Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Yikes!

After the first drive in my old file server died, I made a backup of all of my photos...or so I had thought. But actually, I didn't get them all. For some reason NONE of my Africa pictures got backed up!! YIKES. I discovered this tonight when I wanted the original image for the header on this web site. I checked the original card in my camera, my external hard drive..., the copy I had made on the new file server...nothing. A few minutes later I remembered that I had at one time burned other copies: one I sent to my Dad so he could view a slideshow on his DVD player, and another that I kept for myself. Thankfully, I found my copy in my "box 'o pictures" and have recovered all of the photos...PHEW.

It goes to show you: even when you make a backup (or even when you have an implicit backup with a RAID), you could make a mistake and unknowingly miss something. Be proactive in making backups, ESPECIALLY with irreplaceable things like photographs.

I would have been a sad little boy if I had lost all of those pictures. Imagine how it would make you feel if you lost all of those digital photos you have of your kids/grandkids/friends/whatever. Consider even burning another copy and sending the CD/DVD to someone else.

(Now that this blog is online, I may devote some time to that Amazon S3 application I've been wanting to write for encrypted off-site backups.)

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