posted
Our home was robbed last night as were 8 other homes in our little neighborhood of 15.
They stole all our computers and the backup drives. I lost several years of data for my research, papers I'm writing, a proposal that was due today, student grades, blah blah blah.
I don't even care about the monetary loss, I want my life back.
[ March 01, 2009, 06:01 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
That does sound really horrendous. Losing data is one of the worst things ever - I remember we discussed a while back about the different ways to protect data. This is not, in any way, a "I told you so", but just in the future it might be a good idea to backup somewhere online (edit: I had to learn this by being burned a couple of times too, although not at the level it appears you have been). I'd say I hope you can get your data back, but I suspect that's rather futile. Instead, I hope you can move on from this disaster with as little difficulty as possible.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
This happened to me a couple of years ago. The only thing I never expected was to physically lose all the data storage. I bring my backups home now, but have nowhere near the amount of data you describe.
Importantly, though, secure all your online accounts before they are accessed.
Posts: 496 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I know of a few sites, actually, that do. They do cost money, though.
Either way, it's not getting your data back. Losing that much in one go is... unimaginable, really. Or something I would not wish to imagine. You truly have my sympathies.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Re: backup, I'm assuming you mean around a single terabyte. Backing that much up would cost around $1800 a year in fees on Amazon's S3, plus the odd bit of transfer costs (probably less than a hundred dollars a year, since the transfer costs are priced for people serving large amounts of data).
And it would be tiny by the sorts of scales they often deal in. Let me know if you'd like some information on how you might set up a backup system like that.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
You have my deepest sympathies. I cannot imagine how that must feel. It almost makes me want to do monthly backups to external drives and put them in a safe deposit box...
Posts: 1099 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Couldnt you rent a server farm (like for webhosting) and back up onto that? Some have unlimited HD space.
And I'm sorry for your loss Rabit, I don't know what I would do, I think I would cry.
A possibility is in the future have a special program inbedded into your root that calls home ie sends an email to police with current location if its stolen.
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Blayne: none of them that say they have unlimited HD space actually do. There are restrictions in the TOS that put explicit or implicit limits on the HD space that can effectively be used.
There are, however, options.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I'm sorry to hear of it. You must feel violated and angry. I hope you have closure on it and feel safe at some point soon.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I'm so sorry Rabbit. I hope that somehow you can get back as much of that stuff as possible. I truly sympathize. Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Rabbit, that's terrible. I am so sorry; I know this will have repercussions for quite some time. Are you still in . . . was it Trinidad?
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I hate how what is simply cash to a thief can be so personal to the owner, and that likely doesn't even factor in the decision of the thief. The real crime is the theft of your personal data, not the theft of your metal-and-plastic.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Jeez, Rabbit. I'm sorry. That's scary and awful. I don't know anything about what the law enforcement situation in T&T is like, but I hope your things are recovered.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Sorry to hear that Rabbit. Our apartment was robbed in December, so I can at least relate to the invasive experience. I can't imagine losing that much work, though.
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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That's so terrible. I hope there's some ghost of a chance of recovering it. I'm very sorry for your ordeal, and for the loss of your data. That really sucks.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
T:Man Pawn. or auction. Probably wasn't just one guy though. Robbing a home doesn't take that long once you know what is valuable, however to do eight without being noticed at any time of day is a bit of a feat.
Sorry Rabbit, that bites. Any leads on the idiots who did it?
Posts: 86 | Registered: Feb 2009
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posted
(((Rabbit))) That's a lot of data, equivalent to years of your life that have been stolen, I imagine.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Yikes!!!! That's terrible news, Rabbit. I'm sorry this happened to you. Your encounter makes me think to buy a safe that is either too heavy for the average thief, or that is physically attached to the house somehow. Those safes are expensive, but I'm sure you'd agree now any price would be acceptable when it comes to so much information. You can also put money in there too.
Posts: 135 | Registered: Mar 2009
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: They stole all our computers and the backup drives. I lost several years of data for my research, papers I'm writing, a proposal that was due today, student grades, blah blah blah.
posted
The police have found our stuff!! Unbelievable!! They recovered most of the stuff stolen late Friday night. I got a call this morning to go in and identify my stuff. They didn't recover everything but they did recover both my computer and my husbands and the hard drive with the complete set of data.
The most amazing part of this story is that the stuff was all found in what the police described as a computer lab and I imagine was more a kind of chop shop for stolen electronics. All the other computers stolen from our neighborhood (and there were quite a few) had had the hard disks reformated. Ours and my externals were the only ones left in tact.
They are currently photographing all the stuff for evidence. They arrested a couple people and I will have to go to court someday but I should have my stuff back by noon tomorrow.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
If you are interested. here is the article on the robbery that got published in Saturday's paper. This was prior to the news that the stolen property had been recovered. The article is mostly accurate. We don't have a security guard and our apartments aren't posh, they are very middle class even in Trinidad. But aside from those a few minor errors, they got the big picture right and didn't even badly misquote me.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
wow! A happy ending! Posts: 3060 | Registered: Nov 2003
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: The police have found our stuff!! Unbelievable!! They recovered most of the stuff stolen late Friday night. I got a call this morning to go in and identify my stuff. They didn't recover everything but they did recover both my computer and my husbands and the hard drive with the complete set of data.
The most amazing part of this story is that the stuff was all found in what the police described as a computer lab and I imagine was more a kind of chop shop for stolen electronics. All the other computers stolen from our neighborhood (and there were quite a few) had had the hard disks reformated. Ours and my externals were the only ones left in tact.
They are currently photographing all the stuff for evidence. They arrested a couple people and I will have to go to court someday but I should have my stuff back by noon tomorrow.
posted
Not all my stuff but all the most important stuff. I'm still missing a cell phone, the second backup drive, a soprano recorder, my husbands wallet and likely a few other things.
But they recovered the irreplaceable data so the other things don't matter right now.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Corwin: Wow... That's some amazing luck!
Too bad for the others though...
We are hoping stuff will still be recoverable from my neighbors computers once we get them into expert hands. Keep your fingers.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
Rabbit, I'm so glad to hear that your data was intact. And it's pretty impressive what recovery programs can do -- I know someone who managed to recover a fair amount of data from a formatted hard drive using some relatively inexpensive software. So here's hoping your neighbors' stuff can be restored as well.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: The most amazing part of this story is that the stuff was all found in what the police described as a computer lab and I imagine was more a kind of chop shop for stolen electronics. All the other computers stolen from our neighborhood (and there were quite a few) had had the hard disks reformated. Ours and my externals were the only ones left in tact.
Woo. The question is: were they not reformatted due to lucky timing, or had the thieves left your stuff unformatted because they looked at it and thought some of the stuff contained within was valuable?
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I'm so sorry Rabbit. I can't even imagine how horrible it must be.
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