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technology odyssey
Dec. 15th, 2009 11:38 amThe good news: I was able to pick up my laptop today. This was almost the last time you'd hear about it. The bad news: I finally got my laptop reconnected to the wireless Internet at my apartment and...none of my stuff was saved. Talking with an employee when repairs were being done and a new hard drive was being ordered, I arranged for my information from the old hard drive to be saved: documents, music, bookmarks.
None of that is on my computer.
Fortunately, I distrust digital information and everything I have is also on flashdrives or music CDs. I can recover it all on my own. The point is, I shouldn't have to. Everything should have been transferred because only yesterday afternoon an employee called me to confirm that this would be done. I hope to be able to get this taken care of after work this afternoon.
The employee who gave me back the laptop also could not tell me what had gone wrong with the first hard drive. When I attempted to find out what went wrong by asking, "What can I do to prevent this again?" I was told to avoid moving it around a lot when the computer is on because hard drives are fragile. Yeah.
Update: I returned to the store and was lucky enough to get a student employee who actually has a clue about how to communicate. All the information I thought was lost was in fact backed up onto the computer. The problem is, it was hidden in a file that nobody else had told me about. (My main comment throughout the process was along the lines of, "This is really helpful, my main problem is just that nobody told me any of this.") I skipped asking about what went wrong with the hard drive this time because the laptop's been through so many hands by this point, I'm not sure anybody could give me a clear answer. At least I'm 90% sure it wasn't something I did to screw it up. In the end, the store seems to know what it's doing but often has poor customer service. I've told my parents that I'm adding an external hard drive to my Christmas list.
None of that is on my computer.
Fortunately, I distrust digital information and everything I have is also on flashdrives or music CDs. I can recover it all on my own. The point is, I shouldn't have to. Everything should have been transferred because only yesterday afternoon an employee called me to confirm that this would be done. I hope to be able to get this taken care of after work this afternoon.
The employee who gave me back the laptop also could not tell me what had gone wrong with the first hard drive. When I attempted to find out what went wrong by asking, "What can I do to prevent this again?" I was told to avoid moving it around a lot when the computer is on because hard drives are fragile. Yeah.
Update: I returned to the store and was lucky enough to get a student employee who actually has a clue about how to communicate. All the information I thought was lost was in fact backed up onto the computer. The problem is, it was hidden in a file that nobody else had told me about. (My main comment throughout the process was along the lines of, "This is really helpful, my main problem is just that nobody told me any of this.") I skipped asking about what went wrong with the hard drive this time because the laptop's been through so many hands by this point, I'm not sure anybody could give me a clear answer. At least I'm 90% sure it wasn't something I did to screw it up. In the end, the store seems to know what it's doing but often has poor customer service. I've told my parents that I'm adding an external hard drive to my Christmas list.
