So… my hard drive, now, is busted,
And my backup’s busted, too,
And I sorta have to wonder…
If it happened, say, to you…

Is there something irreplaceable
You cannot do without?
The odds are you will lose it,
Why, there’s very little doubt!

So, consider this a warning
(Cos I’m trying to be nice)
It could all go south tomorrow–
Best to back it all up… twice!

The Tech geniuses at Cuttlefish U. tell me my desktop computer is a total loss. Which would not be a problem (I have an external drive dedicated as a Time Machine backup) except that my external drive is also now a paperweight. The computer is nine years old, more or less, which means it is older than Cuttlefish is (more or less), and has files I don’t remember writing. Much of what is there has been backed up multiple times… but if it is like every computer disaster I have known, there will be one or two things that I discover some time next month or next year that cannot be replaced, that I just lost.

Last time this happened, I was moving offices, and a case of notes I had held back (so as not to be lost in the move) was thrown away. They were what might, by now, have been a book (and no, not a book of verse). This time, I have much more of it backed up here and there. It will likely be a month or two before I discover I have lost some irreplaceable file.

But… (and this is my point)… I just lost a lot of data that I thought I had backed up. In fact, I just lost a lot of data that I *had* had backed up. So… back up your data twice. Be redundant. Burn a disk or two or seventeen, as well as that backup hard drive. Or that cloud thingy really I don’t actually understand or trust.

And… What’s the worst you have ever lost this way? Testify, so that others may learn from your losses!