0's and 1's are invaluable

Lost money could be earned, lost equipment could be purchased and so on/ so forth with any physical equipment, but data loss is irreparable and unrecoverable !
Being invisible & virtual in nature, it makes it the most vulnerable thing you can lose (at least for me!)

Want to know why I brag about all this so much ?? Well, this is something which happened to me recently that still floats amidst my senses. It was Nov 15, our semester exams ended @ college, couple of my friends had planned to get over to Bangalore for the famous House-Hunt before we joined our internships there. And so that night, I had my invaluable PC (hard disk rather, I prefer to be bound to the 'data') dismantled. I had plans to come back to hostel in a couple of days (after I confirmed my accommodation) and mail the PC straight to my house. So I left my belonging in my room, locked it up and moved to Bangalore. The house-hunt yielded fruitful results (all that s a different story altogether)

Two days hence I returned to hostel and unlocked my room to find something missing. I had placed one more thing on my cot !! Oh my god, UPS ???????? My 2k APC UPS was nowhere to be found. Scouring over the entire room I could find no trace of it. Was it a theft ?? I couldn't believe this totally. After couple of enquiries around, I accepted my fate and finally did let go. But there was more in store !

It was 23 Nov and I planned to pack my PC up and mail it to Bangalore. It was my habit to dismantle the CPU, remove the hard disk and take it with me (I'm pretty much data-conscious !!), so I removed the slate. "So here it is, very tightly screwed eh ?? Good", thought I and began to loosen the screws subconsciously without looking at what it actually was. "Dhunggg.." popped out the "Floppy-Drive..". Wat the hell !! So where was the HARD DISK ?? I frantically dived into the box and put my hand into all slots, but in vain. "Man, I can't believe this. Is this a planned assault on my PC ??" I was in no way ready to accept the fact, I knew what all my drives housed, 160 GB of heterogeneous data, which I could no way compromise with.

Not knowing what to do, I called up my friend and he gave me the shock of my life.
"RAM irukka paaru da !!". And so I peeped in ...........VOID AGAIN.................... The bloody "whomsoever concerned" had robbed my off my most vital components in a planned conspiracy, while I was away. Such incidents do occur in the hostels often (hard disks, mobiles being the major Area of Interest for the culprits), but that it had happened to me was simply indigestible.

And if you are wondering why I give such high a fuss about my hard disk, here are its contents:
D: - All softwares (A-Z) lined up totaling 20 GB, all of my project source code, documents.
E: - Audio/Video songs of diverse languages totally 40 GB (with the most wildest collection ever)
F: - Photographs taken since my first year in college (so that makes another 15 GB), assorted study materials, misc wallpapers (you could find a wallpaper on any topic you chose to) easily figuring 5 GB, my academic stuff & backups of the work/packages I had done over the last 5 yrs.
G: - Tutorials (placements, misc) spread over 18 GB
H: - Stuff on Higher Studies(GRE, bla bla bla...) which summed up to 10 GB.

Besides, there were two Linux Partitions that held significant data as well. Besides XP, I had Fedora 6 & Ubuntu running.. (This is a rough amount of the data I am able to summarize, there were several others ! My hostel-mates will acknowledge that..)

The next one day I turned very suspicious and began eying everybody who passed by my room as the suspect. I put myself into his shoes and began thinking of "5 good reasons why he shouldn't be the culprit !!!". I wasnt worried about the other components, that I had lost "MY PRECIOUS DATA" was thorning my every moment. There I then emerged as Sherlock Homes unraveled his mysteries @ the end. The only difference - I had no Watson to help me :( I had noticed the bolt of the door being unusually stiff and bent the day I came in, but I dint give it any thoughts. So it was actually forced through and the mastermind had managed to retain the lock in its normalcy. I spotted a stone lying at the far end of the corridor, which was probably made use of ! I was able to interlink events now, but it had no potential use now. Tracing a hard disk in a hostel of 2000 inmates was a herculean (rather impossible) task.

The last day @ hostel was extremely agonizing, I was reminded of the loss every moment, all I wanted to do was - "Get out of this damn place as soon as possible".
I reluctantly wrapped up the "mortal remains" of my PC and mailed them.
And drowned into lamentation, I left Coimbatore with a bitter climax !!

That night I wondered of the paramount importance and value, these random bits of o's and 1's hold. Data loss is indeed the severest of all !!

[P.S. Should the reader come across my hard disk, please do let me know immediately. Thou shall be richly rewarded !!]