I ran her off the shoulder, and now the axle's broken

[lizblackdog]

Arrrgh, my bloody C drive just turned up its toes and died!

The bad news: It contained a large chunk of my music collection: all my Graham Parker, Men They Couldn't Hang, Nick Lowe, Peter Blegvad and Bob Dylan MP3s, as well as the few bits of porn I liked enough to keep on my hard drive, all my ebooks, and my chatlog backups.

The good news: All of that is backed up onto data DVDs somewhere or other.

The bad news about the good news: I have a thousand-odd data DVDs in this room and the backups are scattered over hundreds of them; basically every time I write a DVD and there's a bit of space over, I shove some music or chatlogs or audiobooks or something on it. I do not have any sort of catalogue or system to keep track of what's where, other than writing on the front of the disc. So it may take me a month to find the stuff I've lost.

The possible good news: For a while now I've been having a weird computer problem, where the entire system would reboot if I clicked certain links - notably Amazon and Wikipedia, but also some other links sometimes. topbit reckoned it was a hardware issue, but couldn't narrow it down further than that. I thought he might have solved it when he upgraded my RAM, because it happened much less after that, but it crept up on me again. With luck it will have been the C drive causing the problem and it won't happen any more.

The other good news: The C drive was the smallest of my three hard drives, only (I think) 20 gig or so. Shouldn't be hard to replace/upgrade it.

I've added the "psychic paper" tag to this entry because I haven't heard from you for ages. You still reading this? Talk to me!

Comments

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

I'm still reading. :)

And I sympathize with your computer problems. Mine has been running very slowly lately, and whenever I download anything using Firefox (ie. an attachment on an email or an image I want to save), my browser freezes up for several minutes (sometimes as long as half an hour) and I can't do anything. Also, when I click on "post" in LJ, about half the time it causes Firefox to crash.

I got around the latter problem by going back to IE whenever I want to make a post, and discovered quite by accident that IE doesn't lock up when I try to download something.

I think it might have something to do with the fact that my hard drive is about 90% full - I had no idea I'd used that much of it until recently when I thought to try a defrag to fix my processing speed issue. (It turned out that a defrag wasn't necessary.) Or it might be because I'm still using Firefox 1.0. I really should get around to upgrading to version 2.

Or maybe it's due to spyware or the virus that Norton says I have but won't get rid of.

My last resort will be to back everything up on CDs (I don't have a DVD burner), reformat, reinstall and restore all of my data files. Alternatively, buy a USB drive, back everything up there, reformat, reinstall and restore.

[mudshark58.livejournal.com]

I've added the "psychic paper" tag to this entry because I haven't heard from you for ages. You still reading this?
Oh, yeah -- still here.

Bummer about the music files, but if you've got them backed up, it seems they ought to resurface sometime or other, with any luck. Peter Blegvad -- there's a name I haven't seen in a while -- probably know it by association with Henry Cow, as much as anything, though from the description I really should look into Leviathan too.

[lizblackdog.livejournal.com]

John and I used to read Leviathan together when it was a newspaper comic strip. Can't recall, now, if it was in the Guardian or the Independent - probably the Indy, we always had that at weekends. It was... odd. Well-done, but odd, and we found it a bit hit-and-miss.

If anyone on my friendslist knew who Peter Blegvad was I knew it would be you. I fell in love with his music when I heard this track (http://media.putfile.com/How-Beautiful-You-Are) on the radio; took me months to track it down on vinyl, and the second time round it took me over a year to track it down on MP3. Worth it though, isn't it?

[mudshark58.livejournal.com]

It is nice. Funny thing, though, is that I've really heard almost nothing by him. I know of things he's done, but I mainly know his name at all because it keeps coming up in reference to people he used to work with -- in his case Fred Frith and members of Pere Ubu/David Thomas & the Pedestrians, among others.

[purplewaxhand.livejournal.com]

I've added the "psychic paper" tag to this entry because I haven't heard from you for ages. You still reading this? Talk to me!

With this part who exactly are you talking to?

[nyecamden.livejournal.com]

You know those two DVDs with a lot of your music on them? I still have them, I can post them to you when I get home (I'm in Nottingham today). Pop me an email with a reminder of your full name and address and I'll dispatch them when I'm in London later. It may not have the full whack of your collection, but it'd give you a fair bit for getting on with.

[mcsassypants.livejournal.com]

I'm here, just fuzzy brained and trying to wake up.

[pointyhairedone.livejournal.com]

Can't talk. Too busy being terrorized by a horrible horrible puppy.

[lizblackdog.livejournal.com]

PICS NOW!

[pointyhairedone.livejournal.com]

http://pointyhairedjedi.deviantart.com/art/That-Darn-Puppy-76165100

It must be at least 70% bladder, that thing. Blech.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

LLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEE

[hellfire82.livejournal.com]

i has a kitty!

[bordercolliebrs.livejournal.com]

Smudge: We've wandered through.
Houdini: Been kind of busy though
Squrrl: There's like all the new baby goats (and they're getting bigger), and their mammas, and the other goats outside the mamma pen, and sometimes MisPeggy's cows try to come over to visit our cows, and all like that.

[nahtmmm.livejournal.com]

TwoThree points regarding the C drive:

1. You could probably get someone to recover the files even if the drive isn't salvagable.

2. Maybe the C drive was overheating?

3. There's a third-party program designed to help you keep track of what-all is on your CDs and DVDs. I don't remember what it's called, but it basically looks just like Windows Explorer, except instead of little folders there are little CDs (or DVDs). We used to use it at work, some years back. You might ask around about it.

[james-the-evil1.livejournal.com]

oh hai
lemme know if you need muzak

[montymark.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, still reading. I'm just a bit of a lousy replier, that's all. ;)

I have some of the Men They Couldn't Hang tracks you posted in the past kicking around. I can upload them if youw ant. It would save digging through all those DVDs.

To C or not to C... thoough I CC.... {G}

[(Anonymous)]

If you haven't resolved it thus far...this might be worth a look...

http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=212&category_id=111&manufacturer_id=0&tid=oy30002/oy32722

And I aten't dead.... {G}. And I no, you haven't yet escaped {BG}.


CC