Backup

A Short Story

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It was time!

Two years after he bought it, it was time to format the laptop. The machine had slowed down over the years. It had so many software installed that he did not even remember why they were installed in the first place. A nice machine with a nice configuration, it had served him good from watching movies to writing mails.

He hated the formatting part because it meant taking a backup of all the files. Searching the small bit of information stored carelessly in the hard disk. Searching for every bit of relevant and irrelevant bytes of data in the sectors and tracks of the hard disk.

For 2 days he copied each and every file he thought necessary. He decided that one day he was going to sort all this data. He knew he never would. The data on the backup hard disk was arranged haphazardly. The priority was formatting the laptop. Data can be organized later.

Last came the pictures. Thousand of memories stores in that little hard disk. Somewhere in a folder with a stupid name was her photos. Her few photos she had sent him through mails and chats.

Chats?

He remembered the long chats with her on Yahoo Messenger. He logged in to the chat software and clicked on the archive option. The archived showed all chats arranged according to date. His fingers stiffened as he clicked on each and every chat he had with her. He knew that after formatting all this will be lost, gone forever.

All those moments on the chat when they talked to each other, laughed with each other and waited for each other. Everything will be gone with the click of the button. Memories erased at the touch of a single click. Many memories going back to those years, every conversation, every fight, every tease and every smile. It was all there. Just a click and everything would be gone, just like that.

He waited and then slowly started copying the chats. If it would have been easy, he would have erased all those memories long ago. He clinched his fist.

God! He hated backups!

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Note: It is amazing how much data is stored in our computer. More of it is personal data rather than work-related data and each bit of information is associated with that moment, those memories. Inspired while taking a backup of my laptop.

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