What’s Going On Here?

I’m adding this post not through blogging software, like I normally do, but by hand, right into the webpage. It feels odd. I’m doing this because a week or so ago my web server started making funny error messages and not working so well. The web server is in Chicago and I am in California so it took a day or two to get someone to check on it. The conclusion was the hard drive had been fried.

When the weekend ended, we sent the disk to a disk repair place. They took a look at it and a couple days later said that they couldn’t do anything. The heads that normally read and write data on a hard drive by floating over the magnetized platter had crashed right into it. While the computer was giving us error messages it was also scratching away a hole in the platter. It got so thin that you could see through it.

This was just in one spot on the disk, though, so we tried calling the famed Drive Savers to see if they could recover the rest. They seemed to think they wouldn’t have any better luck. (Please, plase, please, tell me if you know someplace to try.)

I hadn’t backed the disk up for at least a year (in fairness, I was literally going to back it up when I found it giving off error messages) and the thought of the loss of all that data was crushing. I broke down crying and couldn’t function.

I’ve since been trying to piece things together from the old backup and the Google cache and so on, but it’s a painful and time-consuming process, and even without this on my hands I am extremely lacking time. I’ll try my best, though.

Thanks to everyone for their kind words and support. If you have some files you think I might be missing, let me know. If you have some disposable income and want to help fund the purchase of a new server and perhaps the recovery of the old disk, you can make a donation.

Sorry for screwing up.

You should follow me on twitter here.

May 15, 2005