Sometimes things happen that we think are bad, but if we look at them another way they actually seem like good things. For example, my hard drive crashed last week and I didn’t have some of it backed up. At first I started worrying about what information I had lost and I was concerned that it was gone for good. Then I started thinking about it and realized that there was really nothing lost that couldn’t be recreated. So here are some other good things that came out of losing my hard drive:
1. It was a really fast and effective way to clear 40 GB of space on my computer!
2. I was able to reinstall all of my programs and actually organize my files as I went.
3. I got to talk to some very helpful people at Adobe and Apple, and had some great email support from some other companies.
4. I learned that I need to add a serial number recovery feature to my own shopping cart system.
5. For $300 I have a new hard drive and my machine is running about 5x faster than before!
6. I learned that keeping lists on your hard drive is only for non-important stuff.
7. I now know that backing up your email is important, although I’m not sure how to do that yet.
8. If it weren’t for the blog, think of all of the photos I would have lost! (not really, but it is a great scare tactic to get some of you to start a blog so we can see what you are up to!)
9. My desktop is finally cleaned off, and I don’t have hundreds of bookmarks to sites that I don’t remember why I bookmarked them in the first place.
10. I feel like I have a new computer without spending a fortune and I didn’t have to spend a week trying to decide what files to transfer over.
All in all, it’s been a pretty good experience. I really should have done this years ago and started out with a fresh new file system. So for all of you that get on your computer and say to yourself, “One day I need to just sit down and delete some files off of this machine.”. There’s a simple way for you to do it*:
PC Users:
Start > Run > Type “CMD” > type “Format C:” and hit enter
Mac Users:
Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
Choose your hard drive, go to the format tab and choose the extended file system with logging
You really will feel much better after the initial shock wears off. It’s like jumping into a pool of cold water, once you’re in it feels pretty good, it’s getting in that’s the scary part!
* Please don’t actually format your drives, I don’t want to have to help you reinstall everything and if you didn’t have a good experience I would have this guilty feeling later. Just buy a new computer instead and pretend your old one died.