The importance of backing up stuff!

I just wanted to share a wee drama I had today and I really would hate it to happen to anyone else!

Recently my old faithful and reliable camera, that I effectively hijacked from the family to take gardening photos, died.  The memory card held within was jam packed with photos proudly taken of my awesome produce, with the occasional birthday party, parental proudness and cute moments – although with growing boys “cute moments” are getting fewer and far between!

The camera had been my constant gardening companion for years.  The cord was all grubby and I was sure there was dust in the focus bit that zooms out (I’m not a photography expert, more a point and shoot kind of a girl) because it made a funny crunching sound when it zoomed in on something.  It was old and battered, but it did the job.  That was until I dropped it!  So I convinced Hubby the Un-Gardener that in this day and age that it is pointless not having a decent camera to catch those all-important special moments, although I neglected to mention that more often than not we have our phones with us and they take pretty decent pictures these days.  But he saw reason and off we went and brought a shiny new camera (in black so the dirt won’t show as much!)

I figured all I have to do is swap the SD card over and bobs your uncle, we’re back in business and I was in business –  for about a week.  Then I popped the SD card into the computer to have a look and got the biggest shock – the kind that leaves a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach as you fight the waves of nausea.  They were gone.  My photos – just gone.  The ones taken with the new camera were all still there – taunting me as if to say:  “get those grubby old shots out of my memory space.”

Now the problem was that I hadn’t been very good with backing up.  Every time I looked at the photos I’d think – I should do something with those, and luckily for me, occasionally I’d drag a whole lot across to the computer, but I never got round to deleting them off the SD card.  Which is probably more likely to be the cause than a new camera with malicious intent!  There were about 2000 photos on my SD card – mostly of the garden!  Frustratingly the properties function shows the card is almost full, but I just can’t get to them!

So now I have gone into back up overdrive, I have “very important files” backed up to two alternating memory sticks, a CD and an external hard drive and sent to a specially opened Gmail account.  Not so important stuff is backed up to CD and external hard drive.  Now all I need to do is to remember the pain of losing data and train myself to back up routinely.

I figure I have only really lost photos taken since January and while it is sad to think the birthday party photos and other memorable moments are gone, we still have the memories in our heads and hearts and I since we switched to digital I had never printed any out anyway!  The garden photos can be retaken next season and tales of the summer of 2012 can be like a good “the one that got away” fishing story:  You should have seen how fabulous my garden was that season – not a weed in sight (wink wink nod nod!)

And that old SD card, well I think I need to replace it as I don’t want to risk losing more memories, but I shall label it “stuffed SD card” and pack it way somewhere safe so that in the advent of a miracle it should start working again, I’ll be able to back it up.

Come again soon – but back up your stuff before you do!

Sarah the Gardener  : o )