I am temporarily interrupting my nervous breakdown to chug some wine and share with you some deeply disturbing news:
My computer crashed.
Even more disturbing:
I lost everything.
And the real punch to the throat:
This includes all my photographs of Kate.
(Excuse me while I vomit.)
Feel free to stop reading this very instant to chug your own bottle of wine and BACK YOUR COMPUTER UP, which is what I had fully intended to do the weekend before it crashed…but never got around to.
Famous last words, right?
My computer is currently inpatient at the computer hospital and I am desperately hoping for a successful data recovery. Once that happens (please God let it happen) I WILL TAKE A SLEDGEHAMMER TO THAT DAMN THING FOR PUTTING ME THROUGH ALL THIS ANGST!
I have loads more to say but I’ll have to save it for another time…must go vomit again right now.
This just happened to a friend of mine, too. However, the good news is that some blessed computer geek was able to restore everything for her, so here’s hoping you have the same luck! (She used The Geek Squad guys.)
Just wanted to say that it’s rare someone would actually lose all of the data from their hard drive. So, as long as you’ve got someone good working on your computer, there is a very very very real chance you will get your data back. If they tell you they can’t get it back, try someone else. I can definitely understand the stress and anxiety potentially lost data and PHOTOS can be though! Hang in there.
Ditto Heather. You should be able to get it back. Unless you threw it in the bathtub or something. Or if its a MAC.
This happened to me in January and I lost everything. The computer guys at work had it for weeks while I kept begging them to try again. I am going to back up TONIGHT!!!
I hope you will have better luck. Have been wondering where you were!
Gotta hand it to Office Depot – they recovered my desktop when the crappy Windows Vista operating system went UA permanently. Less than $200 – would have paid anything to get all my photos and work back! And it was the week before Christmas
Office Depot rocks – and for much less than Geek Squad.
Saying a little prayer that everything turns out… I had a similar scare when my daughter was 2 and I swear the anxiety took years off my life! The geeks were able to save my photos… hoping the same is true for you!
Just wanted to let you know that my husband is one of those computer geeks (IT director for a law firm) and I promise your files are recoverable. Of course, I don’t know how, but seriously, if you want to send us your computer, he can recover your stuff to a CD.
Just want to offer! I know how stressful it would be to think about losing everything.
Ughhh! Good luck getting everything back.
oh no!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i am so sorry this happened. we lost all our wedding pics this way.
Oh no! How horrible! I hope you are able to recover at least some of your pictures…
That. totally. sucks.
That’s terrible. I can’t help you get back all your pics, but going forward, have you thought about a cloud service? I use sugarsync (there are a bunch out there, like carbonite and others I can’t think of the names), and its set so that every time I upload a pic to my computer, it automatically saves it to the cloud. I never have to back anything up manually. (And it does this for everything I upload to my computer, like documents and pics and whatever.)
I started using a web-based service after we had a fire last year–it made me panic that even if I had a spare hard drive backup, i’d still lose stuff if there was a fire.
I’m sorry you lost all those pics.
Holy crap! I’m so sorry. This almost happened to me last week but it was just a virus that made it look like I had lost everything. And I too was crying at the potential of having no record of Maura’s first 8 months of life anymore. But $200 later I was all set and will definitely be backing up more. I hope they can get your data for you, Dusty. I’ll be crossing my fingers for you all weekend long.
Ugh, so sorry to hear that! What a nightmare. I’m crossing my fingers that they’re able to recover everything for you! And that is a good reminder to me to go back up all my photos… a task I’ve had on my to-do list for, oh, a good year and a half…
We had an external hard drive SPECIFICALLY for ALLLLLLL our photos documenting every detail of my now husband and I’s dating history…until I dropped it…it’s still sitting there…anyone who has a SUPER UBER SUPER CONFIDENT reference for me to send it to…do not hesitate to contact me. I’ve been told it’s a one time shot apparently???…once the ‘seal’ is broken that’s it??? Fingers crossed and double crossed for ya girl!!!!
That sucks! I’d vomit too. I am sure it will all work out though.
jbhat
@j&k If you dropped it, that is a little different than if the drive just crashed. It is a hardware issue then instead of software. If the pin on your drive is off or bent or the discs are off, that pin could damage the drive further which is why you were told it’s a one time shot. My guess is that is going to cost a lot more than the $200 others have paid for hard drive recovery.
Oh no! I’d vomit too! My computer just crashed, but thank the Lord, Computer wizard from work said it wasn’t my hard drive. He had this thingy you attached to the hard drive that has a USB and plugged it into my husband’s laptop. 1st thing I did was burn all my videos. I hadn’t backed up any of them (my son is 4). Thankfully I am OCD when it comes to my pictures. I upload all of them to Snapfish, then burn 2 CDs (1 for home and 1 for work), and then I keep them on an external hard drive before I even delete them from my camera. Now I will do the same for the videos once we get our new computer.
You poor girl. I really hope they can work their magic and get your pictures back. It makes me so sad just to think about losing them.
Oh no sweetie. I’m so sorry to hear this! I really hope that they are successful in their recovery efforts!
In addition to an external next time, check out carbonite and crashplan as online backups too! GL!
I’m so sorry! Fingers crossed that they fix it and that you get them back!
That just happened to us with our external hard drive, for the second time… Got everything back, but thought I would puke too! Good luck, and know we are all thinking about you and hoping for the best! Missed your posts the last couple weeks and hope for good news soon!!!!
Been there, done that… and they RECOVERED my photos. I’ll hope the same for you. Just last week I installed Carbonite (www.carbonite.com) which is a site that will back up your hard drive every night without you having to life a finger. I’m so glad to have found them, seriously, I WANT to back my stuff up but rarely find the time. Just a thought for when (not IF) you get your computer back– data intact. (fingers crossed!)
Oh sister… I feel your pain!! This happened to us as well… We weren’t able to recover the hard-drive though… I had printed off some of the pictures, but we lost all of the videos from birth – around 5 months. I cried for days.
I really hope they are able to recover your pictures!!! I know how awful it is to have lost all of those special memories!
Thanks for your comments everyone. I’m going to look into an online back-up site. That sounds like a really great idea, thank you!
This happened to me. I bought a new hard drive and took out the old one. Once I had the new one set up I bought a cable for $15 that makes the old hard drive an external hard drive. You should in most cases be able to see the C:\ drive and copy the files you need.
It cost me about $60 bucks for a new hard drive. You will need to know if you have a Sata drive or IDE drive to buy the right cable.
I wouldn’t trust a tech with my hard drive until I checked for myself if the files are their or not. That’s just me.
Good Luck.
http://www.ehow.com/how_5151990_convert-hard-drive-external-harddrive.html
Hi there,
I once lost everything I had written for my undergrad. You learn quick after that.
We use a cloud based backup site called crashplan.com
Easy to set up, unlimited uploads, and u pay for how many years you want to backup. I think we paid 100 for 2 years plan.