Backups are great when they work - Learn my lesson.
Had a rather ordinary start to last week …. my computer was telling me I needed to back up but didn’t have enough space. So figuring my photos were probably the biggest thing on there, I copied them (twice – to a usb drive AND a disc). Alas, being the computer gumby I am, I apparently copied a short cut, not the actual photos. So, for those of you as inept as me, when I deleted the photos and emptied the trash can “Adios ALL OF MY PHOTOS”. I was a wreck for 36hrs by which time I was starting to resign myself to not having them.
I friend had a disc recovery program and I got some of them back, and there are some in other places I can retrieve them from. But probably not even half. Lucky I’m not as avid a photographer as some or it could’ve been MUCH worse and a WHOLE LOT MORE photos. = )
There are always stories of people not backing up their work on the computer (or even saving it) and then losing it – and we always think “I’m careful, it’ll never happen to me”. Please let my loss be a reminder to you to have at least two storage spaces for your work – at least then you can make silly mistakes and it won’t matter a rub.
And I had a couple (?) of good ones waiting for me to upload to RB = (
Damian
Oh no! What a nightmare! Good luck with getting some of them back.
Paul Tait
My thoughts are with you. I’m sure that most of us could share your grief.
SnowDog
Splogy – at one point in our computer lives we all lose important information , photos and artwork. Sorry to hear that you lost your photos.
The first step would be to have a computer litterate friend show you how and what to back up.
I use 3 external USB hardrives and also burn them to DVDs
A copy of the DVDs is at my inlaws in case of fire here at home.
Allways make sure your ” Computer Buddy ” really knows what they are doing. I get more calls because of the ” Computer Buddy ” making things worse.
The last time , a lady lost over 500 family photos cause he thought her computer was running too slow. Luckily I was able to get back over 400 of them. He deicided he was gonna get them back with a ” Photo recovery ” program, but then installed it to the same hardrive that he has erased the photos on. This was a BIG mistake cause by installing the software on the same hardrive he was overwriting the photos that were accidently erased, due to the nature of how files are erased by the operating system.
Redbubble can help if any of the photos were uploaded here to RB aswell
Best of luck in the future
Splogy
Thanks Damian, thanks Paul.
Snowdog luckily my computer friend knew about that, he had an external harddrive to run the recovery program from (and stated the very reason you mentioned).
Most of my family/friends/occasions photos are else where so that’s great (haven’t tracked them down yet). But pretty much all of my “possible” RB work is lost, oh well, guess I’ll just have to get out there and take some more! = )
SnowDog do you know anything about repairing corrupted files? I have some partial thumbnails that came up as the complete photo and then got grey and coloured stripes over most/part of them. They also don’t open.
Damian
I back up onto DVD every month, and much more regularly back up onto a USB key when I do anything to take to store on my work computer hard drive (heheh – well, it’s not like I can install programs on it). I’ve got some on DVD or CD with other people, but not so much.
It definately helps to expect the worst, and don’t trust your hard drive!
Hmm, now I think I’ll burn a few DVD’s to store at my parents :)