My computer died this morning. It makes funny noises when I turn it on, almost like it's laughing at me. "Nyeh-nyeh-nyeh-vrom-click-click-nyeh-nyeh-nyeh." I think it's the hard drive, so I've ordered another one. I'll be back online sometime next week. (Can't read mail either, so use a comment.)

I'm actually kind of relieved. In an age of 90GB hard drives that still obey the law that data expands to fill all available space, having your hard drive go dead is a form of Herculean spring cleaning. And I do have backups of essential data. Lost maybe two weeks of mail.

Here's a neat trick, btw, that solves several problems at once: Install a file encryption program like Drivecrypt (or the freeware version, Scramdisk) and create a 700mb container file, exactly the size of a CD. Let's call it c:\stuff.svl. Place a shortcut to c:\stuff.svl in you startup-folder, so you'll be prompted for a password at logon. It'll mount as a drive of its own, for instance H:\. Set the my documents folder to point to that drive. Move all absolutely essential and/or personal files to the encrypted drive - mail, notes, 5 year old abandoned diaries, etc, (photographs, video and other large files excluded). Now you have only one file to take your monthly backups of, (c:\stuff.svl), and you can leave copies of it around without worrying about who's going to read that 5 year old diary. If your hard drive fries, you've only lost as much data as your most recent backup. If your computer is stolen, the thief can't read your mail. If your house burns down, you've left a copy with a friend. It's not completely straightforward, but if you do it right you'll never lose that data. (In the case of old diaries, that might be a bad thing.)

Of course, if you forget your password you're screwed.

(And yes, this is the first and hopefully last completely technical post in this blog. I think differently at work.)

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