PSA - Back up your photos!!!!!

[BernardandMissBianca]

Ladies and gentlemen!!

This is a Public Service Announcement!!!


Please back up your photos!!!!! Somehow a few nights ago I lost my entire iPhoto application and DH spent the last 2 days running a forensic recovery program to find them. I almost lost over 15,000 photos. I now have to painstakingly search 250,000 image files and move every photo back to my iPhoto account then reformat the external hard drive and then back them up on CD and the hard drive.
I know I lost some in bit transition but I think I can recover at least 95% of them, plus I recopied all the pics I have on various sites like Walgreens, Snapfish, photobucket, etc and I burned those to DVD. Total I should be able to recover 99% of what I had.
I was in tears, like "I haven't cried like that ever" tears. My poor kids had no idea what to do but comfort me. DD was a sweet angel, patting my hand and told me, "It will be ok Mama".

Thank God I have the smartest computer geek in the world for a husband!!!!

And yes, I documented the drama of 2 computers and the hard drive hooked up for my 365 album! LOL My table was covered with 7 laptops and 3 hard drives last night, it was kind of comical.


So, back up everything by the end of the year and get ready for 2010!!!!!

 

[PrincessNancy96]

Glad our computer geek was in town to work on this! Gotta love having him around!!!

Glad you are able to find 99% of it...
Off to copy what hasn't been copied to what discs I have left... note to self: need more discs next time I'm in town..

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

me too!! I just put him on a plane this morning. He was not happy with me but I didn't do anything. It just vanished!

 

[bskts4bj]

I can totally relate to the importance of backing up your photos -- computer failure can cause total heartbreak, sheer fear, ultimate panic, and not to mention financial distress if you don't "own" a computer geek of your very own.

This courtesy PSA should appear on this board almost weekly IMHO!

Happy scrapping,
Brenda

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

It still cost me $70 to download the recovery program but I'm glad it wasn't going to cost me $1000 to send the hard drive out. And I was only without my main laptop for a few days, I just used the old one for the kids homework and to check email.

I was just so mad that I almost lost DD's pics from when she was born, her first Disney trip etc. Once I got out of my own head and calmed down I was a machine, hooking up various hard drives (thankfully all but 2 Disney trips were on the hard drives), then listing and retrieving photos from all the sites I upload to. I stayed up til 2am the last 2 nights remembering sites and burning DVD's.

It should be up weekly, especially for the Digital scrappers. I think I was a little better off because I'm been printing photos left and right lately but most digital scrappers keep their stuff on hard drives.
Maybe I will add that into next years monthly challenge and have all of us get into the habit up back up our pics monthly.
Thanks for the idea Brenda!!

 

[labdogs42]

This is why we have a bunch of EHD's and a Carbonite subscription on our computers. I lost a hard drive with pictures on it once and I never want that to happen again! Thanks for the PSA -- off to burn some DVD's now (can't have too many backups!)

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

I'm doing 2 sets of DVD's and 2 hard drives. One set of each will go into the safety deposit box.

Don't forget to back up your digital pages too!! I know you guys put a lot of work into them, I'd hate to see all of that lost!

 

[pjlla]

Wow! Glad you were able to recover so much. My DH is also a great computer geek guy.... he has recovered photos from "crashed" computers for TWO different family members!!

I kind of leave him in charge of backing things up, but I suppose I should check with him and see when was the last time he backed everything up!

Thanks for the helpful reminder!.........P

 

[wtpclc]

How scary! Yay for your dh! BTW, I don't knwo if I ever thanked you for his info on a shellf or an old hard drive. I was so proud of hoolking it up myself adn gettign al lmy old data off it. Thank you! And him!

Thanks for the reminder. I think I am a year behind in my backing up.

 

[dlbwright]

BAMB, Oh Thank goodness. What a awful feeling. I am so glad you were able to get them back!

 

[Lisa]

Thank goodness the pictures were recovered.

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

Well, I have all of my RAW, RAW/JPG, and about 10,000 of the 95,000+ JPG images uploaded. But it uploaded everything, screen shots of the DIS, every picture I have in pages, word, etc, every thumbnail image. It's going to take weeks to get it all squared away but I'm getting there.

here is an example of a few of the pictures I have found. It seems to have happened mostly on Disney pics which is good because those are on other hard drives. Some I can just crop and rework to get rid of the streaks. Some images are completely black.

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

How scary! Yay for your dh! BTW, I don't knwo if I ever thanked you for his info on a shellf or an old hard drive. I was so proud of hoolking it up myself adn gettign al lmy old data off it. Thank you! And him!

Thanks for the reminder. I think I am a year behind in my backing up.

I'm glad we could help. Maybe I should listen to myself!

My problem was I was trying to get all of my pics in one place before I moved them. Needless to say that job will be done by the weekend.

 

[New England Eeyore]

I'm so sorry you had this happen, Buffy, but I'm glad DH was able to work some miracles.

This is why we have a bunch of EHD's and a Carbonite subscription on our computers. I lost a hard drive with pictures on it once and I never want that to happen again! Thanks for the PSA -- off to burn some DVD's now (can't have too many backups!)

I'm curious how you do this - I'd be happy to pay for a subscription to something like Carbonite, but it won't back up an EHD, and I really like to keep my pictures on there for various reasons. Do you keep double copies of everything on the main drive and EHDs? I worry that my computer would run too slowly with my pictures (and my extensive iTunes library) in both places.

 

[lovingthemouse]

Excellent suggestion Bamb. I set the back-up scheduler on my Click-Free for every 21 days, then make sure I do it then. Thankfully, after an HD crash 4 yrs ago, i now make sure all my programs are backed up. Each time it backs files up, only new ones are added.

 

[MazdaUK]

I have a ghost drive after a crash in 2006 - I find Snapfish downgrade the quality after a certain time so you can't get big prints, gift stuff etc. I also transfer bundles over to the Cm system and regularly back that up - note it only backs up the latest pics on the disc so you can't get rid of the older discs!