Agh! When was my last back-up?

So I'm convalescing on the couch, laptop on lap. Life is good. But one can only spend so much time staring at a computer screen. I close the laptop. It heads into suspend mode as I lower it to the floor beside the couch. My arm doesn't quite extend far enough. One end of the computer is on the floor, but the other end drops a couple of inches. The hard drive heads are still engaged. End of hard drive. Gone. Dead. All my lovely files. I notice the drop and wince, but don't realize the significance until next time I open the computer, at which time it starts making little whimpering sounds.

I wait for the panic. This is far from my first hard drive crash. I have been through this before with all the classic steps of grief.

1. Denial -- it can't be. Maybe it's not really dead. Surely someone can bring it back for me.

2. Anger -- in this case, at myself. Why did I drop a valuable piece of electronic equipment on the floor? Why didn't I have a decent backup?

3. Bargaining -- HOW much does it cost for data retrieval on dead hard drives? Can I pay someone to bring back my lost files?

4. Depression -- The pictures I will never see again. The data lost. So devastating. So hopeless. So valuable and yet not worth the money to bring them back, even if it were possible.

5. Acceptance -- yes, my data is gone, but life will go on. I won't pay for resurrection. I will accept the loss and start a new collection of data on a new hard drive. I will survive.

So I wait for the panic. Arghh! My hard drive is dead. My data is lost. Let's see. What did I lose?

Uhm... well, I did a new blog post earlier today. Yes, and it's safely stored at blogspot.

Uhm ... mail files. I have lots of AOL mail files and this computer is the official storage spot for them. Yes, and the most recent ones are still on the AOL mail server. Is there really that much value in the old ones?

Data, surely I had valuable data on here. On a laptop? Why would you store your valuable data on a piece of equipment that can walk away in a moment? All the most essential files are stored other places, remember? Haven't you started storing most stuff in dropbox?

Pictures. I have pictures on here that may not exist anywhere else. Maybe, but aren't most of them pictures someone sent you via email? It's not as though you have the only copy in existence.

But always before I've missed most the little things, the files not worth backing up. The applications with no supporting media. What about those? Name one.

Hmm... so, still, I'm convalescing. I can't be expected to sit at a desktop during my time of need. So bring your work laptop home and use it.

That's it? No grief other than the value of the hard drive and the Windows license? This is certainly a change since the last hard drive tragedy.

(Placeholder for summary last line -- I'm still on my mental break.)