I thought I was going to throw up…

Pin It It is a beautiful Saturday and I was finishing my standard reports. I also was having some difficulty with my laptop. I decided to format the hard drive, and reinstall the operating system.

I hooked up my external hard drive and began to back up files. You know, my professional photos, all of the sixth grade photos for the graduation video, and all the video files for not only graduation, but for my classroom DVD as well. I also had a treasure trove of files on this external drive including my trip whitewater rafting last summer with my friend, Ron Firmage, and my classroom website.

In a few words, there was a HUGE amount of data stored on this drive

When I restarted my computer and made ready to format, I noticed a second “hard drive.” Now, why would I have that? When it was formatted before, was an extra partition created to simulate an additional hard drive? Well, that might possibly help explain just why my laptop was running rather slowly, and a few items wouldn’t install properly.


I decided to delete the partition, format the drive completely, and then reinstall Windows. As I deleted the partition for the “D” drive, my eyes suddenly fell on my external hard drive near my computer. That is when the horrible realization hit me…I had deleted the partition on my external hard drive!

Now, you may be unsure what a partition is…in an easy word, a hard drive is like a large, dark warehouse. All of the files you store are kept here. The partition is like an index, or database, where a map is kept which tells your computer where to find the files on the hard drive. Without the partition and index, the computer wanders into the “storeroom” and finds nothing there.

I had deleted the map.

I felt horribly sick. I dropped to my knees as the realization of what I’d done washed through me like a tidal wave of dread. I had just destroyed hundreds—possibly even thousands—hours of work.

I just stared at the screen.

I had completely destroyed the final copies of over five hundred “professional” photographs I’d taken, about five hours of raw video footage, and files I need for graduation this week.

Not knowing what else I could do, I did a search online and downloaded a program which claims that it can restore data which has been lost….the program has now been running for over five hours and has only analyzed about 17 percent of the drive.

I am hopeful though…

I hope I don’t throw up.