Catastrophic failure

[Scrapbird]

Not an error message you want to see on your screen.

I've started this post a few times and just deleted it, but I'm ready to share it now. One seemingly small computer glitch led to another, until everything finally cascaded into the above words on my screen, and there was no fix to be had.
So I reformatted my hard drive, thinking that, because I had online backup, it would be a piece of cake. Just click restore, right?
Two weeks later, I am just finishing that restore. I lost all my contacts, email messages, bookmarks, and most distressing, all my DD brushes. I do not know why these things were not backed up.
The files that were backed up had to be downloaded, one set of files at a time, over many, many hours and days, and placed back into the folders they came from. There WAS no magic restore button.
A 1TB hard drive and backup software is on its way from Amazon. I'll keep the online service for an emergency.

Sorry to sound so bummed. I still have every one of my precious photos and all my pages, all my digi supplies, all my documents. It could have been worse. We talk here all the time about the importance of backing up, and I thought I had.
The moral: we need TWO backup systems, ladies!!

Glad to be back!!!!

[Tesia]

Oh my gosh. That is SO sad! What an awful awful experience! Glad you did have most backed up - that makes it slightly less devastating I guess - but still, the hours and hours of time. I'm so sorry! Thanks for the reminder though...I need to get a secondary system in place!

[digigrandma]

I am glad you are back, Diane, and, so sorry for the reason you have been MIA! All that time to get up and running again....and so frustrating, I'm sure.

You are reminding me that I need to back up things like email addresses and bookmarks. I regularly back up photos and layouts and kit supplies, but, I don't back up my whole hard drive. I've been meaning to get a second EHD to do that. I guess I'd best make it a priority.

[Lynn Grieveson]

Oh no. I'm glad you managed to save nearly everything but still .. what a nightmare. You must have been so sick of downloading by the end!

[anxela]

I'm so sorry this happened to you... What an amount of work! But still, you had almost everything secured. You must be so relieved about that!

[anxela]

Originally Posted by Scrapbird

The moral: we need TWO backup systems, ladies!!

And you're absolutely right. My online backup is for emergency only - if (knock wood) our house is destroyed, or in the unlikely case that both my EHDs quit working at the same time. (I have everything stored on one EHD, and have another EHD to backup that.)

I also keep an EHD at my mom's house, but it's not up to date. It keeps pictures from 2007-2009. I update it on a very irregular basis, it's the emergency backup number one, so that I won't have to download everything from my "cloud" backup.

Again, so sorry this happened to you. And glad that you're back!

[DonnaNJ]

What a horrible experience.. so glad you got most of your stuff back.. I do consider my offsite backup as a last resort.. I have a time machine backup.. then two separate EHD that I copy to once a month.. one I keep here and one at the office.. hopefully even if my house burned down I would only have to get the last month from offsite.

[anke]

Oh no!!! Every scrapper's nightmare! I am so glad you got all your stuff though, that is one good thing. I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been to download everything again....
I do pretty much what Heidi (Anxela) does (except for the mother part), although I do not backup my bookmarks, I should prob do that too, it never occurred to me! Again, so sorry you had to go through this, glad to have you back!

[grandma lynnie]

Such a nightmare. i'm so sorry you had to go through this experience but am very glad that you are finally able to be back with us. Thanks for sharing your experience so ,hopefully, we can learn from it!

[earlofoxford]

Oh, how awful, Diane. I'm glad you were able to retrieve everything, but what frustration and irritation.

[carollee]

Crikeys.

[whatnext]

wow. that's a story we all need to hear. what an awful thing to have to go through. but happily the photos and pages are restored. whew. i know what I'M going to be doing today....

[KerryMac]

Yikes! Such an awful occurrence. I'm glad you are back and I bet you're happy to be mostly finished with the task of reloading all of your files.

[iUma]

So irritating. Did you every find out the source of the crash? Back up...ah....like weight loss, right? Must do....but o so easy to forget. At least YOU had done it and You were fortunate that you got all of it back. Sorry it has been such a huge DRAG!

[JALong]

How sad and I am really "bummed" for you!

[cheska99]

Been there, done that. If someone says reformat to me about my hard drive, I know I'm in for about six weeks of getting everything back the way it was before the catastrophic error. It just goes on and on and on--although I must say that downloading my files from my onsite backup wasn't so bad. It was restoring all the little configurations I've done over the years.

[maureenreynolds]

Oh Diane...my heart goes out to you. Your little fingers must be worn out from non-fun computer work.

One thing I started doing this year is putting my bookmarks on Delicious. I have changed computers so many times over the years when I was working, and usually found that a good portion of my bookmarks either were no longer on line or were no longer of interest to me. I pretty much gave up on keeping them, tho what I have now, before Delicious, are up on MobileMe along with my contacts, and email. My gmail account is so rarely used, just for some logins, that I only check it periodically or when I am doing something on freecycle or getting diligent about Flylady again.

2 ehds, one for my time machine, and now a new portable one that will be strictly digi stuff, to be formatted when I get home. It's all a pita but worth it when we here a story like yours Diane. As someone here said, Patricia?, it's not if, it's when. Machines wear out, often shortly after the warranty imho. ;-p