I feel as if I’ve just suffered the biggest disaster of my life. It’s as
if someone just flushed my life away. It’s not the decorating, that’s all going
fine, paper’s successfully on the wall, it’s all looking good and I’ll start
painting this weekend, if I feel up to it. At the moment I couldn’t care less
about the damn decorating. I just want to sit and cry.
This is far more serious, this is a genuine, major, mega life crisis; my
external hard drive has wiped EVERYTHING stored on it and now, it doesn’t even
register on the computer. It’s well and truly knackered. Maybe that doesn’t
sound too much like a crisis to some people but consider this; my computer is
old and not to be trusted and every couple of months I transfer every thing
from my computer hard drive onto the external hard drive and then wipe the
computer hard drive. When I say EVERYTHING, I really do mean EVERYTHING. ALL,
yes ALL of the photos I’ve taken over ALL
the years of the wonderful Scottish countryside, all my family photos, my
photos from France, last years photos of Barcelona, Carcassonne, La Rochelle,
every last one of my photos GONE forever. It gets worse; believe it or not I
have kept copies of EVERY single blog I ever posted. It started with 360, onto
Multiply and then here on Blogger. My way of writing a blog post is to first
write it out on a word doc (as I’m doing now) then put the word doc in a
folder together with the pictures for the post and then post online from that
folder. ALL of those folders were named and dated and then kept in bigger
folders marked either, 360, Multiply, Blogger or FB. There was other stuff,
personal stuff; all my passport details, insurance details, email lists etc. I
had so much stuff from when I worked in the school, pictures of the kids and
the work they did. I know I am a bit (maybe more than a bit) on the obsessive
side, but keeping everything and backing it all up on the external has been part
of my life and my way of doing things for a long time now. I genuinely feel in
shock, it’s almost like grieving, I can understand the devastation people feel
after losing everything in a house fire. Right now I feel physically sick. I’ve
been onto my sister, she’s the computer expert, and I’ve followed all her
advice but…..NOTHING……………it’s all GONE.
Ooooooooooh my stars!! You TOTALLY and completely have all my sympathy. I too am obsessive about photo storage, keeping files and documents and I have a ridiculous number of flash drives with an equally ridiculous number of copies. Nevertheless, last year my computer randomly deleted some files with photos of days out with my mum that I hadn't had a chance to back up and obviously can't be replaced. I was GUTTED.
ReplyDeleteI get it completely. I can only suggest that you check your locale for any tech companies that specialise in file retrieval...there might still be a chance. Have you still got all your old blogs? Obviously there's this one and your VERY cool painting blog (love it) - at least you should be able to copy posts and pics to new backups. Really wish I knew more, tech-wise, so I could be actually HELPFUL. All I can do is send you massive e-hugs and keep my fingers crossed that some of your precious memories can be rescued. Sending hugs/cup of tea/cake/gin and tonic! - Shroo xxxx
Oh Loretta, I feel your pain as something similar happened to me . I was able to retrieve some of the files, but most of them were corrupted and I was never able to get them back. Now I back everything up on an external and I burn CD's. Anything I write that I want to keep, I print out also. I feel so bad for you and I know what you mean when you say you just feel sick. You might do as Rachael said and check with someone who specializes in retrieving files. I'm not sure how expensive that would be, but in your case with all you had stored, it might be worth the expense.
ReplyDeleteHugssss
I do feel for you as I've had similar problems in the past and my sister also, but she had her computer and camera stolen in a burglary, so definitely no hope at all. Have you saved any to the 'cloud' or whatever they are, or any of the photo type sites? Do any members of the family have copies? Can any blogger friends help by downloading and resending photos to you? Keep your pecker up
ReplyDeleteOh, how horrible! When I came over from Multiply, I imported my blogs from 360 and Multiply to Blogger. You must have some of your photos on memory cards though, right? I think that a computer tech could probably help you get back your lost data. I hope so anyway. Let us know how it goes for you. I'm so sorry to hear this and how it's affected you.
ReplyDeletehugs to you, sweety. i just don't know what else to say. :(
ReplyDeleteIcan't even think what to say Loretta. I sure hope something can be done.Is there a company you could take everything to and see if they can find anything. From what I have seen you can't really delete everything so maybe there is still something left on the initial hard drive. Oh I am soooo sorry
ReplyDeletethank you so much for all the sympathy, its good to know some people understand how I feel. BUT........................some good news.
ReplyDeleteI had given up yesterday after doing all the stuff my sister suggested, we were doing stuff like changing the ports used to connect hard drive to computer, disconnecting hard drive from computer then shutting down completely, then re-booting, then connecting hard drive again etc etc. We went on like this for ages then a couple of hours later, after I had given up all hope, I unplugged the external hard drive from the mains. A while after that, ( no idea why) plugged it back in to the mains again and as it was already connected to the computer, it back it came !!!!!!! Took a while for the whole thing to load again and have to admit, I've still not checked every single file to make sure there is nothing missing, but wow, you wouldn't believe how relieved I am. Sister has suggested something called cloud, apparently stores stuff online so you never use it. Will def be backing up that external some way, just couldn't go through that again. Thanks for being there ladies :-)
so very glad to hear this. With computers some time it can just be as simple as turning everything off and starting again. Sis is right must store on the net not just your computer. I have backup files on dvd and prints of all my photos.don't ever want to lose them and thanks to blogger all my blogs from 360 on ward are stored here. Drop box is good for photos, tends to slow the computer down but hey and it's easy to down load and gives you lots of space for free. The minute you load a photo to your computer it goes to dropbox. You don't have to do anything. I don't trust any computer. You just never know what could happen. Hope everything is there. Hugs Loretta. Hope you didn't throw up too much over all this..Hahahahaha
DeleteYAY! now please, remember to back of EVERYTHING, just in case this happens again. *phew*
DeleteThat's exceptionally good news! I really hope all the files are intact - and yes, major backups necessary!!! Top stuff, Bill Gates! Hugs from Shroo:)xxx
DeleteGreat news, Loretta. I have had my data retreived after my HD died, so I thought that could be a solution. Just glad you don't have to go through the expense.
ReplyDeletethanks Brenda, you know after all that I think it was the blogs I was most upset about. Like a lot of other people I moved everything from 360 to Multiply and then from Multiply to here but; when Multiply finally turned off the lights the blogs stayed and the pictures disappeared. I had all of my blogs in folders with the text and images saved on the external hard drive. Sometimes I think I'll trawl back through them all and put all the pictures back but realistically, maybe I'll never get round to it. Point is, I could if I wanted too. Anyway.............I am soooooo relieved and actively looking for someway to back up the hard drive. :-)
ReplyDeleteThis is my nightmare! I'm so sorry! But do contact a technician. They can often retrieve files on these drives. Seagate drive makers even tell you you can send it to them for retrieval but the fee is horrible. So, look for a local company who has a good reputation. It will still cost but you may feel the cost is worth what you can get back.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Loretta, back up your photos to something like G+ and Photobucket. You can also use other sites. Also, back up documents to Google Drive or Dropbox, or both. All my blogs post are backed up to Gmail. Blogger will send a copy to your email if you put it in your settings. You can set up an email account in Gmail just for your blog posts.
I too have an external hard drive, my second one, since my first one started to go bad. But I've been moving stuff to the cloud, something I"m totally opposed to for the same reason. But there isn't much else to do but print everything out. I had to replace it and did lose somethings but not a lot. Flash drives are a good alternative as well. However, we all have to realize that digital is not hard copy and is far more apt to be totally lost than hard copies. Digital has resulted in a higher number of photos and documents and although storage is usually no big deal, it is fraught with potential disaster.
I try and tell myself that these kind of losses are meant to teach us the value of what is really going to last. The memories are in your heart and head. Start blogging those memories in new posts and save them to G+mail or some other location. They won't be the same but you'll at least have a piece of them.
I'm really sorry but I do hope you can retrieve some of the files.
Hi Cynthia thank you so much for your input and sorry its taken me so long to get back to you. When this happened I was in the middle of decorating, which of course took second place to the IT crisis and then once I realised I had not in fact lost every thing, I concentrated on making sure all my data was intact, getting my whole PC 'serviced' and then finishing the decorating. Since then, I've spent a lot of time saving photos to my old but still servicable Flickr account. I have so many photos I can't possibly save them al onto flickr but I am sorting through them and saving what I think of as 'the best'. or at least the ones that mean the most to me.I've decided to prioritise my 'tourist' photos, I want a record of all the lovely places I've visited and thats going to take a while. Please, do what ever you have to do to save yourself the heartache I went through. It really was the most horrible feeling imaginable. Thanks for your support.
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