Computer Backup Horror Stories

"I was getting a hard drive error on one of our older computers.  This IBM PS/2 Model 70 was outdated but had been used extensively in it's time.  Apparently these hard drives were quite valuable.  The tech opened the computer to check for a loose connection and found that the hard drive had been stolen right out of the computer at my desk.  The cover had been replaced and the monitor put back on top like nothing had happened.  There was no data backup & the drive would have cost so much to replace it probably wasn't even stolen for information on it.  Now I'm paranoid about my info." - Anonymous

"Years ago when starting a new job, one of the first things my boss wanted me to do was inventory all the computer equipment (model, serial number, location) in the building.  Once I had that info, I had to research who owned the equipment and how much was owed on each piece.  Quite an undertaking!  Over the course of 3 months I tracked all this information in an Excel spreadsheet, over 2000 rows of data. At this point in my technical career I did not know much about the PC.  I didn’t have one at home and had only started using one with this job.  A real newbie!  I came in one Monday morning toward the end of the inventory project and turned my PC on.  The screen stayed black, except for a message flashing in the middle of it that said, "Fatal Disk Error".  I began to hyperventilate.  If this was as bad as the message sounded, all my work for the last 3 months was gone! I called our computer guy and cried on the phone.  He said, "Don’t worry about it.  You have a backup.  Right?”
I asked him what a backup was. He and I didn’t get along too well, so when he laughed at my question I knew I was in trouble.  He said, "Well, if you have a "Fatal Disk Error" and you don’t have a backup, you've lost everything on the disk.  And as for the disk, we might as well drop-kick it out to the parking lot." I have been sure to backup on a regular basis ever since." - Lizabeth

"I started writing a story some years ago about the end of the world. I spent considerable time researching it and everything. I thought it was some of my best writing too. So there I was, 120 pages into the story and bam.....everything was gone, I lost the whole thing, and I never got it back. All that work gone. I was so mad I never even tried to work on it again." - Chris

"I'd recently purchased a computer with a 140gig hard drive.  In addition to important school projects, papers, and research information, I'd uploaded a few hundred pictures to my computer over the course of the past year.  I left the computer plugged in when I left my dorm to go home for a week-long spring break vacation.    When I returned to school, my computer turned on, with a black screen, flashing the word "error".  The hard drive refused to boot.  Never having backed up my projects, papers, research, or pictures, all files were permanently lost.  Although I was able to send my computer back to the company I'd purchased it from, and have a new hard drive installed, I was never able to regain the lost files. From that point on, I've always been sure to back up my files, and can't emphasize the importance of this enough." - Sarah