Woman Explains Why You Should Eject Your External Hard Drive Before Removing It

One of the key pieces of advice most people in college have received is to back up all of your work on an external hard drive. Though technology has come a long way, it's still not entirely reliable, which is why having a backup copy of your work is the best way to make sure you'll always have access to your files.

Unfortunately for one college student, her hard drive didn't save her. Thanks to her brother's carelessness with a brand new hard drive, TikTok user Gillian (@gi11withag) shared a harrowing story of how she not only lost some of her files from college but also her save files for The Sims.

Anyone who has ever tried to play The Sims on a MacBook knows that the computer is just not built to handle the game. Though the popular simulation title can run on Apple computers, even the best and most powerful MacBook sounds like it's preparing to launch into orbit anytime the game is opened.

Because of this, Gillian shared in a teary TikTok that she tried to alleviate some of the stress on her computer by transferring her files to a brand-new external hard drive.

"I download everything onto this hard drive and I'm like 'Oh my god this is going so great,'" she says, though we can tell from her tears that this story won't end well. "It takes me nine f------ hours because I have every single game pack and expansion pack."

Gillian says before her brother came home from college she was playing The Sims on his computer, and after she transferred everything to the hard drive, she wanted to snag the custom content and save files that were downloaded to his computer.

"I go into his room with the hard drive and I'm like 'Hey, can you give me like two seconds so I can just get the [custom content] and files off of your computer and get them on my hard drive real fast?'" she continues.

She says he insists on doing it himself, and though Gillian was perfectly capable of doing it on her own, she politely sits back and hands him the hard drive.

"I'm watching him move the files over and I very politely lean in and I'm like 'Hey can you just make sure you like eject the hard drive? Like I know you know to do that but can you just make sure that you eject the hard drive?'"

This seems like an entirely reasonable request, as we're always told to properly eject an external hard drive before removing it from a computer. But this, unfortunately, is where the tale goes south.

"He goes 'Whatever,' and he rips the cable from the computer while making eye contact with me," she says, admitting she was shaking with "girl rage." "I'm like 'Why would you do that? I just asked you to eject it,' and he's like 'It'll be fine you don't have to eject stuff.'"

Unfortunately for Gillian, her brother was wrong — you do have to "eject stuff." She says that when she tried to open the hard drive on her computer, all of the files on it were corrupted. It wasn't just The Sims files that weren't able to be opened. Gillian said she had four years' worth of photos and two and a half years of college assignments backed up onto that hard drive.

Of course, the comments were filled with people offering ways to seek revenge on her careless brother (in addition to supportive comments offering ways to get her files back). The good news is that most of her content was retrieved! Gillian says she did lose some photos, along with her saved files and custom content for The Sims.

"I guess in the end I only lost a few photos and assignments here and there and nine hours of work, which is better than everything I guess," she concedes.

What about Gillian's brother?

"A lot of people were asking me if my brother was sorry. That's so funny. No, he was not," she shared in the update. So, did Gillian get revenge?

Though many suggested Gillian give his computer a bath or delete his game library, she opted instead to wait for the universe to do its work.

"Karma is real, you know," she says, showing the lone earbud of her brother's she found in their home. There's no chance he will be getting his left earbud back anytime soon.