What's the Worth of Memories?

For the second time in my life, and the first time in 100% financing my own possessions, my current laptop, Montel, has kicked the bucket. I had him running a virus scan after my shift with Gallery only to discover a few hours later him frozen with the "thinking" light on solid, and no image on screen. I did a manual shut down so I could reboot the computer, only to hear that well-known and much despised clicking noise, and the error message that told me that the computer could not locate the bootable devices...GREAT.

Thankfully, Montel is a Dell baby, and even moreso, my warranty expires on TUESDAY. (perhaps this is a sign for me to actually consider extending my warranty another three years and get a $75 dell dollar certificate?) I was still at work (off the clock already, but had to attend my class), so I was able to jump online and got in an online chat with a technician to troubleshoot the problem (ie to officially tell me that my hard drive is dead and I'm screwed). It was very helpful and the links he provided me were useful in what he wanted me to do, but again, this was all just to tell me that my computer is dead. They're sending me a replacement hard drive, and it better get here pretty damn soon.

Then, the real concern came up: What about my data? I wondered, well, shouldn't data recovery be the responsibility of Dell? I mean, the warranty covers their parts, and if their parts fail, resulting on data loss, aren't they responsible for recovering that? I wasn't able to talk to anyone last night, but after calling someone and talking to one person, to be transferred to person after another, then having to call another number, I was referred to the Dell Service Contracts site, and found this document

I was given a link to a SF-based company that recovers data and gives Dell customers a 10% discount (Drive Savers). I figured I might as well call them and see how much it would cost, and I got a hold of a very nice, mellow-voiced man who got all my information down. He said with a the age of my computer and its capacity, the economy (turnaround time of a week or so) estimate would be $500-2,700, depending on how much information they're able to recover. Considering how my computer crashed, he assured me that they'd be able to recover a good deal of information.

Now, even if I had the money to do such a thing, which I don't, such a procedure is pretty pricey, even though I am more than aware this isn't an easy task they must do (even though I'm sure what happened to my hard drive is easy-peasy stuff compared to other data loss situations). As I mentioned before, it's not the first time this has happened to me. It happened to my very first laptop, Sally, a mere month after getting her. I had her shipped away and then she was lost. I spent another 6 weeks just trying to find her, then just have to settle for a replacement (only to have her returned to me after Holiday Break), as it was lost in the mail. A month's worth of college student's work can be pretty bad, but I was able to hang during that time...but I've had a year of use of my Monty, with all the programs, files, documents, and PICTURES I had saved on him. What sucks more is that I use my computer for work as well, but thankfully for work, I do back up THAT information on our network server. And sure, I do have a lot of my images on file, but there are some that I may not be able to recover. I also have a large number of documents I have saved, as well as the bookmarks to many, many websites I often like to reference. All gone. Wait, I shouldn't say that since it's not all gone, they're still around for a modest price.

So what are those files worth me? Is it worth waiting, saving the money, and then seeing what they can recover?




*SILVER LINING*
Thank heavens for Flickr's pro account...at least, thank heavens for the fact I actually sprang for a pro account...from what I know about it is that all the images I've uploaded to my account gives me the ability to download the original files...so at least there's...THAT.