04.11.2004
backup
I'm trying to backup data on my too-expensive DVD burner that's been remarkably ineffective since I bought it for three hundred bucks at Best Buy sometime in January. Last night my hard drive started making that sound, that little "tsk tsk tsk," shame-on-you-for-not-backing-me-up-in-the-last, well, ever sound that hard drives sometimes make after you've pretty much left them powered on for three years.
I started this "backup" process earlier, and the first cool thing the software did was to tell me that it had detected bad sectors on the drive so it advised that I back up the entire thing. Well, sure, I said, but everything here is crap i don't need, so let's just continue doing what I asked and backup some of the important stuff, mmmkay? Later, after going through an hour of fancy spinning and progress-bar updating, it just stopped doing anything. Sat there showing that it was about half done, and that about two gigs of data had been "backed up." Eventually I ended the task and found another blank DVD and started over. Of course exactly the same thing happened. This time after some time spent working very hard at not pounding the shit out of my whole crap room here I decided to open the DVD drive instead of cancelling the backup, and right away it said, "Insert Next Disc." Timely request, that. I mean it makes perfect sense, now that I think about it. How dumb of me not to know -- it had backed up 2, maybe 2.5 gigs onto a reportedly 4.7gig DVD, so of course it was well overdue for just sitting there waiting for me to pull the disc out.
What worries me, of course, is the fact that the DVD burner itself doesn't seem to really have any part in this "backup" thing. I mean at first it did a fine job of making a spin-the-disc sound, and sounding like it was working enthusiastically while the little popup window said "writing disc info," or whatever. But after that there's been a remarkable lack of spinny noises or flashy-lights on the thing while the "backup" software offers information about how much data's been "backed up" and what file it's currently "backing up."
I'll be the first to admit, though, that I don't understand this DVD-burning technology. Who am I to say that the disc has to spin? Maybe nothing observable actually ever happens. Could be using quantum technology, and I'm sure I don't have a chance of understanding it. Schroedinger's DVD -- it's impossible to actually proove that anything's not being written without using the DVD drive to check the contents. I can't simultaneously tell whether it's actually backing anything up AND let it continue to possibly back anything up. Once it stalls I open the drive and kill the cat. I mean the DVD. I kill something, and let it start killing something else. Or start the process, or whatever you'd call it if it were quantum.
Either way I'm absolutely certain this will all be very useful after I move and the hard drive never comes back to life and I attempt to restore the data from the DVDs and it gladly shows me how it's restoring all this data that eventually never actually shows up as having been restored to any place in particular. That's just a detail, really, that I should know where it puts anything. "Your data is safe, trust us. For security reasons we cannot tell you where it is, or show it to you, or tell you how we know, but trust us. It's backed up."
(This brief respite from not posting has been brought to you by the letter I'm-packing-all-this-shit-for-the-move-that's-only-two-weeks-away. Really-I-am.)
(I just realized I'm afraid to save this, or to incorporate it into my weblog file, because doing so would change data that's in the process of being "backed up." Wouldn't want to cause any problems.)
Update: It is finished. I think. Maybe. It popped up a window asking me to insert disc 1, which I did, being thankful that it prompted for that because I never would've thought of doing that as a random, why-isn't-this-thing-doing-anything response. Then it told me there were errors on the disc, and asked if it should correct them. So the mysteries of the quantum technology backup continue. Then it asked me to insert disc 1. So I kept hitting okay until it wore me down, and I stuck disc 2 back in, and it kept saying insert disc 1 as I kept hitting okay some more, then it said there were errors on that disc and I let it "correct" them, and then it gave me some report about the backup, then it sat there and I started typing this, now it's asked for disc 1 again, and I've put that disc in and clicked "okay" 25 times (I counted,) and I just KNOW it's trying to get me to click that "cancel" thing instead, but I FUCKING REFUSE. You won't get me this easy, you fucker. Trying disc 2 again...
Fucker. That's not workin'. Just keeps asking for disc 1. There's still a possibility of that kick-the-shit-out-of-everything-in-the-room thing I avoided earlier. I just clicked cancel. I'm going to attempt a restore, just to see if anything's working, but I'm sure it's not. Oh, okay, that's clear. It's telling me I don't have permission to open the file. That makes sense. I'm supposed to see the owner of the file. Or an administrator. And I see now that windows explorer thinks the disc contains a CD audio file, and winamp is playing it. It says it's 255 minutes long. Which is cool. It's all silent, of course.
Yes, this DVD drive was a real investment. I'm very glad for how this has worked out.
