I own a 120 GB IBM DeskStar drive, which is one of many in a series of IBM/Hitachi drives that are well-known to die a horrible, clicking death. I’m pretty sure that I’ve lost all of my MP3s, but that’s okay – I’ve had the music for years and I’ve listened to most of it enough to have it all memorized. Pandora satisfies my music fix now, and I know a lot of songs I hear on the on the XM Chill and Ethel stations.
I picked up a USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE adapter from Brando so that I could have quick access to my old desktop and laptop drives. The experience with the doomed music drive left me disheartened, but I plugged in my old Windows/Linux dual-boot drive to explore.
My old Windows partition is a time capsule from 2003-2004 and earlier. There exists a .viminfo file containing dusty outlines of text-editing session, which includes a list of previously-opened files and copy-and-paste buffers.
All of my music projects live there quietly with an outdated copy of Propellerheads Reason as company. I just spent a good hour listening to my favorite MOD and MADH music tracks, and I still remember details ofeach of those hundred or so songs. I thought they were mindblowing when I listened to them in 1996 and 1997.
Remember when I used to make swaths of downbeat music and post it online? No? Yeah, that’s fine – ‘twas a long time ago.
© Ian Langworth