Dude, Where's My Muse?

On Monday I went to boot up and got the black screen that informed me of Boot Manager problems which terrified me. To say I hadn't exactly been backing up regularly would be an understatement and I didn't really want to lose all of my workshops, work, notes, emails, etc since my last backup. It didn't help that the day before I'd cleaned off two of my SD cards and happily clicked format when I put them back in the camera without backing them up off the hard drive.

A quick google search later I found a great post on how to download and use ubuntu as a workaround to get to my files on the crashed computer and safely back them up. After a three hour download of ubuntu on my dad's computer, I burned the program according to the instructions, headed to my computer and prayed like crazy this was going to work. The article I found mentioned a bunch of command prompts to use if things didn't pop up right away. Luckily for me, the Ubuntu loaded easily and within a few clicks I was able to get things loaded onto the external in case of disaster. The only issue I had was the 'install ubuntu' icon was a little too close to my liking to where the file windows tended to open. Once or twice I nearly hit it, which would have started to install and therefore, erase all my files before I managed a rescue.

Soon as I find the article link again, I'll update the post with the info. Definitely a lifesaver!