For the last few weeks, I’ve been working steadily on editing one of my stories, Intervention.I finished rewriting a chapter last week and although it needs some tweaks, I feel pretty good about it. I was on a roll.
Then, the kitchen faucet started leaking. Two full days down the drain replacing the faucet, wood beneath the sink, repainting etc. It was exhausting.
Fast forward to this past Wednesday. I step away from my computer to get a cup of tea. When I return a few minutes later, the screen is black and the computer unresponsive. A reboot takes me directly to a troubleshooting app and two minutes later, I’m told with big large letters that my hard drive has failed.
1TB of data, two operating systems, thousands of files down the drain.
Yes, fortunately, all my important data is backed up (thanks to Dropbox) but it’s a huge inconvenience.
Now, I have to decide on one of two things: 1) either I buy a new drive or 2) a new computer.
Neither option is appealing. If I get a new drive, I’ll have to reinstall two operating systems, copy countless files, and configure the two operating systems to play nice together. It took a while to get this to work right the first time around, I’m not looking forward to doing it again.
Buying a new computer isn’t ideal either. It’s been my plan to eventually do that anyway but the plan was to wait until next year. The computer I have is getting up there in age but it’s still a good computer. I mean, I can still play many recent titles when the gaming bug bites, so it’s not terrible by any means. The issue is more of not having the time to research exactly what I need and being at the mercy of what’s available locally or something that can be shipped on short notice. My intent had been to take my time, find the computer that fits my needs and go from there. Now, I feel like my hand is forced.
What does this mean for my writing? I’m not quite sure yet. I use primarily Scrivener to write my stories for Wattpad, but most other things (like this post) I write in Evernote. Although I can run Scrivener on the Chromebook I’m writing on right now, it’s highly inconvenient and not ideal. What I may end up doing is temporarily install Elementary OS on a USB drive, just to hold me over. That’ll at least give me the ability to continue writing etc. while I figure out what to do, whether to replace the hard drive or splurge on a new computer that may not be exactly what I want.
For now, my writing efforts will likely be somewhat diminished as I figure out which avenue to take. Regardless, it’s a huge inconvenience and there’s a lot of work ahead of me to get either my old computer back up and running or a new one.
How about you? Have you run into situations like this? What did you do?
My computer is, first and foremost, a tool that serves my writing. When my Mac failed in 2018 after ten years I didn’t hesitate to replace it with another. It was backed up and my system allowed for the easy restoration of all my files to the new computer (critical for a non-tech person like me), I was up and running again in a matter of hours. I lost nothing. Scrivener is critical to my writing, but so too are the vast, fictional world resources I’ve accumulated on my computer that include biographies, cultural research, glossaries, histories, maps, and my explorations of magic tech. I recognize that your situation is much different than mine, but hope you work out your solution soon.
I think I’ve worked out a solution. Since I use my computer for so much more than writing, I’m going to take my time and get that part right. I’ve got a replacement hard drive on the way. It will take some time to set everything up but I’d rather do that than make a snap decision on I may regret later. Until then, I’ve managed to get Scrivener running so I can at least keep up with that.