Repeat that phrase 20,000 times, so you will be convinced. "Computers are our friends."
I spent the entire weekend setting up a new computer in my office, which replaced an old one that bit dust this week.
I have two pieces of advice for anyone who deals with computers, which obviously means you.
First, never... never ever ever never ever ever trust your valuable photos and data to an outboard USB hard drive. I've been burned twice in the past year... most recently, tonight when I plugged in the drive that contains (er, contained) our entire library of photographs.
Dark power button. Nothing.
Fuck.
The second piece of advice is never, never, ever trust your valuable photos and data to an INBOARD hard drive.
Basically, don't trust a computer to safely store anything. Do yourself a favor, and burn them to DVD. It will save you from patching drywall holes and paying major money to the Geek Squad to retrieve your data.
Which is where I will be going tomorrow.
8 comments:
That sucks!! Mike and I just bought an external harddrive to keep all our photos on....I guess I should start burning them.
Good luck with that!!
Yeah... I guess the solution is backup for the backup of the backup. From now on, I'll be uploading photos to Snapfish, saving the data cards from the camera, and saving the photos each of the computers that we have. Oh, yeah, and printing copies from Walgreens immediately. That should cover it.
Sorry about your PC. I really wanted to say that the new window picture is very pretty.
Funny you should mention this. I told my parents I want a USB external HD this Christmas.
The only reason I want the extra HD is to back up my 1000s of family photos and also, my mp3s.
It's such a pain in the ass to burn to DVD.
But now, I figure it's worth the trouble.
So you've never run into the - "I thought it was burned to the DVD, but the DVD drive will not read nor recognize the disc?" Okay, then that's just me. I get it.
Oh man that bites big hairy ball sacks!
Sometimes computers suck!!!!
I feel your pain! I don't trust computers either, I also have been burned. A couple of years ago we bought a Dell, within 4 months the hard drive crashed. We later fond out that the $1500.00 computer we bought had a rebuilt hard drive! That is crap!
I've been using external HDs for many years. Generally when they fail, it's not the drive but the electronics on the enclosure (case). As a replacement I use the AcomData enclosures, and have used Mad Dog in a pinch. There are other hard drive enclosures out there, but Acomdata is rated pretty highly.
I just pop the drive out of the old enclosure, and install in the new one. Out of 6 replacements, only one drive has been a problem - and I believe I can retrieve the data from that without too much of an investment, except in time, which is a terribly scarce commodity right now.
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