Stirrings Of A Techno Revolution

It has always been a custom to duplicate every bits and parts of me in a medium other than the hard disk. In a time when floppy drives were used to store data, I had three crates of diskettes whose sole purpose was to serve as repositories for DOS Games I copied from computer shops in Recto. Internet was not yet available and Windows 98 ran on Intel 486 computers. Those were the days when Verbatim was the flash drive of the present and pirated CD-ROMs sold in Brochiere cost three hundred pesos in Virra Mall. I was obsessed with my DOS games - so obsessed I copied them all in case the computers where they were stored suddenly got infected by a Trojan Virus.

When CD-ROMs became in and my personal computer got its first state-of-the art upgrade, (its obsolete parts were replaced by Pentium 2 processor, 1 GB storage disk, a 4x LG CD player and a separate disk burner) the first thing I did is to copy the MP3s from my computer to blank disks I bought in Dapitan. It was the golden age of computer gaming and audio ripping. Much of my forbidden sources were acquired from University Mall in Taft and they were all converted to digital files. The stores where I bought them don't exist anymore.

A decade has passed but I remained stuck with my three-year old desktop computer that needs a badly-needed upgrade. While almost everyone have their own laptop computers, I got my first flash disk only recently. It was a gift from a friend and naming it Avestra, its original purpose was for storage of songs from my hard drive. Its designation as a third-party device for file transfer proves useful when downloading from a broadband-connected computer. The original plans were scrapped. With WiFi revolutionizing humanity's access to the web, I need the flash disk for I remain dependent in dial-up for connection.

Things would have remained static now that my personal funds are being shuffled to varied priorities. I was too confident that my back-up drive would store the ancient documents, pictures and songs even when the disk where the operating system is installed reverts to its Tabula Rasa state. But an insignificant mp3 changed everything. A click over the Windows Media Player icon followed by a press of the delete button and the file should have been deleted. However, the system found the error too late. This evening, the entire contents of the Alternative Songs folder went missing.

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Panic was averted only because the hard-to-get songs were already copied in the iPod. It was no reason to remain secured though, after all, I still have to look for a program that would salvage the songs. Instead, the disk failure should serve as a warning.

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The songs were all recovered, luckily, after running a disk error program to check the operating system. I learned that the one song from A Perfect Circle; that one corrupted file bound for deletion nearly destroyed my life's work.

As a result, both storage devices now contain all my digital effects. But the signs of doom will never put me to rest. The custom of duplicating me - to the point of redundancy - must live on. Plans should be drawn up to invest in a gadget like this:

I may still rely on desktop computers and dial-up connections to remain online for some time, but having this technological leap: this conscious attempt to guarantee the continued existence of the things that were long preserved

remains essential to my long-term survival.