It was midday on a rainy Tuesday. I went home for my lunch hour as I regularly do and planned to work on a few things on my laptop while I ate and watched a show. There was reheatable (not a real word) chili to eat and I smugly reveled in my lack of effort and money-spending. I opened my laptop after I put the chili on the stove and a message warning me of the hard drive being dangerously close to full flashed in the middle of the screen. I went to delete things from Trash to free up space as I’d done before; it helped make room when I’d done it in the past, so I wasn’t concerned about losing anything. I sorted the files from largest to smallest, selected the largest group, right-clicked to “delete immediately” and watched as the loading bar filled to capacity. It was finished in less than 15 seconds. I set the trash out to sea and launched a digital flaming arrow into its boat.
Then I went to my Movies folder where I keep every video I’ve ever taken or made to look for a specific file I’d recently saved there. The folder was empty. I felt my heart begin to sweat. I backed out and clicked on it again thinking it was just improperly loading. Nothing came up the second time. I repeated this process an illogical amount of times thinking I’d get a different outcome, each click more frantic and hurried than the last. I realized I’d inexplicably deleted all of the videos I’d saved since I removed my entire stash back in April to put onto an external hard drive. A good forty to fifty videos were lost and my heart started thrashing around inside my ribcage. All that time I’d spent documenting my life and learning how to edit since my last save was gone. Wide-eyed and bewildered, I sat motionless while my heart gripped the bony cell bars around it and wailed. My videos were gone, but at least I still had my photography and everything else, right?
Right?
My aching, banshee heart suddenly quieted. It sat back down and waited for me to double click the Pictures folder. I held my breath. As the screen transitioned, I begged to see little thumbnails of poorly exposed pictures of buildings and crooked sunsets in their little .NEF format. But the bright, stark white screen that met my eyes seemed blacker and more sinister than the faceless, dark abyss inside the Grim Reaper’s hood. Every ache I’d felt up to that point suddenly ceased entirely as a wave of numbness robotically scanned me from head to toe. My vision had static in it for a brief moment and the sounds of the city outside my open window ceased to register in my ears. Everything I’d done was gone; the sensation I felt in that moment was something I’d only ever felt in nightmares when something was far beyond repair and a supreme sense of hopelessness was realized. I felt like I’d accidentally murdered someone and was standing there with blood all over my hands realizing I’d taken a life and changed my own forever.
After taking off my glasses and pacing the room without blinking for an unknown amount of time, I eventually pulled myself together enough to check Time Machine to see if I could restore it. May 2015 was the last time I’d backed up and no restores were available since then. Not everything was lost at this point, but my entire summer, a very productive one with event-based photography and video work, was gone. A wave of nausea hit and I felt like I was going to vomit upon realizing how foolish I was to not back up since May. My sorrow turned to inward anger at that point and I cursed myself for being so stupid and lazy about something so important. It takes so little effort to ensure my files wouldn’t be erased and I’d failed at being diligent about it. Despite the panic I felt in the moment, I became acutely aware that it all seemed like a classroom educational VHS about the dangers of not backing up.
“Phil found solace through art and photography after several personal setbacks rendered him unable to healthily cope with the reality of life and interpersonal relationships. With new purpose, he was able to battle his way out of an emotional hole and generate content both he and others enjoy. The pictures he took meant the world to him because each one expressed his passion for his surroundings, added meaning to his days, taught him valuable lessons both about photography and history alike, ignited his interest in the real world, and allowed him to reflect on his city in a way he never had before. But as important as this was to Phil, he didn’t back up the device onto which he stored all of his work, shamelessly tempting digital-fate to ruin him. Here you see what happens when you don’t back up the files you’ve spent years crafting to both express yourself and sustain living a full, creative life.” (camera pans to Phil awkwardly shimmying out of his 9th floor window and disappearing over the edge forever)
When you’re suffering a crisis, you’ll inevitably turn to another person to either seek help or just to vent frustration. But the problem with losing all your data, as I quickly and painfully realized, is it’s not a crisis that anyone but you actually comprehends. It’s the loneliest tragedy. Solidarity is out the window, much like me in that educational VHS. If someone you love dies, there’s a funeral. If your house burns down, your neighbors and the community feel for you. Even if you go through a terrible break up, people will understand your situation and offer you comfort and support. But this is such a personal loss that no one else fully understands the scope of it and you can’t really tell anyone and expect more than a “Oh, I’m sorry that happened to you.” It’s not their fault they don’t understand, either. How could they? The contents of your folders are a mystery to anyone but you, so when you realize what you’ve lost, it hits you harder than anyone else. Since you’re physically fine and you’ve lost nothing tangible, it’s harder to seek real, heart-felt support from others.
To make a long post shorter, eventually I ended up paying for $80 software to scan my hard drive, locate the files, and restore them to their original places. An hour and a half elapsed from deletion of the original files to having all of them back in their right places, and that was the worst hour and a half I’ve spent in months. The lunch I’d prepared prior to deletion became inedible while in the throes of the situation but was comforting once my hunger returned after I’d sorted the crisis. I felt so much better knowing the files that meant so much to me could still be accessed. I thought back to that feeling of dread and numbness from before and a shiver went up my spine. It’s nearing Halloween as I write this, and that gave me more of a scare than any haunted house populated with masked teenagers ever could. Once the adrenaline wore off, I had to fight to not fall asleep at my desk. My mind was exhausted by the whole thing.
Back up your digital art, people. Don’t be lazy. I’d planned to go home that day and eat crock pot chili on my couch while I did a little photo editing and watched a British TV show about two idiots living in the same flat despite them being entirely different. I ended up losing something extremely dear to me, feeling the purest form of shock and horror tickling every raw nerve I had, then feeling heavenly relief after having avoided the nightmare altogether.
And the chili wasn't even that good.