Summerdale, AL, Part I: Computer Woes

It was a little over a three-hour drive from Meridian, MS, to Summerdale, AL. Summerdale, which is on the eastern side of Mobile Bay, is the home of the Escapees Rainbow Plantation RV Park. Rainbow Plantation is one of our favorite Escapees parks. The sites are big, and the campground is quiet. There are no trains and no interstate noise.

The park has a campground, and there are also co-op sites and deeded lots. The roads are paved and the campground sites are grass with some shade. There are full hookups (some with 30-amp electric and some with 50), and Wi-Fi is available for a small fee. Our site for this stay at Rainbow Plantation is shown in the next photo.

The campground wasn't very full when we first arrived, but the number of RVs steadily increased during our stay. The next photo shows the view down the road.

You know how you always read about how important it is to back up your computer files? You know how you're always planning to do it some day? Well, we can tell you from experience to DO IT NOW.

We have a fairly new laptop that is our primary computer. Our old laptop is slow and out of date, but we kept it around because sometimes it's nice for both of us to have access to a computer at the same time even if one of them is a little slow.

About the time we arrived in Summerdale, Paul noticed the old computer had slowed down markedly. It would frequently hang up and had to be rebooted. Scans of the hard drive with anti-spyware and anti-virus software didn't turn up anything, but Paul was fairly certain it was a problem with spyware. Paul spent almost 4 solid days trying to correct the problem. To make a long story short, Paul was finally able to find a program on the Microsoft web site called Microsoft Security Essentials that was able to find and remove the spyware from our old computer. The good news is, after all the things Paul learned about speeding up computers while researching the spyware problem, he was able to tune up the old computer and clean up the hard drive so it is now running faster than it has for years.

The second chapter of the story started shortly after we got the spyware problem with the old computer corrected. The new computer is the preferred machine for downloading, cataloging and working with our thousands of photos. However, since we have two computers, we sometimes need to be able to access photos and other data from either computer. For that reason, we store the photos and some of our data files on an external hard drive so we can plug the drive into either computer when we need to access files.

We started experiencing problems with files on the external hard drive that neither computer could read. Paul figured those files may have been somehow corrupted by the spyware. However, the problem began to grow with more files that couldn't be read. Suddenly, neither computer would recognize the external hard drive at all.

We researched companies that specialize in data recovery from failed hard drives. We got an estimate from one company for $350 to $500. Yikes! Further research turned up Tech Advanced Computers in nearby Pensacola, FL, and we gave them a call.

They seemed to be very knowledgeable, and their initial price estimate was reasonable. About a week after we dropped off the drive, we got a call saying their analysis software told them most of the files could be recovered. So for a cost of a little over $200 we had them transfer our files to a new external drive. That wasn't too bad since a new external hard would have cost about $75-100 by itself.

Paul spent a couple of days re-organizing all our photo files and getting our photo catalog software to be able to find the files on the new drive. In going through the files, it doesn't look like anything is missing. Paul will begin the task of backing up our data so we don't have this problem again.

We've had a good bit of hot, humid weather with several rainy days since we first arrived in Summerdale. With the weather and with spending so much time on computer problems we haven't done any sightseeing, but we did find time to go out to eat. One afternoon we headed down to the Shrimp Basket in nearby Foley for an early dinner.

The Shrimp Basket is a chain of 9 restaurants along the Alabama Gulf coast and Florida Panhandle. As the name suggests, they specialize in seafood. We went on a Wednesday because on Sundays and Wednesdays they have all-you-can-eat fried shrimp baskets. The baskets also include cole slaw (with mini shrimp), potatoes (French fries, new potatoes, or potato salad) and hush puppies. The shrimp is delish, and the creamy potato salad or the buttery new potatoes are a nice contrast to the fried shrimp.

We'll be doing a little sightseeing between backing up computer files, so stay tuned for our next post.