Wendy,
I feel your pain and you have discovered a given - every computer or hard drive will at one time fail.
As the owner of a photography studio, dealing with 75,000 images a year and multiple computers, both PC and MAC, backup is critical.
As some of your readers suggest, and since you’re looking for a new laptop, I would highly suggest looking at a Mac. Backup of your Mac is very easy using time machine - no additional software and no thinking involved.
If you are using Outlook on a PC, it is very difficult to backup your .pst file and email messages/archives.
If you find that you need to recover your hard drive - the top recovery company is considered, by most professionals to be Drivesavers,
http://www.drivesavers.com Good luck, I feel your pain.
I actually use Thunderbird, not Outlook, which always drove me nuts by running so dang slow.
Now I am trying to import all of my old settings, filters, accounts and emails from the old install to the new one. The only import settings are for other programs.
If anyone knows how to import from Thunderbird to Thunderbird, please ping me.
Thanks!
I’m glad for you Wendy, I wish you good luck in getting everything up and running smoothly.
Ria Kennedy’s last blog post..Urban Jazz
Whew, glad you got your data back! I’ve gone through a failure before and paid a geek $50 to recover pictures. I use a Seagate external drive and back up the important stuff. I just don’t do it regularly enough. I like some of the solutions, esp the online storage solutions but I wonder about safety with that– can others access those online storage sites if they’re hacked?
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Oh MY! My computer crashed last week and I had to reboot from scratch last week. I LOST EVERYTHING, including passwords to everything. This post is VERY timely. Thanks!
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man, do I feel for you - so glad that things are coming together for you
curious if we can back up our blogs, mine has become a pretty serious archival of writing for me and now I look at it and wonder what I’d do if it all disappearred
Mother Earth aka Karen Hanrahan
http://www.bestwellnessconsultant.com
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Today, I went out and bought an external hard drive that I’ve been putting off buying for about a year now. I procrastinate terribly about backups (and yes, I’ve had crashes), but continually hearing panic in Wendy’s comments made me think, “Hm. Time to get off the pot, James.”
James Chartrand - Web Content Writer Tips’s last blog post..Get Unlimited and Get your Business in Gear
Oh, I feel your pain! Last year my Toshiba laptop went ka-put, and my most recent back-up was 5 months old!!! Re-creating the financial stuff was a nightmare and I swore I would never shed that many tears over a computer issue again. (Nor have to explain to my son why mommy was crying over a computer!)
So, I’m now a Mac girl … bought a MacBook, a LaCie external hard drive, and subscribed to the .Mac online back-up service. My back-ups are pre-scheduled and happen automatically. I do check in on them every once in a while just to make sure the back-up files are where I think they should be and that I can access them. My new motto: Better Safe than Crying in My Coffee!