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November is Back Up Your Damn Data Month!
Today I had a rather stupid scare with my iBook notebook.
Late last week some seagulls crapped all over my car and busted open some clams off the roof of my car. This past weekend I went to the car wash and before I drove through the wash I took off a magnetic ribbon that was making a progressive political statement on the side of my car. I set it on the floor on the front passenger side and did not think about it. Then today I set my iBook in my messenger gadget bag on the floor of the passenger side of my car about a foot away from the magnetic ribbon. The ribbon was under some papers and my notebook was inside a leather case but when I realized that they had been close by after several hours I almost spontaneously crapped my pants. After a few moments of hyperventilating I moved the magnet and booted up my iBook. Luckily it booted up fine and there was no file corruption. I ran some diagnostics and came off without a scratch but I learned several important lessons.
I learned :
1. You have to be damn careful about magnetic fields around computers.
2. Magnetic ribbons are damn cheesy and not in the good ironic way and they don't really do anything except making you look like a sheep that payed three bucks for a magnetic ribbon that was made in China.
3. You really need to back your hard drive up on a regular basis.
4. Seagulls are filthy dirty birds. They are basically rats with feathers and they will shit on anything and everything.
Next month I am going to get an 80-gig external USB2 Hard drive as a bit perfect backup of my notebook hard drive and also have a back up on the new drive. That way I would have my data in three different places and the new drive would be bootable with the Firewire cord.
My mom has wiped a computer before by vacuuming next to it with an industrial strength vacuum cleaner and I have lost a few school project to crappy floppy disk and dead zip disks. I am a little paranoid about magnetic media drives for good reasons and I do think that a certain amount of paranoia is perfectly healthy. A personal computer is like a slice of your brain and you don't want to loose a slice of your brain without having a good back up right? Damn straight.
Next month is national back up your data month here at 8bitjoystick.com.
Sorry I sucked at updating this site last week. That was weak.
Jake at October 25, 2005 
Rants
Comments
Should be backing up your data weekly, I'm surprised that you don't. For me it's like a Sunday night ritual before I go to bed - burn all my important data (the irreplaceable stuff that changes at least once every week) to a CD-R (about 400MB) and burn all my web development stuff to another CD-R. Not only does it give me piece of mind but it allows me to easily pull up older versions of documents and graphics if need be.
Not all those magnetic ribbons are bad, I've had a POW-MIA one for over a year now as a sign of respect.
Posted by: InsaneDavid ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.8bitjoystick.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 25, 2005 2:47 AM
I backup my data multiple times a month to a second HDD and every 3 months or so I burn a backup on optical discs.
BTW: I doubt that a magnetic car "sticker" can erase your notebook's HDD.
Posted by: Jim at October 25, 2005 3:48 AM
On drives now a days it actually takes quite a large magnetic field to cause corruption. We have a device that generates a magnetic field that we can stick hard drives in to wipe them.
Typically it takes about a 20 minute session inside the field just to make it unbootable. Now we use a utility that the FBI gave us for wiping the drives, then we stick them in our super magnet for about 30 mintues.
Posted by: kevin at October 25, 2005 11:45 AM
I think that one of the companies that sell removable hard drives should consider the tag line "helps prevent spontaneously crapped pants"
Posted by: hibiscusroto at October 25, 2005 4:15 PM
I would have crapped myself too.
Posted by: Shawn L at October 26, 2005 2:57 PM
I want to Have some !i Book! Its my dream 4 my everyday life!!
Posted by: jonathan at April 16, 2006 11:05 AM
