In Loving Memory

Big Blue

1998 – 2004

"It made a clicking sound for a week, and I thought it was talking to me. It was saying goodbye."

Files We Lost

my_novel_FINAL_final2.doc forty thousand words, about a lighthouse. I remember the first line and the last line and nothing in between.
photos/lake_2001/ the only copies. The light was very good that year.
song_for_nobody.mid a MIDI file of a tune I wrote for no one in particular. I can still hum it. I'm the only one who can.
emails/ six years of them, including the one where my brother apologised. I'll take his word that he did.
all of 2001 Most of it, anyway. The year exists. I just can't open it.
a folder called "do not open" I never opened it. I don't know what it was. I miss it most.

Eulogy

Big Blue came into my life in the autumn of 1998 in a beige tower that took up half the desk. It held everything I had then, which wasn't much, and then everything I had, which became a great deal. It never complained. It whirred when I came home and it whirred when I left, and in six years it never once asked to be backed up, because hard drives don't ask. That was the problem. That was my problem.

It started clicking on a Tuesday in March. By Sunday it didn't spin. A man in a shop with a magnifying glass said a word I won't repeat and a number I couldn't pay. I took Big Blue home and put it on the shelf over the desk, where it is now. I'm told this is unusual. I'm told a lot of things.

There's a man on this website who keeps a memorial for dead links. I asked him if Big Blue could go on it. He said a hard drive isn't a link. Then he said, "But it held a great many," and put it on anyway. I'm grateful.

What Big Blue Taught Me

Back up. That's it. That's the lesson. If you take one thing from this page, take this, and do it tonight:

Three copies of anything you'd cry about losing.
On two different kinds of storage — say, your computer and an external drive.
With one of them somewhere else — another house, or a cloud service you trust.
That's the 3-2-1 rule. People who know about these things say it. I learned it from Big Blue, the hard way.
And check that your backup actually opens, now and then. A backup you've never opened is a hope, not a backup.

There are free programs for copying and syncing files in the Downloads library.

Condolences

If you've lost a drive, you're among friends here. Leave its name, its dates, and what was on it. I'll light the candle for it too.

Owen Castellanos · keeper of the shelf · say hello in #lobby or on the forum