Monday, August 9, 2010

the pledge


picture via http://superduper.co.za/lucky/?p=910



I'm starting to feel the pain now. Withdrawal is setting in. So many pictures are lost from the hard drive crash on the old computer.

All the pictures of what the country house looked like on the inside when we got it. There goes my 'then and now' post.

All my sunset pics for the year. There goes my 'the year in sunsets' post.

A lot of my flower pictures but those I can take again when their season comes around.

All the pictures of the grandkids taken the past 8 months. totally irreplaceable.

All the raw footage from all the pictures of our jobs the last year. Fortunately I had transferred the 'doctored' pics over already.

Now the downside of digital camera-ry becomes apparent. Lazy people do not print out their pictures. Lazy people do not back up their hard drives. Lazy people lose their pictures.

So in the grand tradition of closing the barn door after the cows have got out, I have now installed the camera software on my (the new) computer. I never bothered before because I hadn't been able to install my version of Photoshop (it keeps telling me that there is missing or invalid personalization information) and without a graphics program, I didn't see the point. Especially since my new Mac has a slot for the memory chip in my camera and will transfer the images directly from it, bypassing the whole having to plug in the camera thing. I only recently discovered that I can crop, resize, and adjust the levels in Preview, finally being desperate enough to explore a little further into the program. What a nitwit. I thought it was just for viewing images.

I hereby pledge to back up my stuff. I even have a nifty little function that will do it automatically if I will just go get the thingy that it backs it all up on and plug it in. In the meantime, I have a stack of empty media discs...in 
Houston.


Yeah, I know.


15 comments:

  1. I lost 10 years worth of photos for the same silly reason - now I have the back up.....but have never actually used it! This serves as a great lesson. But truely sorry for all your stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ugh. Been there, done that. Lost a year's worth of baby pictures of Laura.

    Now I have a scheduled backup that runs every day and backs everything up to a usb drive; and another program that runs once a week and copies all my stuff over the internet to a file on my computer at work - so I even have an offsite backup in case my house ever burns down...Paranoid? Yup. But I never want to lose my important files again.

    Sorry for your loss.

    ReplyDelete
  3. We've gotten bad about just leaving the pics on the chips instead of even putting them on the computer. THAT can't be safer - those chips are tiny! We need a plan...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Whoa - I feel for you. My computer was so overloaded with photos there was no space left for any kind of editing work. Got a new one just in time with an external hard drive for back up. It could have happened to me at any time too. I just got lucky with my timing. Jeff brings up a good point of a backup outside of the home too. Have to think about that.

    So sorry.

    ReplyDelete
  5. oops, you silly.
    I have a mac which does all the photo stuff I need doing + photoshop if I so desire, but best of all, I have an external hard drive which automatically stores Everything on my mac because my darling mac also has the wonderful Time Machine.
    So, no excuses from now on.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'm supposed to do what? When? How? Ouch!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I lost most of my pictures once, too. I had backed up a few super favorites, fortunately, but that was all. Poor Ellen. It sucks to lose them.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Can't it be recovered at all? It's a dreadful loss, but might be worth seeing it anyone can retrieve something.

    ReplyDelete
  9. ellen - even the crappiest things happen for a reason they're just harder to see. wayyy harder. my heart breaks for you - cause like so many others here i know something of your pain through my own bitter experience with a similar situation but here we are. wiser. older. something. steven

    ReplyDelete
  10. Unfortunately we have all learned the "Back that thing up" lesson the hard way...

    Rene

    ReplyDelete
  11. Yep. Blue/Gray screen of death. I think we have all seen it. I am so sorry ellen - been there. I have none of Wallene's pics from when she was a baby - and if I was to lose this computer now I would only have the pics on my blog. Eeeek.

    ::running away now to find a disc for back up::

    SkippyMom

    ReplyDelete
  12. I just experienced the blue screen of death so I know, man, do I know!

    I do have an external hard drive now but what happens when it dies, do I need to back up my back up???

    All those boxes of pictures are beginning to look better.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Oh my. You are neither lazy nor a nitwit. Maybe you don't realize it, Ellen, but you have a full plate what with two houses and work and the g-kids, etc. So sorry you lost your pictures, but yeah, now you can take new pictures. Trying to look at the bright side....

    ReplyDelete
  14. You're ahead of me, and I know I know I should do it all. I didn't know Preview let you do all that! I thought it was only for viewing pics too. So sorry about yours.

    ReplyDelete
  15. You are freaking me out. I am thwarted at every effort to back up my hard drive and am seriously worried I might suffer your fate. I'd cry if I lost my pictures!
    I promise to get it fixed and figured out this week!

    ReplyDelete

I opened my big mouth, now it's your turn.