the past couple of weeks we have been working on recovering files from our backup drive. what do you do when your backup fails and you already reformatted your drive? you call clayton. he is amazing!!!!
here’s the story: we were upgrading to windows 7 in an effort to clean up our computer and get it to run more efficiently. it is 4 or 5 years old and we didn’t want to buy a new computer yet. so, we ran a backup, checked to see that everything was there-it was, and we proceeded. well, the install was fine until something was making the computer restart randomly on its own. kip and clayton both tried a few things and then decided we needed to reinstall windows 7. well, somehow during the process, the backup drive decided to fail. when we went to retrieve files the second time, they were gone.
clayton ran a backup recovery program and was able to recover some files-pictures mostly, but not all of them. i actually spent a few hours sorting through a crazy long list of files and found the pictures. here we are two weeks later, though, still working on recovering files and still missing a lot of them.
i have looked through my cf cards and sd cards and discovered that a good portion of the pictures that i thought i had lost, are still on the cards. actually, i believe i have received a blessing from god. i have spent the past week praying that i could recover my photos. i was afraid to look at my cf cards because i knew i had deleted two cards to take on our trip to montana. well, when i finally looked at them this morning, NONE of my cards were empty! i only used one card for the trip, and it had more than just montana on it. truly a blessing, a miracle perhaps? whichever it is, i am very, very grateful!
my new backup plan for pictures: upload them ALL to two websites, get prints made, cds made, and continue to use a backup drive. i’m even considering buying new media cards when the ones i have are full, so i never delete another photo, ever!
as for word documents, i’ll just print everything and continue to rely on my backup. i don’t know what else i can do. but, my pictures are more important to me, anyway. i’ll spend my effort and money there.
so, lesson learned: backup your backup!
