DSLR Photography Forum

My PC is kaput - stone dead - won't boot. All my photos trapped onboard.

Could be worse. The problem seems to be that my primary hard drive is unrecognized - possibly defunct. I think not, however - I have been having similar non-recognition problems with other devices on the IDE controller - so I think it is the motherboard that is toast and not the hard drive. Fortunately the unrecognized drive is not the drive where I keep my photos - only the drive with the operating system. When I install my photo drive in a new machine, I will get my photos back (hopefully).

Why bore you with this story? It made me think about how often I back up my photos to other media? If your hard drive crashed, how much of your work would you lose? I know that I would lose a lot - my photo exhibition masters, the dance portfolio I did,and all my new work.

Makes you think, eh?

Yep... the most I would ever lose is 2-3 weeks fresh shots. Everything else is on CD.

I have most of my computer copied onto a slave drive but that's not the best solution either.

I lost about 2-3 months work earlier this year and still I have not learnt to backup regularly. Best a I do a backup DVD tomorrow.

I back up all my RAW files onto my portable HDD, but what if THAT breaks?
I should have a backup of the backup at a different location!

So I have managed to coax my PC back to stuttering life. You'd think I would immediately perform a backup - wouldn't you? Maybe tonight...

Toad Wrote:So I have managed to coax my PC back to stuttering life. You'd think I would immediately perform a backup - wouldn't you? Maybe tonight...

Don't be a glutton for punishment. Back up those files!

I did it, made a copy of all my important files, not a backup mind you, running the backup software wanted to recompress all those nicely compressed jpeg files, seemed to like a long time to compress a couple of hundred megs so I abandoned that and just saved a copy in a fairly short time.

I don't use a backup file, just burn the files I know are new to Cd and rename the folder they are in to have the date I backed them up on. Everything else on the PC I can afford to lose.

Toad Wrote:So I have managed to coax my PC back to stuttering life. You'd think I would immediately perform a backup - wouldn't you? Maybe tonight...

Phew, good thing you could salvage it...

Salvage is a good description - something (I suspect the motherboard) is clearly on its last legs - and I need to investigate an upgrade quick (time anyway - PC is 5 years old - and if you play games, that is an eternity).

I am just happy that the hard drives are OK. Backup tonight. I also don't use actuial "backup" software. I just copy the files that I want to keep to DVDs.

My machine is about the same age... and more than ready for replacement.