Computer Thoughts

These days, more and more stuff is in the cloud, and I'm glad. I want a-l-l my stuff to be in the cloud.

Notice I said, the cloud. The reason for that is to distinguish the cloud, a noun that means "a network of remote servers hosted on the internet", from a cloud, a noun that means "a visible mass of condensed water vapor floating in the atmosphere."

When my hard drive fails, as all hard drives are destined to do, I want all my important stuff in the cloud. That way when I repair or replace my computer, all my stuff is still available. All I need are my login credentials: my user name and password, which are safely stored on my ... hard ... drive. Yeah, the drive that is now kaput.

I'm kidding. My credentials are safely stored in ... the ... cloud. Wait a minute. I think I need my login credentials to access the cloud to retrieve my login credentials. This is the scenario where pen and paper win.

Actually, you can store all your stuff in the cloud. There are companies on the Web that will backup your computer auto-magically for you. Or you can do it yourself with an external drive, but this will require a bit more technical expertise.

In a way, it's good to not have a backup. Our computers are like slow-moving barges on a river ... they accumulate unused files and fragments of this-and-that like a river barge accumulates barnacles. Once in a while, it might be a good thing to have it all wiped clean. Not the really important stuff, mind you, and I'm talking about the stuff that you back up to a local drive, and to a thumbdrive, and to Google Drive, and maybe to one of those websites like Carbonite or IDrive. I'm not talking about the important stuff, I'm talking about the stuff that you can easily replace, such as program files. You probably have programs you never use anymore. When you start using your computer again, you'll discover you want to do something but don't have a program installed for that. So you reinstall it. Or you never miss it, in which case there's less junk on your hard drive. It's like spring cleaning for your computer.

You may have deduced that I recently had a hard drive go down. I was able to retrieve it thanks to Dell's Backup and Recovery software which was in some magical partition on the hard drive that only the virtual wizard on my drive can access. It saved many items like Pictures and Documents and the Desktop, and it offered to save other things, but I was tired of how long it was taking and decided to forego the Extra Backup and go straight to the Recovery portion of the show. And it did recover a surprising amount and helped me get back to normal operations fairly quickly. And no doubt I lost things that I'll never miss. But I also had an external backup drive which, combined with the Dell Recovery software, let my PC return to life quickly. 

So now I'm pondering: do I clone this hard drive or just buy another PC? I think I've had this PC for 6 years. The previous PC lasted for 6 years. Its hard drive didn't die; something else failed. It might have been the CPU. It might have been the system board. Whichever it was, neither were still available for purchase. And if I could have repaired it, it would have been an obsolete system. I could have used it, in the same way I don't buy a new microwave oven every six years, even though the new ovens are much more advanced and can be purchased with the thought-command option and other marvelous, sci-fi things. None of this ponderation helps me with the decision—do I super-backup this hard drive or buy another machine?

This is the right time of year to be buying a new PC. It's not Black Friday, it's Black November, because the stores don't want Black Friday crowds this year. I'll look around. I'll see what's available. And then I'll ponder it some more.