Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Gone! Poof! Just like that

A month ago I was working on my external hard drive - organizing photos and documents that I had put there. Long story short, the hard drive fell and crashed into our wood floor.

Immediately we tried to see if it worked but it sounded stuck and would not be read by either of our computers. L took it to a hard drive recovery place to see if it could be fixed. The cost estimate for this work: $1000.

Was it worth it?

Well I had 15+ years of ALL MY PHOTOS and documents on this drive. Of course it was worth it.

Yesterday we got news that the drive was damaged beyond repair and not able to be recovered. (And no charge to us- no recovery, no bill)


15 years of tangible memories gone in in instant. Poof.


I'm incredibly sad over this. Yeah, "it's just photos" and I have the memories, but those photos were more than just that. I would look at them and they would remind me of more memories that I had forgotten over time- What CB looked like as a 10 week old pup, irreplaceable photos of my late grandmother and late great aunt.


I'm looking at this in 2 ways... First, I need 2 hard-drives to truly back up my data in case another catastrophe happens. Lesson learned the hard unfortunate way.

Second, it's a fresh start. While I love all the photos I took of places, many from a period of my life brought a gray cloud over my head because of the abusive relationship I was in at the time. Now they are all gone and I don't have to be unintentionally reminded of the bullshit I put up with for so long while looking at pretty photos of mountains or Mexico. Silver lining?


So here's to only the happiest of memories going forward.

And ps: go backup your blog, your photos, your files- anything important to you in at least 2 places RIGHT NOW.

- xaar

21 comments:

  1. Man, I am so devastated for you. Like I told you... my photos are what I value most, in my house. Over anything. But you have a good perspective and this WON'T happen again!

    I think you travel and relive the good memories and redocument! Hee hee! :)

    I guess this makes me think about the photos I share on social media, because the internets doesn't forget! So I hope you have some of that :)

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    1. Sorry to hear about your hard drive! If there's one silver lining it's like Kim said, at least the Internet doesn't forget. You'll still have all of your Internet pics right?

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    2. I have pretty much everything from 2012-present... 2011 is dicey. And you are right- I did post some of my favorite older photos on the blog... But just not many of them. :(

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  2. Noooooo! But I love your positive sentiment for only having happy memories going forward. I can totally get on board with that.

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    1. Thanks :) being upset over it won't bring it back to life... I'm in shock over it, but life goes on...

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  3. Oh no!!! That stinks! I have lost my photos before and I was so heartbroken!! You just reminded me that I need to buy a new hard drive!

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    1. Yes! Go save your files now!!! Don't lose your photos again... This was my second time losing all the data- first time was a loooong time ago so I got lazy... :(

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  4. Same thing happened to me a few of years ago. All the photos of me while pregnant gone in an instant. I was able to find a lot of stuff I had uploaded to the internet, Shutterfly etc. So I got some things back. Sorry this happened to you.

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    1. Oh gosh, losing all your pregnancy photos would be devastating! But so glad you were able to find the ones you posted online. 90% of my photos were of places and not so much people.. So I could always go back and recreate those... It's the people and dog ones that I'm dying over right now.

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  5. Oh my, that sucks! I'm so sorry! I don't know what I would do if we lost all our photos of Patsy! I hope that with both of our phones (me and the hubs) as well as Google plus and Walgreens, we have things digitally stored in a few places (Google plus is the newest backup system we put into place). It is nice that you have a good perspective on things--that really is probably the best way to move on from it!

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    1. Yep... Trying to be positive but it just sucks.. But being angry won't change any of this.

      I must check out google plus for possible storage options. That's a great idea! :)

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  6. I also be super bummed over this :( Do you have many of the pics on Flickr?

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    1. Unfortunately no. I have backups of all the 2012-present stuff. Everything that was lost was 2011 and earlier- before I was blogging or sharing photos online..

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  7. Ugh so sorry that happened, that is a lot of years of memories to lose. I haven't backed up my pictures in a while this reminds me I need to!

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    1. Go backup your files before some random accident happens and renders the drive non-recoverable. It's a pain- and one of those things "I'd get to tomorrow." But now I wish I had done things properly and could have avoided this.

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  8. I am so sorry, I used to blog over at a place that is closing its doors and I can't pull out the photos..I was able to download it, but lost all of the photos. I now put almost everything on facebook. I used to have a bunch on my computer, but the computer crashed.

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    1. If the blog is still up, you can still get the photos from it.. Just go through every post and save every photo individually. Or do screen shots.

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  9. Xaar!!! That totally sucks!!! I am so, so, so sorry to hear that you experienced that. =( But, you have such a great, positive attitude about it. Big cheers to creating lots of happy memories going forward from here on out.

    I am also going to take your advice now and go back up my backup...!

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  10. Oh no, that is a huge bummer about losing all the photos. Though I guess at least you have some pics from your blog over the last couple years? For the past 5 years I've had an external hard drive that had all of my pics on it - I just bought a new computer, so now I have the pics in basically 2 spots - my new computer, and my external hard drive. Nice to have a backup in case something happens. Also, I have a bunch of photos on facebook from 2009 to present in case something happens to my actual photos, plus youtube for videos that I've shared.

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