I recently had to format my laptop because I was using a beta version of Windows 7, which expired.
And this happened on day 2 of a 11 day trip. Yes, bhagwan help me, I know.
However, the logic I follow with laptops or desktops is that I keep a separate partition on the hard drive with all my personal data, documents, device drivers, setup for basic utilities (anti-virus, firefox, SSH, etc) just in case of random formats and OS reinstalls and such. Being the genius that I am, I obviously thought about backing up my Outlook emails to this second drive also. However, somewhere, somehow, during the backup, I only asked Outlook to backup the main inbox. Not the sub-folders under it that I use to actually store my old mails (I am anally organised that way, ask anyone who’s Start Menu and Windows Desktop I’ve had the chance to clean up!!!)
However, I only found this out AFTER i had formatted my laptop (and reinstalled Windows (and reinstalled Outlook (and tried to restore the backed-up emails))).
So, basically, for the last two weeks, I’ve been running on emails from only the last two months, that I could download from the server again. It is a bloody nightmare for someone like me who has to often refer emails months and quarters old.
Today, I get back to Bangalore, turn on my portable hard-drive and guess what I see? A completely functional backup from a day before flying out. I had forgotten that I habitually backup my laptop a day before leaving for any trip.
You know you are a fanatic back-upper when you remember to actually backup even when you forget that you had back-upped.
Muscle memory, boys. Muscle memory!
Total damage: 0 lost emails.
Jai ho!