Well, today I'm really stressing. Yesterday I finally got around to doing a bit of spring cleaning on the PC, i.e wipe the fucker.
My whole family use this PC, so I told them weeks ago that this was coming. I backed up all of my important files (I'd hate to have to download that 70mb Counterstrike install again) onto CD's. My parents only use a select few programs so saving their stuff was easy, my younger brother on the other hand is a whole different matter.
I asked for over a week for him to back up any files he didn't want to lose. He spent it playing CS instead. I wanted to wipe everything a week ago, but couldn't start until my brother backed up his files. Finally on the friday he tells me that he has a folder on the desktop which he wants copying to CD. I make a mental note to do it later. My brother leaves for a long weekend of Hockey training.
So saturday comes and I decide to get down to business, I copy my parents files over to another partition, which is basically empty, and go to put my brother's files onto a CD-RW. I start it off to burn and then it rejects the CD, I need to wipe it first. I choose quick wipe, which takes 5 mins, then 10, then 15. I get bored and go and read for a while. 40 minutes total later and the CD is finally clean, then I notice that his files are under 50mb, so I just decide to copy to the other partition. Except I don't, for some reason I forget.
This happens every time, I wipe a HD and there's always one thing i forget, usually one of my own files. This time however it isn't.
So I'm stressing. My brother hasn't come back yet, all I know about those files, is that some folders were marked up as homework. Whether or not they actually contained homework or not is another matter. My brother often mark up his folders full of dope related texts and jokes as homework, becuase he thinks nobody will look in them.
So there's nothing I can do, I ran an undelete program, but the HD was formatted, so there's nothing left. I managed to salvage some homework files, but I have no idea if they were important or not. I don't take too much interest in my brother's schooling, I do know that recently he has had exams, and I'm praying that I haven't deleted any exam related coursework.
All I can do is wait until he gets back and break the news.
It doesn't stop me going over in my head who exactly is to blame for this. Now admittedly I deleted the files and have to accept responsibility for it. Although, if he had backed up the files when I had asked him, and done it himself, then this mess wouldn't have happened.
I have no idea whether he has any of his own backups for this work, but knowing my brother probably not. It's common sense though, what's one of the first things you learn when you first start using say, a word processing program?
SAVE!
If there's a power cut and you don't save, all that work you just did is gone.
It works the same with backing up your files, if you don't have a spare and a virus or something hits you, then you're in trouble.
I mean, I could twist this around all over the place and assign blame to everyone, but in the end, it's still my head. This could all be nothing, then again it could be everything, I may have deleted some assignment that is due in tomorrow. If I have, we're both screwed.
I guess all I can do it wait.