Attention all computer users!

Our PC computer obviously got to the stage of this overloaded lorry...tooo fulllllllllllll!

I've learned a lot about computers these last couple of days so I'd like to pass on the jewels of my crash course in our crashed disk.

Here's the story...over the last two/three years....we saved a lot of data, work and personal, to our lovable PC. We also had to download a booking package - online booking system - onto it as well. This allows our guests to book and pay (if they wish) remotely using a computer. It obviously took up more valuable space.

To cut a long story short our computer was taking longer and longer to access data, photos and the like. I now realise that this is a sign of the computer "having trouble". As our hard disk was split into two drives C&D Mr. H. thought that by freeing up one of those drives we would then have more space for the computer to do what it does more efficiently. We did try to back up (a few times) but the computer wouldn't let us. We used a third party to help remove the partition in the hard disk side of the computer. I do not want go into details but we have ended up with a major loss of data.

I've now spoken to three data retrieval firms and another computer specialist and here are some helpful hints from them:

1. Always back up your data...to an online service if possible. Also back up to other computers, pens, disks..anything which gives you other options. But beware that all of these can fail at any time. PC hard drives are very temperamental these days and can decide not to work at a moment's notice. Portable hard disk drives are frequently dropped, pushed over by cats and dogs and children and adults. Coffee, ice cream, lipstick, lightening, fire, water, power failures, tea, smoothies....you name it...can spice up the non-workings of a computer! CDs can get scratched, pens can be lost or stolen. The online data companies are supposed to take backups of backups. That's what they are there for!

2. Once your computer starts to feel like a heavy smoker panting for dear life up a steep hill...STOP USING IT! Once you start to switch it on/off, open/close files etc. etc. you are overwriting the original files. Send it off to the experts in data retrieval. I know I sound like a sales person for them but many often will give you a free estimate of what they can and can't retrieve.

3. Keep your business and your personal stuff separate on separate computers if at all possible.

4. Back up often. Ideally once a week. More often if you feel like it! If you download some precious photos or files which you really don't want to lose...back them up straightaway...prefably on the internet.

5. Erm. What else? Just keep an eye on your precious PC or laptop. Any signs of distress or failure or "hanging" - where it takes ages to open files...that's when things aren't going so well. Blog more often and/or Facebook it! Anywhere you can put your stuff. (Just remember the privacy settings if it really private.)

6. Treat your computers as you would your family, pets and friends.....with care, love and affection! (Don't take them for granted!!!) But remember that they are basically mechanical things which can and do break down frequently. (Maybe we should get them serviced annually? How about computers with MOT stickers?)

7. My fingers are crossed that I'll be able to report on a happy ending.

8. If not...I'll have learned a lot.

9. After all things could be worse...we still have a lot of photos and data. Luckily we haven't lost everything.

10. We don't do it right now but maybe I will think about it again in a fresh light: Take a selection of photos to get printed every so often! If the worst comes to the worst.....you'll have something.

11. Use the online photo companies for storage. We have used them some of the time...thank goodness!

12. Perhaps we need to be realistic about what we can and cannot keep. After all we still have the memories....

13. You know about those people (in Selfridges) who go out and choose colours/clothes for others (I know they exist but not in my little circle in good 'ol Haltwhistle).... Maybe we need personal [personal] data storage experts?

14. Have I just invented a profession?

15. And finally just to remind you of my tried and tested favourite: "Always look on the bright side of life?".................Tee hee. Can't help but seeing the funny side of everything, hinny pets...Let's face it - I do get myself into all sorts of pickles. ;)

16. If the "forensic team" over in Middlesbrough write it off I will give the hard disk a decent burial. Any one up for a pixel wake?

Back Up/Pack Up!!!!

"To a rising young screen poet this might have been a crushing blow but Pat was made of sterner stuff." (Quoted from "Pat Hobby's Preview by F. Scott Fitzgerald".) In my mind's eye I take out "Pat" and insert "Hade" (short for Hadriana). In other words - me! I think we all do that. Don't we?

"Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and bury them beneath the sea!.....Don't worry about the cavalry!" (Quoted from Eliza Doolittle's very hummable tune [video of which is above] which keeps running around my head, ta da, running around my head, running around my head...to the delightful lilt of the song....)

"And Why? Pray?" I hear you all ask nicely and politely.

Due to some basic schoolboy errors (we each thought the other had backed up) we have lost two to three years worth of documents, data, work photos, personal photos  et cetera et cetera. Won't bore you with the teensy weensy details but my mantra or chorus has now become............

Back up your data in your old kit pen and bury them in every conceivable place! Every conceivable place, every conceivable place! Back up your data in your old kit pen and bury them in every conceivable place! Every conceivable place, every conceivable place! Don't tarry with the USB! Don't tarry with the USB! (To the tune of Pack Up!)




And so...."In the office assigned him Pat looked at the script of True to Two Flags. The first scene showed General Fitzhugh Lee at the head of his cavalry receiving word that Petersburg had been evacuated. In the script Lee took the blow in the pantomime, but Pat was getting two-fifty a week - so casually and without effort, he wrote in one of his favourite lines:

Lee (to his officers)

Well, what are you standing here gawking for? DO something!*

6. Medium shot Officers pepping up, slapping each other on back, etc.

Dissolve to:

To what? Pat's mind dissolved once more into the glamorous past."

(An excerpt from The Pat Hobby Stories, A Patriotic Short, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.)
* i.e. Back up and remember to back up as often as you want/need!!!!!

Even the data retrieval company has written off our hard disk as the data has got (or gotten) overwritten. There may be a 0.00000000001% chance that we can send them another hard disk which had an "image" of our computer written to it. But even that might not work.

So farewell then to...............

...................past deleted blog posts (unless they turn up on the internet at some point); photos of (and these are the ones I can remember. I'm sure there must be more): Center Parc holidays, Christmas trees at Lanercost, trip to Chesters last Summer with the friends of Segedunum, Senhouse and Maryport, Chill on Sill photos, Christmas at Bocketts, Desert Island Drive Photos, Lanercost again and again, Great Chesters, children at Great Chesters, photos along the Wall, Willowford in the rain with children, Whitfield Steam engines, Birdoswald, Mr.H.'s parents with children, Askerton Castle photos, Whitley Castle, friends in Newbury photos, Vindolanda, Walltown, Thirlwall castle, Solway photos and Edward I statue photos, Penrith, Salkeld, children in Surrey, Whitstable, Granda's 90th celebration photos, medieval Newcastle wall photos, Jim and Marj - Wall show photos, face painting, K's paintbox artwork, Cawfields, Alnwick castle and Gardens, White House Farm (Morpeth), zoo photos, santa photos, Carlisle castle, Hutton in the Forest. Lots and lots of documents relating to work we were doing for the B&B website. (We are writing the War and Peace version of it!) Serves me right for not writing stuff up to the blog quicker. Ah well. Ah well. She sighed.

These are just a sample.

Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!

Maybe in thousands of years to come in the scrapheap, midden of life future archaeologists will find a way to read our corrupted, beaten up, mashed up,chewed up, overwritten hard disk and take pleasure in those much, much, much cherished words and images.

I do hope so.

And I would say to them:

"Enjoy!" "Gaudete!" "Euge!"



Post Script: We do have other words, documents, photos in other locations. So we haven't lost completely everything. This allows me to keep my sanity. One minor advantage of living in two houses is that we have e-mailed a great deal of stuff to each other. So bits and pieces are out there in the internet ether. We'll also e-mail friends to make a photo appeal as well. Luckily my parents have taken masses of photos of the children. This piece has been cathartic for me. I have been having a few nightmares about this lately. So many thanks for reading this. Please do take it to heart and act on it. Don't assume that computers are foolproof. That they most surely ain't! I know we cannot keep everything in life and we cannot take pixels to the grave but I would say....try and save it for future generations. Don't keep putting it off! Say a very firm, stern NO! to procrastination!!!!