Very Important Reminder to All

[JandJ]

Last night one of my hard drives crashed. It's gone. DH is a computer engineer and he can't even get it back. That particular drive (we had 3 on the computer) contained all of my pictures. I lost everything from June 2006 forward. Why? Because June 2006 is the last time I backed up that hard drive. Every digital picture from June 2006 to today is gone I almost cried and I would have if we hadn't backed-up our wedding, anniversary cruise, and vacation to Las Vegas on a USB stick. Also, thanks to being and avid scrapbooker I have hard copies of every picture from May 2007 back and some are on our website. Thank goodness!!

So let my loss be your warning - back up everything and keep the back-up in a safe place. I have the pictures from June 2006 and back on another hard drive and tonight we're going to put them all on DVD and into a safety deposit box. If I'd lost my wedding photos, well, I'd have had a heart attack Please don't make the same mistake I did - Remember to frequently back-up your pictures!!

 

[LindaBabe]

Oh, Poor Dear! That's AWFUL! No matter how often I hear these horrible tales, I don't do it as often as I should. my bad. I will do it tonight.

 

[lewdyan1]

My DH was worried about this and now pays for offsite backup. It's not a lot of money and my computer is automatically backup every night and stored sommwhere else. This is great for important papers and kids school stuff also!

 

[ogreenlee]

i share a lot of my pics using KodakGallery.com and Shutterfly.com. It's also a good way to backup your favorites for free.

Both sites will let you purchase your entire gallery on disc for a very small fee.

 

[Faerie]

makes me glad I'm anal. I have every event on 2 CDs, one at my house, one in a firepoof safe at mom's and everything is on an external HD as well as my computer's HD. Once a year, I do DVDs and also have 2 copies of those. Same for my docs and music.

 

[Fran98765]

Sorry to hear of your loss. I've put almost everything (except the newest stuff) on DVD, I am so afraid of losing stuff. Plus I digi-scrap, so all my layouts are on my drive too. I would sink into deep depression if I lost it all I think.

 

[moppety]

Another thing I have been doing is:

We have a external hard drive that we load a copy of every picture to. We have watched for sales and have picked up a couple of 250 GB external drives for around $100 each. We have thousands of pictures and haven't even filled one yet. And I rest a lot easier knowing that I have 2 copies of all of my memories.

ETA: Well, 3 copies if you counte the hard ones...

 

[Faerie]

You can easily turn an internal HD into an external with a housing. I bought a 320 GB internal drive for $50 at staples and a housing from newegg.com for $20

 

[moppety]

Really?

Well, you learn something new every day! Next time we need one, I'll let the hubby in on that one

 

[MyLittlePiglet]

This is exactly why I am in the market for an external hard drive. 3 years of photos on computer some backed up some not so I'l love to just "dump them all" at one time. CDs are difficult for me to keep organized..... although on the topic of organization.... I have a photo printer but rarely use it (I think the store prints come out better and I have a heart attack everytime I go to buy ink but anyhow I have been uploading 3-6 months of photos at a time and getting them printed all at once. Of course this doesn't print the date on them or anything. I do have a program that will allow me to make index sheets so brillant idea for scrapping is to print out the index sheets per month and then I know exactly what order the photos were taken in and what month no matter how the get "reorganized or disorganized" by my scrapping.

 

[Kim1964]

I'm sorry that happened to you!

Tuesday morning I downloaded our WDW trip photos from the camera to my computer. Then I took the memory card out of the camera and put it in its case in a safe place. I usually erase the memory card after I download, but no way this time. We're not going back to the World for a while, AND now that I am a scrapper, I am not taking chances with losing those photos. I'm also going to send them to Shutterfly.

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

Yep, still moving pics and backing up. We have 2 externals, and one internal. I also have a bunch of pics on my TIVO. I also have a lot of my pics on CD which go with me everywhere. My biggest fear is fire, so if for some reason the house burns down while I'm not home, I have my pics with me. Mom has some CDs and we are getting a Safety deposit box, I just need to find a bank. Our Credit Union doesn't have boxes.

 

[calanniebu]

:-( sorry for your loss ... but thanks for the reminder! I backup some stuff to my DH's computer, but I really need to get more in the habit of burning things to CD or DVD ... especially since I'm atleast 2 years behind on my scraping!

 

[undertheseas]

Oh gosh that's horrible! I've started burning a CD as soon as I have enough pics and then I burn two DVDs, keeping one at home and one at work. Are there are family members that might have copies for you???

 

[New England Eeyore]

So sorry that happened to you! And thanks for the reminder. I need to burn my most important stuff onto CDs and leave a copy at my Dad's house.

 

[Nutty4Disney]

This happened to me once. I lost some pictures of my whole family, the first time we had all been together in 10 years. Now I back up frequently (although not as frequently as I should). In fact on my new computer you are reminded once a month to back up all new files. I hate Windows Vista, but this reminder from the Microsoft virus scan software is great.

 

[boBQuincy]

Search the Photography board for some good threads on this topic. Most of us go for "safety in numbers" with three (or more) copies, all on different media such as: hard drive, DVD/CD, external hard drive in a firesafe, offsite copies, web storage, etc.

 

[bigbabyblues]

Thanks for the reminder! DH loads all of ours on a cd as well as backing up the computer.

I'm so sorry this happened to you!

 

[MazdaUK]

Since my computer crashed last autumn I now have a "ghost" hard-drive to cc everything. PLus I upload everything to Snapfish ASAP and don't delete from my camera until I have a hard copy in my little fat fist!

 

[calanniebu]

For those of you in the states, Best Buy has a sale this week on a 750 gig (three-quarters of a terabyte - muwahh!!!) external hardrive for $179.99: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...0+gig&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1177113149365. We checked around and that's a GREAT price. We're going to use it to backup all of our important stuff.