You are allowed to enjoy this…

Using Active Undelete I managed to deep scan my formatted hard drives and recover ALL my lost data after yesterday’s Vista-related mishap. I can thoroughly recommend that software, though it does take a few hours to scan a large hard drive and then recover the files, but it is surprising to see just how easy it is to recover files that are supposedly deleted. It certainly makes me think about selling my old drives on eBay, because the unscrupulous could access all the data on those disks even though I have formatted them. Scary stuff and plenty to think about, eh?

I write about computers for a living. I get paid to write about the inner workings of operating systems such as Windows Vista. I have been doing this for over a decade now, but no amount of experience can prepare you for a mess-up that’s partly caused by the operating system. I know a bad workman always blames his tools but what happened this morning should be a lesson to everyone – this is why I am writing this up. Keywords are: windows vista backup and restore overwriting partition.
Anyway, with the GoogleFluffTM out of the way, what happened to me is a tragedy. I keep backups. I have a backup of all my photos and my MP3 files from CDs I’ve bought. I have a backup of all my creative stuff. I have two external drives totally 500Gb for this. I also keep a second drive inside my computer and have a backup of all the song mixes I am working on – and once I have finished a CD these backups are moved to the external. So I have three backups at work. I also have my operating system backed up in case of emergencies.
Such an emergency happened the other day. For some unknown reason, my PC took over half an hour to start up and then was refusing to boot up at all. So I decided to restore my backup of my PC. I have done this before with a fresh drive, etc., so I backed up my email onto my internal hard drive and moved all my master tracks onto that drive too. I did the restore and was horrified when Vista had taken itself to wipe my D: drive.
You see, when you do a snapshot of your system for a backup, it takes a snapshot of the actual state of your PC at the time. When I did my initial backup, my D: was empty and my C: was partitioned different. Despite backing up my system subsequently, the state of my D: drive and C: drive partitions were not backed up. So when I did the restore – kaput! All those partitions were wiped without my consent. Thanks Microsoft for making this clear in your instructions.
While I am pissed off about this, I do have various final mixes of tracks stored all over the place, but I have lost a number of files. I am currently running an undelete application in order to retrieve whatever data I can. Let this be a warning to those of you thinking of using Vista Backup and Restore. A system restore will cause your PC to revert to the condition it was when you initially backed it up.

We celebrated a couple of landmarks over the past week or so. Firstly, Verity reached six months old and it seems a lifetime away that I spent all those hours waiting for her to be delivered in September. Having a child changes everything, it makes somethings easier, and some other things more difficult. For me and my own childhood, the arrival of Lock Jnr has made me take my responsibility as a father very seriously. I also have less of an understanding of how any father could abandon his child or how a single parent can cope raising a baby on their own. It changes your perspective. Of course, I wouldn’t want it any other way and I am blessed. I’ve always said I am the luckiest man on the planet and this self-imposed title seems even more justified now. Even though it has only been six months, it feels like Verity has been with us forever.
Today, we have had the shop for six months too. While I don’t regret buying the shop and moving on from the old life, there are things here that I don’t like and issues that need to be addressed. But this is all down to experience and buying a business for the first time. I am glad I bought this particular business because I have learnt so much in such a short amount of time. I feel that the next time I move on, I’ll know exactly what to look for and to avoid certain pitfalls and shortcomings of future purchases.
For example, although we have a sizable four-bedroom property above the shop, two of the rooms down the far end of the house are totally unsuitable for us as Verity’s room (which was the plan). The noise from the shop below would be too much for a small baby to bear. So I’ll have to give up my office room for her (not a problem), but I won’t be moving to the far end of the house, because I won’t be able to hear anyone calling up for me whenever there’s a bill query to rectify or sales rep to deal with. That’s one of the main shortcomings, the layout of the home is a bit wrong and not working for us.
I could write a book about the do’s and dont’s of shop-keeping. I’d love to write more on this blog, but when you live in a small village, people talk. Mind you, I’m the second Darren Lock in this village – so god help us all! 🙂

Managed to get my fingers working again today. The pains in the fingers of my left hand are still there but have eased off slightly. I don’t think it is arthritis or anything like that, but probably the strain of lugging all those bundles of newspapers. I had a similar experience when I was a hack journalist mining the rockface in teletext for five years. Back in the day, I used to type a lot…and I mean a lot. My word count is up there with the professional touch typists (I think I scored 80 wpm when I was a student) and we used to do a lot of near-live stuff. Recipes on the screen for “This Morning” – yup that was us. Get the recipe faxed through from production at about 10.30, the item is on air at 11.05 with a mention five minutes later, so it has to be edited down, typed up, laid out on the screen and zap – on air within seconds across the various TV network regions of the UK. It was exciting stuff, but it takes its toll on the fingers. And so this familiar ache in my left hand reminds me of a different time when I was paid an awful lot of money to write with light.
Anyhoo, I rerecorded the “Super” track and gave it a new title – “The Sun Even Shines…” as in “the sun even shines on the dog’s arse once in a while”…
Oh look, a juggernaut…