Requiem for a Hard Drive

It died yesterday, the hard drive in my Mac Book.

For six years, during spans of employment and unemployment, it chugged along until it could no longer.

It was old, I knew that. So when I turned it on yesterday and it took longer than usual to boot up and I heard ominous clicking sounds from the innards of the computer, I panicked but was not surprised. I really should have seen this coming. In fact, I knew the day of reckoning was near. So much so that I recently took money from a retirement account, ostensibly to pay bills, but I knew a big chunk of that coin would someday soon pay for a new model when the inevitable day came when my old computer died.

I called Apple, but the nice lady could do nothing for me except make an afternoon appointment at the nearby Apple store.  

I lugged the heavy, now-dead computer there, and told the young techie what the problem was. He took it into the back room to do more tests. (As a cancer survivor, more tests means bad news.) Sure enough, he confirmed the worst: The hard drive had died and all my files were lost. (Please spare me the I told you so’s about backing up my files. I didn’t. I’m no

techie. And how many people in this age of the Cloud and google docs backs up their files anyway?)

The choice was this: Keep the old computer with a new hard drive inserted in it, take the now-dead hard drive to a data recovery service in the hopes of resurrection (which may or may not be possible and would cost at $300), or buy a new computer.

Merely replacing the old hard drive with a new one would have been the cheapest option, but one that would have left me without a computer for days. With no computer, I can’t work, and if I don’t work I don’t make money. I need money.

And like everyone else, I like shiny and new. So I bought a new MacBook Air (the cheapest one I could reasonably afford while still buying one useful for work), and will contact a data recovery service to see if anything can be salvaged from my old hard drive.

The irony isn’t lost. Me, the person who rails about employers who only want to hire young people ditched without hesitation my faithful old computer whose only crime was that it aged. The hard drive may have died, but what remained could have worked again. Yep, folks, I laid off my old computer. Just like that.

Apparently, I’m like every potential employer: I want shiny and new and easy. So much easier to hire a young person, right? So much easier to train on new tech systems. So much easier to justify the lower salary, even if they don’t have the experience or qualifications for the job. They come with no baggage, unlike my old hard drive with its decades-old files and photos. Who wants old?

Is this what out society has come to? It’s one thing to discard a computer for a newer model, but a person? Just like that old hard drive, perhaps our knowledge and life experience can be saved and put to use once again. Here’s hoping ... for me and the old hard drive.