Digital Disaster!

As a Creative Memories consultant I've shared over and over about how important is is to make sure that your digital pictures are backed up, in more than one place.  In fact I have warned my clients and the women attending the Creative Memories parties that it's not a matter of if your computer will crash, it's a matter of when. I predict that there will be a whole generation of children that wont have pictures of their childhoods due to digital files being deleted, destroyed, lost, or just plain inaccessible.

Well, recently it's been my turn at "when".  I'm writing this as a heads up for those of you reading, but in some crazy way, I'm hoping for some healing from my pain. 



The reality of the situation and how easily this (losing your digital pictures) can happen has sunk in!  Did I mention that I knew the dangers of digital?  I was a good little CM consultant, I had done things correctly.  I had two external hard drives, one to store my pictures (memory manager vaults), one that I used for a back up of those pictures and a full backup of my desktop computer and I had just purchased a subscription to an onlne back up site. You'd think that will all of this I would be safe right?  Wrong! I must share with you to demonstrate just how delicate the digital situation can be.

So this is how it all happened. . . . One day I tried to back up a file on my desktop to my external hard drive that for years had been located stationary in my desk.  It wasn't accessible...don't know what the problem was/is, but for some unknown reason I couldn't back up or access the files on that drive. I started to freak as there was about 6-7 thousand pictures backed up on that drive.  But I thought no worries...I also have those pictures, and more, on my other working hard drive.  I need to have my son-in-law the computer guy look at it to see if it's repairable or if I need to replace it.  And I then I procrastinated, well not really procrastinated as it was constantly on my mind, but life is busy, busy, and I kept forgetting!

And then one day, not to long after, I plugged my working hard drive into my computer, you know with the 6-7 thousand pictures from the stationary drive, PLUS about 2 thousand additional pictures. Initially the picture vault opened, and then I received an error...and that was the end of that...I could never open the drive again.  NOW THE PANIC STRUCK, there was nothing I could do!  I prayed...yes I'm a praying girl, and I gave the drive to the son-in-law.

No Luck!  He tried to pull the pictures and couldn't get them off, it seems the type of drive I purchased was notorious for this problem!  So I pulled myself together and realized that there wasn't much I could do about this situation. So I begain to gather stray pictures from a few memory cards laying around the house. I thanked God that there were many pictures still on the cards as I had not completely deleted all the photos.  I realized that there was a new feature at Costco where I could download the full resolution picture from Facebook to Costco and print pictures.  Over the last couple of months, I've gradually found, borrowed and replaced pictures.  I needed to access my daughter's Facebook account and download her graduation pictures and I was starting to feel better....not good but better.

Until last night, Someone hacked her Facebook and her email, took over her page and to make matters worse....DELETED ALL HER PICTURES! And then tonight, I had my memory card next to me on the sofa and it somehow found it's way to the floor, AND THE DOG ATE IT, adding it to her destruction~! That on sent me over the edge!  I didn't lose much this time as there was not many pictures that I hadn't backed up. My family knew I was on the verge of a complete meltdown, they felt awful! While my loving husband was trying to figure out if there would be any way to repair the card (as you can see, that's doubtful!)

I resolved to be even more diligent about the back up of my digital photos!  Tomorrow I will be adding another external hard drive to my home so that will bring me back up to two.  Since the initial disaster, I've been more diligent about uploading my pictures to Smugmug. (the online site) and I will begin to print my pictures more regularly, not just when I want to scrap them.  It truely is the safest way to ensure their safety!!

I hope that the details of this digital disaster will help you to understand that it too could happen to you!  Don't procrastinate, back up your pictures and PRINT YOUR PICTURES! If you are not a scrapbooker, or you're not into digital photo albums, you can either store them in a photo safe box or slide them into a quick easy photo album.  DON'T WAIT....LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES!