hello old friends

Several months ago, I alluded to the fact that I lost a lot of pictures. Enough time has passed that I can now actually talk about it...painfully...

I kept all my digital pictures on an external hard drive. Every.Single.Picture I have ever taken in the last 5 years...most of my pictures from the three previous years.

I have an old computer. I need a new one. But our quick fix was an external hard drive where I put all my pictures. And then...I didn't back that up. YIKES. (Lesson #1...back up your pictures...several places).

So earlier this summer it started acting up. But I could re-boot it and it worked fine. I ignored the warning signs. (Lesson #2...don't ignore techy things when they start to flip out...it's a warning for bigger issues coming soon).

Finally in August, my dad was trying to reconfigure some stuff on my ancient computer to see if we could band aid it to last a bit longer. And the external drive? The newest item in my arsenal. It died. Kaput.

I cried.

Then I pulled myself together and found an IT guy willing to look at it...he thought he could do some recovery and I gave that precious cargo to him. Without much hope, I might add.

So long story short...I finally have it back. It wasn't cheap and it took way longer than I expected. But they just handed me a handful DVDs with 20,000 photos on it. Yep. 20,000 photos!

So now...I'm looking into backing up online (the consensus is mozy...do you use it?) as well as a new external hard drive. My dad and I are even thinking of getting twin ehds and backing up each other's computers, switching back and forth each month...that way if there is a catastrophe we would have a back up at the other's house? Make sense?

Anyway...the big lesson here...you need to think about how you are backing up those files. I really never thought it would happen to me. I am very careful with my computer and it's use. Doesn't matter. These things are tempermental!

Sigh...I'm so happy so see some of my old friends...