Crashed External Hard Drive

Ocala, Florida

Weather: low 75 degrees, high 96 degrees, partly cloudy skies, light afternoon shower

The weather here is depressingly boring: hot, humid, showers, more heat, more humidity, more showers...... We're ready for some cooler weather! The weather out in west Texas around Alpine and Fort Davis seems to be much more comfortable, with lows in the 50s and highs in the 80s. In addition, that's beautiful country out there. We're glad we went there this past winter.

It seems like we need to get out and take a ride in the country every day in order to scratch our wanderlust. Today's ride took us north to the area around Anthony, Lowell, Reddick, and Sparr. We concentrated on taking roads that we hadn't been on since our time back here. As expected, the countryside is just as beautiful as what we've been seeing during our time back. Horse farms, mini ranches, pastures that look like manicured lawns, huge oak trees, moss.... The beauty keeps on and on. No wonder that this area was the fastest growing area in the country at one time. The only problem with that is that there was so much growth in a short time. Now, there are many homes sitting empty, and it will probably take a few years to use up the surplus stock of housing. That's bad for the people who make their living in construction.

When we got back home and had rested from the drive, I decided to back up the computer. Several years ago, we neglected backing our data up, with the result that when the computer crashed, we lost a lot of data. Over the past three years, we have made it a routine to back up our data with an external hard drive. Now, we have a problem with the external hard drive. I can't get the drive to respond when I want to do a backup. Bad, bad, bad.

I did all the trouble shooting that I knew to do, such as using a different USB port, changing data transfer cables, and rebooting the computer. I looked on the Internet to see what I could do to access the drive, but all I found was the cures that I had already tried. I still want to get another power supply to see if that helps, but I suspect that the hard drive has bit the dust. If the hard drive is bad, I'll take it to a computer shop that says they can recover the data for us.

I fell victim to the philosophy that if I backed up the computer, we would be safe. Now, it looks like we'll have to use two backup drives to ensure we'll be able to access our old stuff. Things like pictures, Carolyn's genealogy research, my writings, etc.

More later, be safe.

Today's Town - Alpine, Texas: Gateway To The Big Bend

Not all who wander are lost.