60 GB Hard-Knocks Drive

Recently, Chris Battle blogged about the unfortunate experience of having his hard drive crash. Since I immensely admire Chris's work and his illustrious career, I decided it would be a good move to crash my hard drive as well.

1.5-years of blood, sweat, and tears on a candybar-sized piece of metal

Well, not really. It actually was the worst possible thing that could've happened when it did. Picture this:

(At 1 a.m. one Sunday morning)

Me: "Wow I finished almost a day before our early morning, Monday delivery for this super-difficult, high-profile project. I better back up my files on my trusty iPod just in case. Because I'm screwed if I lose everything since it only exists on this computer."

[sound of me happily typing an email to the rest of the gang telling them that I was done as I begin transferring files]

[sudden zapping sound of my laptop shutting off]

Me (now sweating): "Uh...heh...what...?..."

Laptop: "..."

iPod: "It wasn't me..."

Fortunately, thanks to a heavy heaping of divine intervention and classic Ghostbot Rescue Team Procedures, we were able to make our deadline with a few hours to spare. What was more painful, however, was the actual act of recovering my drive. I had about 80% of the data backed up on an external drive, but that last 20% was some of the most important information on my computer (emails, pitches, Six Scoop Sketches!). Moral of the story is back up your work, folks - frequently. If you don't believe me, I can send you a copy of my bill from Data Recovery Group.

Thanks to the reality-kick-in-the-pants, I thought I'd post some Painter sketches that I forgot I had which I recently "re-found" amidst the recovered data. (Consider it another form of back up in case this happens again.)

Ok, so maybe it wasn't worth the cost, but dangit I needed those emails…