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I am grateful for this blog and for Facebook. Without them many of my photos be gone forever.
Last January we lost the hard drive. Nothing was recoverable. Anything that wasn't anywhere else lived only in my memory.
All big trip photos get backed up right away. Most of my manuscripts are in hardcopy and all were on some type of disk.
This left some general pictures, camping trips, scenics, some playing around on the camera that I did with my Yellowstone photographs.
It hurt, but I could live with it. I'd certainly learned my lesson as regards backing up everything.
About a week ago I went looking for a photo from our Cuba trip to post on Friday.
Nothing.
I swore I backed it up on a flash drive.
It wasn't there.
I further swore I had it on disk.
It wasn't there either.
That said, I will still swear to it.
Blogger has the pics from the blog on a file one can get at by going to the post a picture feature. I saved more than 400 of them to my computer the other day.
I wish it had all of them, but I can recall some photos I've posted that were not there. The two I can think of were scans of prints so I won't be worrying.
For as happy as I am to have them, they've lost a few steps in quality. They get fuzzy when enlarged to a decent size.
I'm still grateful to have them.
FaceBook, for as much as I may grumble, will send a download of everything. I am so grateful for this as it was easy to put them on to my computer once I sorted out what to do.
It was nerve-wracking, I admit. It comes in a zipped file which means nothing to me.
I thought I was going to have to open each one --more than 1200--and save it.
Did I want to extract the contents?
Maybe.
I tried one.
It opened in my photo file with no problem.
I swallowed hard and did the whole file.
Success.
Exhale.
They blow up fine.
I'd put many of my travel pics on FaceBook including what appears to be all my Cuba photos.
They've been backed up on to an external hard drive and a flash drive with the notation they are rescues as opposed to originals. I want to be able to tell the difference when I fire up one of those drives and find my original Cuba files waiting.
16 comments:
I love this.
I keep backing up on DVD which means difficult download and search when I need them. I do have one separate hard drive and back up there many times. I finally subscribed to an online site and back up there...now I am thinking of using a few flash drives. I am really schizo about this it appears.
Thanks, Miz.
Tabor, I totally understand. I've emailed a few files to myself at yahoo or hotmail just to be extra sure.
What's the 1 in 3 2 1? Three different media types, two different physical locations, one....something, or it's not really backed up. I have very little backed up online because of the bandwidth shortage until my recent move to the city. I need to get on that. I have complete backups of both hard drives, next to the computers, where disaster would kill them all, and essential files on key drives in my purse and my safe deposit, but my online strategy could be better.
Mary Anne in Kentucky
Mary Anne, it's one copy stored off-line or off-site. I had to look this up as I hadn't heard of it until now. My first thought was one meant a hard copy somewhere and that's what I have for much of my writing.
Oh what a pain, but that's so cool that so much of your stuff was rescued!
Thanks for the reminder about backing up, and for the tips about using FB and blogger for recovery!
Unfortunately I'm way too lazy to post many personal pictures, so in the event of a hard drive crash I may lose all my precious memories but at least I'll be left with a bunch of lolcats and natalie dee cartoons to console me.
This is something every user dreads. I'm sorry for your loss. I'm not sure about the back up business. Maybe I better find out for sure.
I just backed up on files on Friday. It took forever, but I can see now that I'll be glad I did it. So glad you were able to recover what you did!
No matter how good the technology gets, backing up will always be necessary.
Glad you were able to rescue so much.
Thanks, Crabby. Back up the back ups.
Thanks, Red. Yes, by all means, find out what you can.
Bossy Betty, backing up is worlds better than re-creating.Thanks.
So true, Messymimi.Thanks.
WAAAAY off topic, what kind of bird is that in your picture? is it really that colour?
Rikk, that's a male quetzal. I lightened the photo. They are that colour. I have a pic of it that I did nothing to if you'd like to compare them.
I am so glad that you were able to recover most of your photos. It's time I did another backup myself.
Thanks, Reb. I strongly recommend you do.
I am sorry you lost files, Leah. I know how much that aches. I have been using a Mac application to back up frequently.. as in every hour or so. It does the initial back up and then only adds the changes since the previous backup. It is supposed to allow you to go back in time and find what you might have since deleted. It's worked for me on a few occasions. Gotta love technology.. though it can be incredibly frustrating when it works against you. Love the cat pic.
Thank you, Hilary. Between Blogger and FaceBook I've managed to retrieve a great many of them. I also discovered if I use the Picasa web feature and enlarge the pic and then save it back to the computer I don't lose those steps in quality quite as much.
For as easy and as cheap as digital pics are to store and copy there's a lot to be said for film negs and hard copy.
Glad you like the pussycats.
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