The Solemn Death of a Beloved Hard-drive

RIP old friend. You were working, and then you were not. The reason for your demise is a mystery. Is it wrong to speak ill of the dead? Because, dear Hard-drive, although I’m sad you’re gone, you could have given me some notice. A sign maybe? I mean, when you were fine and well you would tell me about all kinds of problems that you knew very well I had no chance of comprehending. Like, “ERROR 501: Header values specify a configuration that is not implemented.” Great! Thanks for letting me know, I’m not sure what to do about it, but thanks for keeping me in the loop. So why not, for once, couldn’t you have said, “Hey, buddy, I think I’m really ill. You better back up all your shit.” That is all I ask. But you’re dead now, so what can you do?

I’ll tell you, Hard-drive, what I did. I ripped you out of the machine that is your life-support, took you to a local computer hospital and asked the scruffy bloke behind the counter if he can restore you. You see, I’m nice like that. He un-did some screws. Removed your housing, and plugged you into a machine. Your vitals came up on a screen and the friendly computer-minded bum gave me the bad news.

“If you look here it says we are still able to run a restore program, but if you look in this box it says there is no information stored on the drive. We can go ahead with treatment but I can’t promise it will find anything.”

I thought about it. I did back up my writing about three weeks ago so I haven’t lost everything. But if I can’t get the information back off your comatose hard-drive I will have lost half of a kids book, a chapter from a thriller, and a folder of photos from my phone.

“How much will it cost?” I said.

“A hundred pounds. It will take forty eight hours and at the end of it I can’t guarantee I will find anything.” He must have seen the look of downtrodden despair on my face because then he said, “I’ll tell you what, if it doesn’t work you don’t have to pay.”

“Thank you, you’re a legend. Do what you can.”

He took my number and wrote my name on your underside. Look at that, Hard-drive, you and me, we’re like Andy and Woody from Toy Story.

If the process works I’m afraid you will not survive the procedure. All the information, all your memories, will be extracted from you and loaded onto a brand new hard-drive and installed into the old life-support that used to be your home and is my laptop. So, whichever way this goes, farewell, you temperamental fucking machine, you have succumbed to your final glitch.

In twenty four hours I will know if the procedure has worked. If I wasn’t superstitious about superstitions I would cross my fingers.