Monday, January 23, 2012

Don't Be a Dummy Like Me

Have you backed up your photos lately? Do it. Now, please.

Last week, my computer stopped working. Just like that. No slowing down. No error message. No warnings whatsoever that the hard drive was going to clutch its chest and drop to the floor dead.

The last time we backed up our hard drive was September 2010. Many times since then I've thought to myself, You ought to save your precious photos to a disk, Kim. You know, in case something ever happened to the computer. Hey! Lazy bones! Maybe you should print some pictures and catch up on your scrapbooking . . . but evidently I laid down on the couch and stared at my clean windows until those thoughts went away. Every photo I've taken since the fall of 2010—the family celebrations, the children's milestones, the funny times, the sweet moments—has disappeared. Fortunately, I made our parents a calendar for Christmas, so at least 12 good pictures (and a few others that I didn't end up using) are sitting safely in an online album.

A measly twenty photos from 2011 survived. Oh! and the pictures I've posted on my blog. What would I do without my blurry shots of moose's heinies?

. . . there's one going around the back of the house . . .

. . . and another through my spotlessly clean window . . .

. . . and the one from last week . . .


This one from Halloween isn't so blurry. Sorry.


Dinner last night: baked potatoes

Exactly three years ago:








12 comments:

Deidre said...

Gah, I need to do this so badly! And I keep meaning to, but then forget! Maybe today is the day.

To be fair, the moose behinds are probably your favourite photos anyway, right?

Kim said...

You never think it's going to happen to you . . . I just figured my techno-geek husband was taking care of a system-wide backup (not that I ever bothered to ask), so I kept putting off copying my photos to a disk. I also mistakenly assumed that if a hard drive started to fail, it would be in stages and I'd have time to save my important stuff. But NOOOOO . . . it completely died on me in the blink of an eye.

If they weren't before, the moose's rear-ends are my favorites now--they're all I've got left to look at!

Kathy G said...

Thanks for the reminder! I regularly back up Outlook data. Other stuff, not so much.

Anonymous said...

I haven't done it since last summer. Thank you for the reminder!

Unknown said...

I have a dead computer stored until I can afford to pay a data recovery place to get four years of photos off of it. Same story, worked fine until one day it just died. stupid computer.

Kim said...

Oh, that just makes me sick to my stomach. I'm not willing to pay for one year's worth, but I would definitely consider it for 4 years' worth——especially if the drive holds all your little girl's baby/toddler pics!!

Karen M. Peterson said...

Oh man. I am SO sorry. I just lost my camera a couple of weeks ago and it had all the pictures I've taken since October or so that I hadn't gotten around to transferring to my computer. I have nothing from Christmas. Nothing from my friend's baby shower. Nothing from a fun afternoon with my nephew. They're all gone.

Kay said...

I do back up my most important photos on an external drive and on discs. I'm so sorry that you lost your photos. I'm wondering if you posted some photos of the family on this blog. You would at least be able to download them from your blog then.

Kay said...

Kim, I just checked your 2010 blog posts. You've got gorgeous photos there. You can easily copy those photos and upload them to your computer.

Kim said...

Aagh! That's just as bad (although, secretly, you just made me feel better knowing that I'm not the only one to go through this kind of thing).

Kim said...

You know I will! I watermark just about everything, although I usually hide it into a busy part of the photo . . . hopefully, it won't look too weird in our family albums!

LisaDay said...

That sucks. I am backer-up-er. Although i have been told after a few years you need to reback up your disks because they start to fail.

LisaDay