![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/betanews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/nuclear-explosion-mushroom-cloud-300x240.jpg?resize=300%2C240\" "\\"nuclear"){kind=spacer}
I do not generally use our desktop computer. I prefer my laptop, but my wife likes that desktop and uses it daily. She also keeps her precious files on it, and I have the folder set to backup to Crashplan automatically, as well as to sync with the home server. However, she also uses a small four gigabyte USB drive for files -- I assumed ones that she just wishes to move around with her. I was wrong.<\/p>\n
I am not making excuses for myself. Even if I had known the files were backed up I\u00a0would\u00a0not have deleted them -- I had no reason to wipe her drive. The truth is that it was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was a victim of my own oversight.<\/p>\n
Here is the story -- and take heed because it can happen to all of us at anytime. After complaints from wife and kids that the computer had become slow over time, I decided it was an opportunity to start over fresh. I copied the User folder to an external drive, knowing it was also in the cloud for good measure. I then inserted a CD containing the ISO of a small program known as \"Derrick's Boot and Nuke\" or DBAN to most. It is frequently used by businesses to wipe data before getting rid of a drive. Without thinking I booted to DBAN, set each drive to \"wipe\" and let it run. I failed to notice that the little Kingston USB was one of those drives.<\/p>\n
DBAN works very well. It eradicates all traces of data, rendering the drive so unrecoverable that you need to reformat to just get back a file system and use it again.<\/p>\n
The files contained on that little piece of portable hardware, as it turns out, did not exist in my wife's backed up documents folder -- or anywhere else. Meaning that they now existed nowhere at all. And that I could be facing that same fate.<\/p>\n
I have said many times that one copy of a file is the same as zero, because zero is what you could have at any second. Drives die and, in this case, accidents happen. I backup everything to home server and cloud -- three copies for good measure. I will be adding the thumb drive to that routine providing I survive to do so.<\/p>\n
Photo Credit:<\/strong> argus<\/a>\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/p>\n I do not generally use our desktop computer. I prefer my laptop, but my wife likes that desktop and uses it daily. She also keeps her precious files on it, and I have the folder set to backup to Crashplan automatically, as well as to sync with the home server. However, she also uses a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4801,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-738830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-36cC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4801"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n<\/img><\/a>
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