Back That Thang Up!!
January 16, 2010 2 Comments
In May 2009 we ( Rolle, My Mama, Her Friend, & Me) went on a 17 day European Vacation. We started out in London, stayed there for 4 days, then we hired a car to take us to Southampton for the start of our 11-day Mediterranean cruise. The ports of call on the cruise were (in this order) Vigo, Spain; Lisbon, Portugal; Gibraltar, UK; Cagliari, Sardinia; Rome, Italy; Pisa & Florence, Italy; Villafranche & Cannes, France; Barcelona, Spain; which is where we disembarked and spent an additional 3 days. During this vacation I took over 1500 photos, and 300 and something video clips. Just to be “safe” I downloaded the photos at the end of every day to my laptop. The plan was to make informative 3 – 4 minute video postcards for each destination.
When we got home, I put some photos on Facebook, but just a few teaser pics, as I wanted to save the best for my videos. Then one day….the weirdest thing happened…I went to turn my 10-month new MacBook Pro on…and I got this flashing folder symbol, and my computer wouldn’t boot up. After calling Apple Care and going through all of the troubleshooting we could do over the phone, I was told I would need to take it into a Mac Store. Since I’m currently residing in Saudi Arabia, I decided to wait until I returned back to the states in November. During that time…I tried not to think about it. Because every time I did, I felt somewhat nauseous. Upon arrival in the states, I immediately take it into the store…the same day…about 3 hours after landing…and they tell me the dreaded words, that I was hoping for the past two months I would not hear, “your hard drive has to be replaced”. ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They replaced the hard drive, and the ethernet port (this also had died about 2 days before the hard drive), and gave me back the computer along with the damaged hard drive. Then…I thought there was some hope. They gave me a card and told me to call Drive Savers. It’s a company located in Northern California that is one of the better known companies for this sort of thing and that they may be able to forensically remove the data, however it was expensive. Well what’s considered “expensive”? It’s all relative, so I make the call. Of course, they can not give me a quote over the phone, they need to see the hard drive, they sent me a box to send them the hard drive, and if they couldn’t fix it, they would also send it back and it will have cost me nothing. So…I send it in. The next day, I receive a call. The quote I received was a range from $1700 – $2400. Sh*t!!!!!!!!!!! That is expensive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! After a few conversations back in forth (over a few days), they offered a price of $1000. I told them the photos were the most important thing. I was willing to pay $1000. to get my stuff off of this hard drive. About a week goes by, and I receive the dreaded phone call that they could not recover anything from the drive. I was pretty much devastated all over again. Because, even though I was trying not to get my hopes up, inside, I was hoping.
The only photos I have from this vacation are the few (about 10 – 20 pics per city) are on FB. And, since I’ve upload them to FB, they are so compressed that I couldn’t pull them off to make a slide show because it would look horrible. I know this because I tried. The obvious lesson here is to back up your photos!! I now back up my hard drive to an external and I burn photos to a CD and file. It doesn’t matter if you have a new computer or not. Trust me…after saving and spending dang near $2500 for my Mac, to have the hard drive crash beyond repair at 10 months in, is horrible. I never would have thought it. So…remember, “Back Dat Thang Up!”.
Just writing this, I’m still filled with disappointment. It’s a hard lesson. If you wanna check out the few photos I have from this vacation, you can click on the links and view the pics from FB (even if you don’t have an FB account).
London, England: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=82812&id=544363929&l=f938a3ad56
London2: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=82812&id=544363929&l=f938a3ad56
Vigo, Spain: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=82818&id=544363929&l=dead38f400
Lisbon, Portugal: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=82823&id=544363929&l=e0cc9b9a8c
Gibraltar, UK: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=82825&id=544363929&l=79ce6bfedc
BTW: Crusing into Gibraltar was awesome, we saw the northern coast of Africa and a pod of dolphins. This stop was a pleasant surprise.
Cagliari, Sardinia: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=82826&id=544363929&l=41b29efb0c
Rome, Italy: We LOVED, LOVED, LOVED Rome: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=82842&id=544363929&l=106d4170c2
Pisa & Florence, Italy: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=82845&id=544363929&l=73d4a26188
Barcelona, Spain: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=82871&id=544363929&l=4ca7059693
Following is one of the only 2 photos I have from being at the Cannes Film Festival:
Really terrible. I had similar problems some years ago, so I upload my photos on external sites now. The same with the post. I don’t have it in my PC more. So, PC+CD+external photo galeries -I hope it will protect me from the problems.
Thanks Liudmila for stopping by. I didn’t consider the external websites. Maybe I should investigate that more. I ruled them out due to file size. But…