2009 09/11

The Two Year Old and the Jump Drive

I spent about ten minutes this evening, holding the two severed pieces of my jump drive together. As the cramps in my hand became nearly unbearable I reminded myself that two year olds and computers are not a good mix.

Yep. My kid snapped my jump drive in two. That thing was my life. It held my RoboForm with ALL my passwords (basically my life) as well as lots of files and folders rescued from my old desktop pc. Why on earth I never backed up the over 4GB of information before this incident, I don’t know.

Long story short, I got my info off the broken drive and am now in the market for something a little more sturdy. Oh yes, and an online back-up service!!

For those of you who’d like a little visual, I took some pictures after the fact…

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Fruitfulvine2

Oh no! But I'm glad you were able to get the information that was on it. This is making me think seriously about using an online service to back up all the info I have on my jump drive and my laptop. I have been procrastinating on this.

Rick Castellini

Glad you got your info back! But your post left me with two questions:

1. How did the little tike break it?
2. How did you repair it?

EricaMueller

Rick,

My kiddo is always trying to sit next to me while I work. Lately he's been getting a little too close and he keeps bumping or landing on the jump drive. This break has been an on-going thing, but even when bent severely, the drive still worked. Last night, it actually broke in two.

I didn't fix it. I just couldn't. I did, however, pull all the plastic outsides off till I was left with the stub that fits in the USB slot on the computer, and the actual 'chip' part of the drive. I held the contacts to each other with my fingers... a lot of pressure was needed and I had to be very still, and when the light came on, I hurriedly selected the most important stuff and copied to my desktop.

Rick Castellini

Thanks for clarification. I envisioned a super toddler who snapped the drive in his own hands. :-)

Good save on the drive too, and thanks for explaining that in case I ever run across something similar.

EricaMueller

Here's wishing you luck and hoping you never have the same problem! haha If you do, try and find a comfortable position for your hand. I was so anxious to get my info off that I started the transfer as soon as I got the light to come out, without realizing it was going to take close to 10 minutes to transfer. My fingers, hand, arm, and shoulder were killing me within 2 minutes and the only thing that kept me holding on was not knowing if it would work again if I moved and tried another position.

Rick Castellini

Thanks Erica...I've put mine through the washer and dryer a couple of times, but so far no breakage. The description of your retrieval would have been a funny picture or video. ;-) Although for us, not you. Stressful when important data gets compromised.

Patty Reiser

Glad to hear you were able to retrieve the info. When I recently upgraded to Windows 7, I could not get the backed up file of my passwords and bookmarks to come up so I had to request my passwords from many sites. Lost many bookmarks and blog RSS feeds.
You might want to ask Santa for a portable external hard drive for xmas. As for online back-up service, I am currently using Mozy.com You get 2GB free or if you need more its only $4.95/month. I have it set to automatically backup every morning while I am at the bus stop with my son.

EricaMueller

My husband used Mozy.com for a while till he needed more space than the free service provided. He then switched to Jungle Disk. He asked if I'd like to be set up too and I said yes, but I am not sure if I actually have an account or not. haha

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