I am extremely upset (Page 2): 2014 my Dell got fried in a lightening strike on our house..........an estimated 9500+ images....."pooft!" .I understand your anxiety..... :sm03:...

photosbytw Loc: Blue Ridge Mountains

Bob Mevis wrote:

I was a CAD Draftsman for ten years in the early 2000's.never lost a files and, we had hundreds of thousands of them and I still use our filing system to this day. Sorry for my panic.

2014 my Dell got fried in a lightening strike on our house..........an estimated 9500+ images....."pooft!" .I understand your anxiety.....

tramsey Loc: Texas

I am really glad you found them, been there and not found mine yet. Where did you find them? If it is a different place than where I've looked I'll check ii out

Horatio

I totally understand your panic. The good news is that you have found your images. That happened to me once, and fortunately for me, I called the Apple tech support and they found all of my images. It was all my error.

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

repleo wrote:

Cherchez la femme !!

Ask your ex-wife if she knows anything about it.

That is where my mind went as well.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

Two years ago, the motherboard of my computer ‘went up in smoke’, apparently taking the HDD with it. I had not done a backup in several months, so I had no photos covering several months. After my daughter built a Linux computer for me, and I again had a stable system, I purchased a device that turned the old HDD into an external unit. I discovered that the motherboard had left the HDD in an unstable ‘in use’ state. I was able to return that HDD to a stable ‘idle’ state and then copy the missing files to my new HDD.

I did learn my lesson, though. Now I copy my photographs to an external unit every month.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Bob Mevis wrote:

I found them.

Great!!!!!!!!!

Now to do a backup of the backups and have one, two, three???? extras sets of backups on external drives, CD, DVD, USB thumb drives etc.

It isn't paranoia if it serves a purpose. I used to keep 6* copies of my electronic roll-book while I was teaching. Even if I lost all but the copy I put in my desktop at home the day before all I lost was 24 hours of grades/points.

*That was just my copies. The school had at least the central mainframe with my roll book and attendance marks that I downloaded to at the end of the day.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Bob Mevis wrote:

I'm still shaking. I know, I'm being silly...maybe.

Not at all. You thought an important chunk of your life was gone.

Bob Mevis Loc: Plymouth, Indiana

tramsey wrote:

I am really glad you found them, been there and not found mine yet. Where did you find them? If it is a different place than where I've looked I'll check ii out

I just went in thru the win10 start menu and accessed my internal HD jar drive and found them. When I went into my Internal HD the normal way nothing. Try that.

Bob Mevis Loc: Plymouth, Indiana

Thanks to all who responded. What a great group of people on this forum.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

rehess wrote:

Two years ago, the motherboard of my computer ‘wen... (show quote)

I backup my entire desktop to an external daily through Acronis' backup function. I also have an external with all the pictures and videos (my wife loves to make videos) copied to it weekly. What happened to you makes me consider doing that daily, at least on days I do new photos.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Bob Mevis wrote:

I just went in thru the win10 start menu and accessed my internal HD jar drive and found them. When I went into my Internal HD the normal way nothing. Try that.

Do you mean you went through "File Explorer" as opposed to trying to access them through your editing app?

There is an older free app "Picasa 3" that you can download. It can be instructed to search your whole computer for ALL images of any type. Even things you may not consider to be images. And then you will know just where they are on your drive(s). It may not search for every image format in the world, but most and esp all the common ones. If you use any image formats it does not have in it's search library I think you can add them. Don't know for sure, I have never done that.

Softronics also has a Mac version. When you download you do have to Opt out of the "free" Avast antivirus - very small print at the bottom of the download window.

https://picasa.en.softonic.com/download

wdross Loc: Castle Rock, Colorado

Bob Mevis wrote:

I was going to post some from the archives but I've lost my archives, even my backup drives but, I found my ex wives files look to be all there. I don't understand this. I can live with losing the majority but, the pictures of my Sons graduation from Marine boot camp I can't. I don't understand how they would disappear from my externals they were there not long ago. Anybody have any ideas?

Excuse me now so I can have a breakdown!!!

I know this will not necessarily make things better, but all of us must realize that there is always the potential to lose all of our photos no matter how we try to preserve them. If it is film, a house fire or flooding can take them out. If it on chips, discs, and drives, then accidental deletetions, electrical anomalies, and drive failures can take them out. Even if stored to a cloud, someone has to run the cloud. Bankruptcy, system failures, and non payment can take them out. There is no perfect way to absolutely guarantee storage. We can only do the best that we can.

Bob Mevis Loc: Plymouth, Indiana

robertjerl wrote:

Do you mean you went through "File Explorer&q... (show quote)

I have a shortcut on my desktop to my C drive, that's how I usually access my internal HD. It was alarmingly bare when I accessed it originally started to retrieve the images I wanted to post. I was trying to remember how to find the search menu, when I stumbled across a link to my C drive and found a link to my archives. I could have lived with a loss of all of it but the images of my son's graduation...priceless. Thanks again for your kind responses. This forum is the best.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Bob Mevis wrote:

I have a shortcut on my desktop to my C drive, that's how I usually access my internal HD. It was alarmingly bare when I accessed it originally started to retrieve the images I wanted to post. I was trying to remember how to find the search menu, when I stumbled across a link to my C drive and found a link to my archives. I could have lived with a loss of all of it but the images of my son's graduation...priceless. Thanks again for your kind responses. This forum is the best.

This last week the big Tuesday update killed a lot of my links and automatic sign ins. Irritating. The main saving grace is I have "Last Pass" so don't have to consult the written list of literally hundreds of sign in names and passwords.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

robertjerl wrote:

I backup my entire desktop to an external daily through Acronis' backup function. I also have an external with all the pictures and videos (my wife loves to make videos) copied to it weekly. What happened to you makes me consider doing that daily, at least on days I do new photos.

I've been using CrashPlan for a few years now. It backs things up to the cloud, but one nice thing about it is that it will simultaneously back things up to a local drive. It checks every 10 minutes or so. The local storage is the same sort of format as the cloud storage, so you need CrashPlan to restore it (the files are compressed). But still, having the local backup automatically is a major plus. No bandwidth worries when you have to restore something.

I installed a 4TByte drive in my desktop that holds the local backup.

The cloud storage is backup backup.