Some time last year, my Mac Mini’s hard-disk decided to die on us. As the Mac Mini had been sputtering along for a few weeks prior to the day the hard-disk totally gave up on itself, I had been kiasu enough to back up all my data.
So I thought.
In fact, I had forgotten to export my bookmarks from Firefox, my Stickies and some entries written using some journal software.
I first tried to start the Mac Mini in Target mode. No go.
Tried a lot of other things to get my Mac Mini back into commission. Sacrificed a bunch of virgins. Slaughtered a cow. Threw coins into a wishing well. Didn’t troll for a week.
No go.
I decided to put off the salvage and recover operations until I had finished moving to my new place.
So move to the new place I did and my Mac Mini set on my desk as an overpriced paperweight for the last 3 months.
Maybe it was time to buy Disk Warrior 4 and try to extract the data. Data which weren’t just bits on a computer hard-disk, but memories, recorded memories of the first 3 years of my relationship with my gf.
The thing about recording stuff down, be it on a blog, in a journal or saved in a .txt file is that it frees you to live your life. The past is important, and you want to remember it, but there is only so much mental capacity to keep all the stuff in, and properly organized.
Recording stuff allows your brain to just be the File Allocation Table. You just need to remember where things are stored. Not the exact details of the things stored. When, or rather if ever, you need to remember the details, you just go to the cluster to retrieve your data.
It sucks knowing that there isn’t a place I can go now to retrieve some information from that period of my life.
It is over.
Today, I decided not to initiate, or rather, continue the rescue mission. I decided to wipe the disk and try a new installation of Panther.
Not sure why … Maybe I think the situation is beyond hope. Or maybe there are some things I want to leave buried alongside the many things I want to remember.
A little of me is gone.
If you have no memory, did you ever exist?
