Well, It is my Anniversary day of 2014 and what do I have? Both my wife and kiddo are in native town and I am all alone. Good news is that I have all the time in the world to spend it nicely and effectively. So how do I spend this time nicely now? I have a very important task which I have been waiting from long time to get it done - There is a desktop computer of mine which is around 8 yrs old and it contains lot of my old precious snaps which I have not been able to transfer to my new laptop, because of the USB ports not working on that desktop. So I want to spend my day in getting those precious snaps with an organised plan in place.
Plan - A -
It is simple. Remove the hard disk (HDD). Take it to a computer hardware shop. Get a cable which connects the desktop HDD to my laptop USB port and copy the data. Pretty simple. So as planned I remove the HDD, take my two wheeler and go to the computer shop which is nearby. As from my history books, simple plans never fall in place as planned, so as I did not expect, the shop was closed. So what, no problem. Move to next shop. Again, as I begin to start expecting, that cable is not available. The same is the result in another couple of shops. Well, it dawns on me that my Plan - A has failed miserably being a simple one. I have no choice but to return back home.
Plan - B -
I see the size of my precious photos, its around 10 GB. So I decide to think of Plan - B now. Again, plan B is now to connect my desktop to internet, copy my files into my share drive (which is called Skydrive by Microsoft) and then download it using my laptop. Its a time consuming process but will definitely work. So as it happens, I boot my desktop and notice that it is running on Windows XP. (For those who do not know, Microsoft has recently stopped any kind of support to XP operating system). So I try to open Google in my old IE version 6 browser and it starts throwing all sorts of errors. Somehow I try to avoid all of those and go on to Skydrive homepage and login. After logging in, it asks me to upgrade my browser to either IE8 or Firefox or Chrome or safari. Well, its simple, just click a button and it starts downloading the update files. However, once download is complete, I try to start my update process and it shows a message on my face saying update cannot proceed due to some internal processing error. The same error comes for all the specified browser update files. Now this is getting a little weird. I cannot update and I cannot use Skydrive without the update. Its a road block again. After trying few more tricks, I give up. There is no point in pursuing Plan B anymore. Its failed again.
Plan - C -
Well, its a namesake plan. I do not have any plan C now. Running out of ideas and am still wondering and thinking about how I can get past this. As one final resort, I just plan to try out my USB slot. This is the same thing I had tried somewhere an year ago without any success. Still out of the living frustration, it is my only hope now even-tough I know the truth. And as I expect this not to work, my only way would be to take the HDD to one of my friend's place where the USB slot could be working and use it to copy my files. So I get my pen drive, insert into the USB drive of my desktop knowing the result as failure... but what do I see here. Suddenly there is prompt on my desktop saying "a new hardware has been recognized". Somehow I freeze and stare the monitor in disbelief that my USB drive is working. I double check and YES, it is working. Immediately without wasting any further time, I get my external HDD and insert into the USB drive and start copying.
With a happy and a pretty much relieved mindset now, I see the files slowly copying on my monitor and start wondering why did I waste my last 5 hours using the Plan A and B. If I had tried out the USB in first place, it would all have been copied by now. As it dawns to me that I am still a software engineer by profession and its a pretty usual practice that we always try all other routes before touching the basic routes unless otherwise specified. I recall another similar incident which brings an instant smile on my face and keep staring at the monitor looking at the files being copied with total disbelief.
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