Ugh...for the past several days I've been dealing with a major issue. I had all my files, which is over 300,000 photos and scans, on a remote hard drive, since I no longer trust my actual hard drive after my 2nd computer died in December 2012. Well...the remote hard drive died. Taking everything with it. Most of my stuff is backed up elsewhere, but almost none of the cards I had scanned since October, when I got the remote hard drive, were. Absolutely none of the back scans were, and that includes more than 1000 foil and Finest style cards that I had done the fronts on but not yet the backs.
I normally back up my card fronts on the first of each month, but it looks like I won't be backing them up today.
However, it is looking like I will be able to recover them. I downloaded a program called "Recuva" which was able to get the files back...However....(and nothing ever comes easy for me)...none of the file names were saved. As I had labeled all my cards and sequestered them into folders (uploaded to Database but not Fotki, prepped to post but not yet posted, and more) they are now all mixed together with everything else. Folders for each NBA and NASCAR season, Non-sports sorted by subject, etc.
It's going to take me days, if not MONTHS to get everything back to normal. It's possible I may not have gotten everything back, I don't know yet. I'm still working on it.
It took the Recuva program more than a DAY to read the drive and pull the pictures off of it. There were more than 300,000 after all. I have not even tried to pull my Excel and Word files off it yet- some of which exist only on the remote hard drive that crashed, mainly my updated comic collection charts.
On the one good thing...it's allowing me to look at my life's accomplishments in photography and scans. Yeah, kind of lacking, but it's something.
Let me tell you, I don't curse...ever...but I came really close here. To me it's a sign of a lack of intelligence and a lack of a workable lexicon, but the frustration levels have been so high that "crap" and "darn" didn't really cut it.
While the computer program was working, my brother and I went to our local Kmart, which is closing. This really upsets me because it's one of my favorite stores and I have memories of going there my whole life- I've mentioned it on the blog in the past, it's the location I got my first box of NBA basketball cards. (either 1990-91 Hoops or 1994-95 Hoops, possibly both on the same day). They had no cards at all this trip. To add insult to injury, we got food out and it made me sick.
Like I said...not having fun.
No pictures today. Will finish posting the COMC bonanza series soon, and then back to regular programming. But for now trying to recover my scans has to take precedence.
Once I have the pictures back and labeled, I'll be working on getting them up onto a cloud program...I might just post a bunch of scans to the blog as well, as it stores them at full size, and I trust Google to outlive me, let alone my Fotki, which I have run since 2004 and has played host to all my photos ever since, but has lost some of them over time.
At least the tornado warning (!) we had today didn't cause any damage.
Documenting History via Trading Cards
Sorry to hear about your bad fortune. Good luck with getting everything back in order.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I've been working on it all day, since before noon, and I am less than 1/3rd through. I've found 176 card scans mixed in so far...still a few thousand left to find!
DeleteI'm sorry to hear of all your difficulties. I know next to nothing when it comes to computers, hard drives, clouds, etc. so I can't really provide any words of wisdom in that department. However, getting sick from eating out is something I know way too much about. I haven't eaten food from any fast food joint/restaurant since I almost died from some kind of food poisoning, courtesy of a tainted sandwich from Subway a little over ten years ago.
ReplyDeleteAre tornados common in your area?
Yikes! You'd think we would not eat anything we didn't make considering all the times we've gotten sick, but we do. It doesn't help that I have some stomache issues to begin with.
DeleteTornados are pretty rare here. We get about 2 watches per decade and this is only the second warning I can remember, although there was no report of an actual tornado. There was a hook echo in the radar, and rotation, which, according to the Accuweather app on my phone, was about 2 streets north of me, but nothing. (I have to admit, I took my camera outside and looked for one, exactly the opposite of what I should have done). Back in the 1980s one hit a school across the Hudson River with tragic results, and circa 1996 my mom saw a funnel cloud form over Poughkeepsie, but they are very rare here. Not a bad thing.
If it makes you feel any better, I would have gone outside too!
DeleteSorry to hear that. I consider days of loading everything onto a computer, then I hear stories like this and not sure if I invested time and lose it all that I will find it worth it.
ReplyDeleteIt got me to thinking about how I do thungsm. I take thousands of pictures every year, but nobody cares except me. I almost wonder if it's worth taking them. Getting my cards and other collections out is physically challenging so I photo document them (or scans) but when your backup of them crashes, it can be really frustrating.
DeleteThings, not thungsm.
DeleteHuge bummer. Here's hoping you can get back on your feet as your card scans are invaluable to the Database.
ReplyDeleteIt's good that your looking into storing files in the cloud. Google Drive could get you a lot of storage
Thanks! I actually have so many files that Google Drive can't support them all. Amazon Cloud can, and that's what I'll be using. It costs less, too!
DeleteOh cool. I always forget that Amazon has personal cloud storage. Glad you found something that works!
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear about your issues. Computers can be a real bear sometimes and no more so than when they don't play by the rules. Good luck getting everything squared away.
ReplyDelete