It’s Thanksgiving, the day we gather with family and friends to eat too much turkey, and toast the things we’re most thankful for with too much wine. This year I’m most thankful for my external hard drive.

Wait! What did she just say? She’s thankful for her external hard drive? Yes, you heard right.

A week and a half ago, my much loved Toshiba laptop, after 10+ years of devoted service, crashed. We knew it was coming. There’d been talk of replacing it, but, of course, we put it off. Now I go back and forth between working on my husband’s desk top for the printer connection, and my daughter’s old laptop where I have an email connection. Meanwhile, the search is on for the best option for my new laptop in the Black Friday tech sales. Another thing to be thankful for, Black Friday! Never thought I’d ever say that.

Here’s where my one great saving grace comes into play. My external hard drive. I had backed up my files and pics before shutting down for a trip a couple weeks before, so all I lost were a couple reports I had emailed to others, allowing me to retrieve them.

This could have been a catastrophe. Instead, it’s merely an inconvenience. I’m thankful that I learned after my last hard drive crash that I need to have something larger than a memory stick. And, I need to do more frequent back-ups.

Computers are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they make our work lives more productive. On the other, going paperless is a daily risk of losing everything. Even back-up systems can fail. (I keep copies of my writing on the external hard drive, a memory stick, AND hard copies!)

Of course, I’m also thankful for friends and family. I’m thankful for good health, a roof over my head, and food in my cupboard. But, right now, the writer in me is very thankful for her external hard drive.