My backup drive gave up in a Bangkok cafe and I'm not even mad

It happened last Tuesday around 3 PM, right as I was about to send final files to a client. My portable SSD, a 2TB model I've had for two years, just stopped showing up on my laptop. No warning clicks, just gone. Everyone says you need triple backups in the cloud, but I've always kept one physical drive with me. I had to run to a mall, buy a new drive for about $120, and restore everything from an online backup that took six hours on the cafe Wi-Fi. Honestly, it was a hassle, but it proved my system worked. I see so many posts saying you must avoid all physical media, but having that local restore option saved my deadline. Has anyone else had a hardware fail on the road and been glad they didn't put all their eggs in one digital basket?

3 comments

3 Comments

janac592mo ago

Just read an article calling local backups a "digital dinosaur." Your story is the perfect counterpoint that physical fails happen, but a local copy can be the fastest fix. Sometimes the old way still works best.

the_oliver2mo ago

Digital dinosaur" is funny, my grandpa still keeps his tax records on floppy disks.

the_elizabeth20d ago

Oh, has your grandpa ever had a floppy disk die on him? My friend's dad stored all his recipes from the 90s on a Zip drive and one day it just clicked and never spun up again. He lost like 15 years of stuff, including his mom's handwritten chili recipe that nobody else had written down. It's wild how fast that kind of thing can go.