Let this be a lesson to you all. BACK EVERYTHING UP!!
Oh yes, I've read that missive before. I've heard it drilled into our heads at school a gazillion times. And I actually did back up my work......three years ago.
Not good enough apparently.
The thing that was attached to me by the hip let me down. Surprisingly it felt like a punch into the gut, like the wind got knocked out of me, like someone ate all my coconut mounds brownies.
(recipe to come.....)
I was grieving. I lost over 3,000 photos, a million recipes, untold amounts of school work and directions for a spinach smoothie that makes you forever young and rich beyond your wildest dreams.
To make a long story short, all of a sudden, after an attempt to download an update for itunes, my screen went gray, the apple symbol showed up and I was unable to sign in. Then the computer started to restart itself over and over and over again and I was never able to sign in.
The computer guy at school said I killed it. ('My' computer really belongs to the school.) He tried several things....his assistant tried different things....everyone researched the internet for solutions to no avail. The special 'architecture' of the 'school' programming did not allow
these remedies to be useful. It needed to be re-imaged, and then all gets erased no matter what.
BUT...it didn't make any sense!!!! I hate things that don't make sense. It didn't make sense to my son either. And he knows EVERYTHING. (ahem)
Everything was still on my computer....right behind that dang gray screen. We just couldn't get there.
The hard drive did not get run over by a bus. It's was still intact. All my stuff was still there. I knew it was.
ALWAYS GET SECOND OPINIONS. Eventually I found someone that knew how to surgically remove my hard drive, put it into another computer and access all my stuff!! It's all jumbled up, no rhyme or reason to it, but it all appears to be there.
Except the directions for the smoothie.
10 comments:
Whoa, I know what that is like. I didn't loose my computer but I had Picasa fail by their own (not broadcasted) written word. I did not realize that if you deleted something in Googles infamous program Picasa that you would also be taking it from the hard drive, no warning or questions asked. Issue here is that this was on an auxillary drive to boot. Somewhere between 3500 and 4000 photos apparently gone.
I too did the smart thing.....I searched the net and found that had I taken one more step they truely would have been gone. As it is, I got them back but jumbled like you wouldn't believe. Sequences, years taken, albums in albums or photos in the wrong albums. It took days, winter project, to fix.
You won't find Picasa on anything of mine, I strickly use PSE, Bridge, LR and PS5 Ext. All this on the main drive and again on an auxillary. They aske the all important question when deleting "Do you want to delete this from the catalog?" followed by in some cases, "Do you want to delete this from the hard disc?".
Awww been there, had that happen and I can vouch it really sucks. But, have I learned anything from it? Nope, as I type from my un-backed up laptop. Well at least your blog didn't disappear! Glad to see you back! ~Lili
I feel ill on your behalf . . . and I, too, hate it when something DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!
It is scary when our computers fail us for sure. I'm glad you got back your jumbled files.
I constantly back-up my computer (why won't it make that little beep beep beep when backing up?)
I just bought two 30G thumb drives for just photos. Last night I copied 60% of my photos to one of the thumb drives - it said I had 46,000 photos. These are for the years 2000-2010. Just two more years to back up and the thumb drives can go in the safe deposit box and I'll update about every 3 months. Feels good to think my photos are safe, as I thought I had lost all of Ben's (our grandson) first year of photos - but wonderful Picasa found them for me.
Well girl I was wondering what happened to you! You should have called my husband The Computer Mechanic!! He would have quietly yelled at you about the backing up thing probably!! So glad you are back!
Been there/done that. Didn't want that particular T-shirt! One word: Carbonite!!!
It is small insurance to pay for keeping those precious photos...um, I mean business records:) It is a back up in the cloud, encrypted before it leaves your puter, easily accessible to the next puter. It works in the background and auto loads stuff to the cloud when you are not actively using the puter. Easy peasy. Worth it.
Have a great day...
I just found your blog while visitng another blog. I am a true pinterest addict. I lvoe your photos but your paintings are truly beautiful. My daughter has a gift (I didn't get it). Thanks for sharing you talent.
Love the computer screen.
Darryl and Ruth :)
True, the number one advice to all who use and will use electronic devices is ALWAYS BACK UP EVERYTHING! You can never guess what will happen if you happen to tweak something in your computer. All valuable files can be lost with just one click. And I agree, always get a second opinion. If you can’t remedy it yourself, find someone who can.
Sorry to hear what happened with your computer. And I agree with you, one should back up everything. It can certainly be a life saver, especially if something unexpected happen with your computer, such as this one. Anyway, I think the problem is that the iTunes update you downloaded is not compatible with your system. That is why it keeps restarting over and over again. It is good that you have somebody to salvage your file, it would be sad to lose that amount of data and information, especially the smoothie. :)
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