Was working on 3 different projects, back to back, no room to stop. It was sleep and work and eat and nothing else for a week.
Everything is going good - I've got happy clients and I'm happy to have cleared some work and made room for the next load. So I decide to do the essential and clone the drive.
I set it going and go to sleep.
When I return, expecting the job to be done, I'm greeted with error messages. Clone failed!
Not only that - the drive from which I am cloning appears empty. I'm panicking inside; if that data is lost I'm gonna have to look for a new career.
I reboot - the data is safe, but not backed up.
I try again, and again. Failure upon failure.
I narrow it down to most likely being a problem with the drive I'm trying to clone. Every now and then it makes a weird clicking noise, and then the transfer dies. The ominous fact is that this could be an indication of impending death of the drive.
Got to get that data transferred.
It takes 3 days - I do it folder by folder, file by file.
Everything is transferred manually by drag and drop; and then I check file and folder sizes to compare.
Eventually I get there - everything intact - and I get to stay in the race and keep on playin'.
You're an island out there and there's no-one to help you so you need to survive by your skills.
Preserving data is a skill we must all be quite good at lest the worst take place and a job should disappear. They will remember the screwups longer than they remember the successes.
