<p>I wanted to take a few minutes to share a very difficult situation our son experienced this past week so that maybe other architecture (or other disciplines really I guess) students could learn from it as he did. </p>
<p>Early this past week his entire semester’s worth of studio work was lost when his external hard drive crashed. He obviously was devastated, not only because he lost his entire semester of work, but because it involved his group’s and his individual final project that was due Friday. He had saved his work to this external hard drive and not his laptop because his hard drive on his laptop was basically full as well. As those of you in this field know, the man hours that go into this type of work are incredible, and with finals in his other classes coming up, lack of sleep/eating, etc…well, let’s just say it hasn’t been the best of weeks. </p>
<p>He took his HD to Best Buy (do not do this if it happens to you) and they did a diagnostic on it only to hand it back to him and to say that nothing could be done. In the meantime, I went online and found a data recovery lab that we thought might be some help. He sent the hard drive overnight to this lab and the gentleman there at first thought his files could be saved and fixed. He posted them to a server, and s thought that he could get them, use the work and not have to redo his final part of the project. Unfortunately, some of the photoshopped files -of course the big one he really needs- are corrupted and the lab is trying to retrieve them (very costly btw- but much less than other commercial stores) His professor graciously granted him an extension, but he has basically had to redo all of his work. This couldn’t have happened at a worse time as you can imagine, but he has learned a great deal from it. </p>
<p>I am sure most of you have more knowledge of the importance of backing up your work in two or three different places or ways, he didn’t. He thought he was safe with the external hard drive. The kind gentleman at the lab has told him that you should back up work in 2-3 places, and to transfer all material to a new hard drive every 3 years. His external hard drive was just a little over a year old, so anything can happen- it doesn’t have to be age related. </p>
<p>We are hopeful that all of his files, even the corrupted ones, can be eventually retrieved, but not in time for this project. His number of hours/stress/headache increased significantly because of this unfortunate situation. It has been hard, and as a parent I tried to impress upon him the fact that in the scheme of things (just think about those poor souls in Alabama who lost EVERYTHING including their loved ones), this was just a big life lesson, but it been hard on him.</p>
<p>Anyway, I hope by sharing this long story, it will maybe help some of the arch students on this board. Back up, back up and then back up again in 2-3 different places :)</p>
Hopefully he’ll get his stuff back :)I know how it feels. I lost 3 of my artworks of my AP Art class and I never found them. Luckily I took pictures of them so I could submit the pictures to AP, but one of them is my favorite and I planned to send it to AP (AP require us to send in 5 pieces for quality check). I guess I’ll need 2 external hard drives then :D</p>