How To Prepare For A Computer's Death

Not more than a few months ago, I found myself in a terrible predicament: both of

my computers contracted some problems while I was in the middle of my busiest semester of my college career. Yikes!

My spouse, who is fairly gifted with computers--or at least diagnosing them--let me know that one computer had the equivalent of the flu while the other had terminal cancer. Yes, the older of the two computers was dying.

Now, most students don't have two separate computers, but in that case, a dying computer is even more dire. My spouse warned me to avoid even turning on my fading hardware in the event the hard drive crashed altogether with the stress.

Hopefully if you know your computer is on the verge of death, you will not need to avoid turning it on, but if you are in fear of doing further damage, you might want to visit the tech department at your school or in your office.

If there isn't one readily available, then visit a local shop. There are even some services that will come right to your home to help you out.

You will want to avoid leaving the job of rescuing your data to a nonprofessional friend or family member. Though my spouse knows his way around a computer and can recognize a serious problem, he knew he was not qualified to fix it or make any adjustments by himself. That job is best left to someone with substantial training.

Make an assessment of what actually needs to be saved. When I was a teenage girl, my computer's files were chalk full of headshots of my favorite celebrities, but those are readily available on any search engine, so when my first desktop bit the dust, I knew I didn't need to rescue those files.

As you get your files to a secure location, avoid using CDs or DVDs. They are fragile and can be broken or scratched, in which case you lose your documents and files forever. Instead, look into data recovery services that can make sure that everything gets saved properly.

You may also want to e-mail yourself or save your documents to an online location. This can be difficult with files that contain confidential information, but it is a good option for papers, pictures, spreadsheets, and so on.

by: Art Gib

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