Well I just experienced the worst possible thing a computer user can experience (this is a tale of woe and misfortune, if you have a weak heart or suffer from a illness that causes you to vomit, please read no further.
I was playing Baldur’s Gate 2 last night and was going up against Kangaxx the Demi-Lich (hardest @-hole in the whole game). Well he would kill me, I would reload, and he would kill me again. This went on about 14 times with me trying new tactics and weapons each time. Then something weird happened. I went to reload again and my computer froze while (as I thought at that moment) a sound of a cd fluttering started coming out of my DVD drive. I thought to my self "That's strange I did a full install and other than the game needing the cd to start, I have never heard it spin-up. And my DVD has never made a sound like that before." So I hit reset and my computer started up and I pulled the cd out and looked at it. Scratches in a ring all around the cd. “That sucks” I thought to myself, but not a big thing since I still have the original cd. I took the original cd out of the box, (I make a copy of every game I buy for just this type of problem) and put it in the drive. Went to start my saved game and the same thing happened. I hit reset took the cd out and looked at it...no scratches. "My DVD must be screwed up" I thought "Its only 6 months old I'll send it back and get it replaced." So I went online and downloaded a no cd patch (I wanted to kill this bastard before I went to bed.) Now I started BG II and went to load my game....SAME LOCKUP SAME SOUND! NO CD! "Holy Crap! Its my hard drive" went through my head. "Please baby start up one last time that I can make a backup.", I prayed. No such luck. My computer went beep I got as far as the Promise RAID screen and the message "Broken Stripe [0] appeared. For those of you who know little about RAID, I had my system set up as RAID 0, data is wrote on 2 HDDs at the same time and makes your computer faster because the system can access the data quicker. This means with one HDD suffering a head crash all my data is gone. My favourites, my ICQ list, my projects, my saved games. and the pictures of scantily dress women that I added or changed since the first of the month are all gone (I USED to only make a backup once a month, from now on it will be once a week) What could I have done different? I could of set up RAID 1, were the data is mirrored on 2 HDDs so if one breaks the other has your data. Or I could of bought 3 or 4 HDDs and made a RAID 0+1, were it does both. But I didn't have the money for that extra HDD and RAID 1 is slower than RAID 0 so I didn't
. Well when the replacement HDD comes from IBM I shall purchase a third and set up a RAID 0+1, the little performance cost be damned!
So I shall be off-line for most of next week in till my new drive comes and would like to provide you with the moral of this story.
YE SHALL MAKE BACKUPS MORE THAN ONCE A MONTH!!
YE SHALL SPEND THE EXTRA DOUGH AND RUN RAID 0+1!!
YE SHALL BE THANKFULL THAT YOUR HDD IS UNDER WARRENTY!!
So weep with me my friends for the death of my data, and rejoice that it didn't happen to you!
AND KANGAXX, I AM GOING TO TAKE YOU DOWN!!
(As soon as I get a party back up to that level
)
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"You must gather your party before venturing forth"