Guru Maharaja's hard drive crashed last night. After going through some technical troubleshooting, it was determined today that the data is not recoverable.
If you have recently sent email to Guru Maharaja and have not yet received a response, send it to him again and he can check it through web mail.
How valuable was the lost data? There are some services who can recover “unrecoverable” data for some considerable amount of money.
The data includes several years of email correspondence and addresses. It seems to me like these would be very important, especially from an archival point of view. But the data recovery services begin at $1,000 and Guru Maharaja doesn't think that price tag is worth it. If he had been in the middle of writing a book it may have been the only option.
This is certainly a huge blow and yet another nasty lesson about the importance of regularly backing up files. I know that I take the safety of what's on my computer too much for granted. Now at least I'll think about coming up with a backup plan, at least for a few days . . . (sigh)
Technology is a real double edged sword. When it works it is great, but when it fails how frustrating!! I often wish I could back up my brain, cus I often feel my data is not recoverable (or it has never been recorded in the first place). Once Srila Sridhar M said that he had a dream in which he lost all his knowledge and only his sraddha remained! How important is our sraddha, especially the higher realms of it!!!
I am very sorry to hear that Gurudeva’s hard disk crashed.
1. Always beck up your data to CD or DVD ( in two copies)!
2. What is nature of damage? Is it mechanic or electronic damage? There are many ways how data can be saved from crashed hard disks. That can be done. Do not throw it away, when I come to Audarya we will see what we can do and probably save some data!
If only menahics is damaged, then 100% data could be restored!