Man, I hope to NEVER have another day like this in my life! For the past few weeks, I have been consolidating all my files from all my computers - everything I have ever created (every program I have written, every document, every image, etc.). Basically, collecting my entire history onto one single hard drive.

It has been a major project, to say the least.

When I was a kid, I made a ton of various audio recordings. Mostly stupid stuff, but it represents my past - my history - and I am very fond of it, so I would like to preserve these silly recordings. I am not sure why, but I guess I just don't question my compulsions, much. I have so few. Basically, my whole life has revolved around computers...so now I am transferring all these audio recordings to disk.

But I don't like to have all my eggs in one basket, so to speak, so I figured it was time to establish a mirror setup so I have a backup copy of all this stuff in case anything should happen. GEE - NOT LIKE ANYTHING BAD EVER HAPPENS ON A WINDOWS SYSTEM!!!

Useless Microsoft!

In my ignorance, I set up this catch-all drive as a "dynamic" disk under Windows XP. This was before I knew anything about dynamic disks, and before I knew I couldn't convert the blasted thing back to a basic disk. So, I was stuck with a dynamic disk. According to Microsoft literature, dynamic disks are more fault tolerant - or at least are supposedly easier to recover. Well...I'LL BELIEVE THAT WHEN I SEE IT! Just not today.

After weeks of copying disks and audio tapes and waiting for a RAID controller card to come in the mail (after I learned you can use Windows XP Pro to administer fault tolerant configurations on remote Windows 2000 servers, but not on Windows XP Pro - what the heck? - I had no other option but to get a RAID controller), disaster struck. I went through a whole series of gyrations and tests, etc., etc., etc. to make sure I knew what I was doing before I connected my 120 GB hard drive full of data to this RAID controller and configured it for RAID level 1. But, sure enough - as sure as death, taxes and the wrath of Bill Hates (Gates???), as soon as I established the configuration, my drive disappeared from the operating system!

Somehow, this wonderfully recoverable, stable dynamic disk I had, full of my past history, was no longer readable by the operating system. Disk Administrator said it was offline, but would not allow me to reactivate it. Event Viewer showed two errors in the sytem log about the LDM (Logical Disk Manager) and how some "magic number" was missing (yes, those exact words were there), and these error messages had absolutely no additional information available for them (and a web search turned up NOTHING - leave it to me to get the worst of the worst).

Anyway, to make a long horror story short, I found and purchased (for $80! Ouch!) some data recovery software that was able to recover all my files from the disk. Well, we'll see. The file system was all intact, but Microsoft's own operating system that created it, simply couldn't read it anymore. Piece of dog doo-doo. Anyway, the restore operation has been going since 7:30 this evening, and it is now about 10:15 pm and is about half-way done. We'll see if it does its job, but I may not know for sure until Wednesday, because I am going to be away for the next four days. GREAT TIMING! Not like I'll be able to enjoy myself with this crap on my mind.

What's it all worth, anyway?

I'm re-thinking my entire life. The computer almost went out the window today (and it's a long way down). My chair flew across the room at least. Once this consolidation effort is done, I am archiving everything I value onto DVD, getting rid of every computer except one (and my Linux box that never seems to so much as gurgle, except when I trip over it), and I am only ever going to use the computer for email and playing games. If even that. I will be pursuing a career in video production and will resume my hobby of flying model airplanes. NO MORE COMPUTER CRAP!!! Technology sucks. It takes the fun out of everything.

So there!