Don't tease me like that

I got the call from the computer technicians who had my laptop today. They had recovered data from the hard drive on my laptop. Needless to say I was thrilled. They also said my hard drive wasn't dead, but would need to be reformatted, which would wipe out the stuff on there. But they put the stuff they recovered onto a DVD. Could I come down and pick up the disk and sign some paperwork?

Hell, yes!

So off I went to the store, picked up the disk and signed paperwork to have the machine sent to the manufacturer to see if a they would fix a part that was broken under warranty. They said they couldn't guarantee the manufacture would say it was covered under warranty. But what the hell, I figured, it's worth a shot, and if I tried to keep using the machine with the broken part pretty soon the machine could become unusable. Since the machine is a laptop and the broken part is a hinge, which makes it damn near impossible to close the top without lots of sounds of cracking plastic and squealing on the part of the computer and myself. And if it keeps breaking further, what use is a topless laptop?

So off I went to my house with my little disk, all giddy. My photos! My music purchased from iTunes! It was worth the $99 for the recovery to not have to replace the music and there would be no way to replace the photos.

I got home, popped the dick into the old PC and went to look at my files. I knew I wouldn't have room on the old PC to move the recovered files there, but just to see them, to know they were there and safe would be reward enough for now. And there on the DVD were folders that looked familiar. I opened up my documents folder and inside that I opened up my photos folder. And all I found were the sample pictures that were in the folder when I bought the computer.

My giddy joy was replaced with sinking dread.

But I didn't panic. When they guy called to tell me they recovered stuff from the hard drive he told me they had found 4 backup attempts. He said he salvaged the last one. Obviously my stuff was in an earlier backup. So I call the store back. The guy one the phone plugged my machine into some other machine and he checked again. The earlier versions of the backup were completely empty.

Now it was too late to panic. Now the dread became outright despair over treasures lost.

There was one piece of good news out of the ordeal, although it involved another trip back to the store, and that was that they refunded my $99 recovery fee since, in fact, nothing was recovered except the basic files as part of the software installation. Oh, they said they could send my hard drive to their super tech gurus and run it through another whizbang machine, but that would cost several hundred, perhaps up to $1,500 dollars, or about twice what I paid for the laptop in the first place. And again, no guarantees anything could be recovered and weeks of waiting.

No I said. I can't afford that. Not financially. And I certainly couldn't afford the prospect of holding onto some slim hope again only to have those hopes dashed. Again.

So, now all that's left is to see if if the manufacturer will fix their machine. I mean, it seems reasonable to me to expect a laptop computer to be able to handle the wear and tear of opening the lid and closing it now and again. But who knows if they will think I'm too demanding of a customer. If they do think it's unreasonable I will certainly think it is unreasonable to pay them to repair it, and will most definitely find it unreasonable to ever buy one of their products again.

A guy can only stand so much rejection.