M
meriadoc
Guest
Well. This is a painful story (and an expensive one to boot).
I do most of my work on my laptop. Due to extensive travel because family members are spread all around this country, I use a laptop. Downloading is easier
.
Well, last sunday I was doing a shoot for a ferret calendar. I did the shoot, came home, and went to work editing them. It was also due for the weekly backup of all my files. Well, I put it off to monday evening, as sunday I wasn't ready to back up. I also had to take my laptop to work to work on a customer's image before sending it out to be printed at our outlab.
So monday it was fine, customer came in, I edited the photographs, and got them ready for printing. then it started to get busy, so I put the laptop into a suspend mode. Well, apparently, it didn't go into that mode. In fact, it didn't really do much. Screen went blank, and I couldn't get it out of whatever mode it got itself into. So I just did a hard shutdown (I hate windows, but thats another story). I went home, to turn my laptop back on.
Nothing happened.
It powered up, you could hear the CD drive starting to power up, you could hear the hard drive power up. The screen didn't turn on, and then the CD and hard drive powered down. Turn it off. Remove battery. Wait 10 minutes.
Tried again. Nothing happened.
So we went to take out the hard drive, in the vain hopes of pulling my stuff off the hard drive, and backing it up (or at least the images) onto another computer (we have so many its unbelievable - we've got four laptops and other desktops). Couldn't get the harddrive out.
So since its still under warranty, we went down to CompUSA before I went to work (thats where I got the laptop from originally). They turned it on, lifted it up, and you could hear a rattling sound, like something came loose. Nope, since its under warranty, they can't fix it, they wanted me to spend some rediculous amount to back up the hard drive (but they wouldn't remove the drive, so how the heck could they back it up if there was no display to see what the laptop was doing??).
10-14 BUSINESS days. They'd call when it got sent to HP/Compaq, and they'd call when they get it back. Well, I STILL haven't received the call that they have sent it out, so I figure it'll be at least a month before I get the thing back. I never got a chance to back up my files - including all the zoo shots I had taken the weekend prior (which can be seen in the general photography forum).
So, if i get my laptop back with all the files, good. If not, well.. yeah. I'm toast. Not that I can sell the zoo shots anyway, but there's some enlargment worthy photographs there that I could have used to promote myself to get some potential work.
So, on Wednesday, I ended up going out and spending money on a desktop PC. With DVD burner.
Painful lesson I have now learned - BACK UP. In fact, Now, I backup after EVERY photoshoot I do. Thankfully the shots I would have potentially have lost for the ferret calendar were still on my compact flash card, so I didn't have to go through the hassle and embarrassment of reshooting that project.
So yeah, after any major assignment or just after an important personal event, I urge you all to back up your files. Its an expensive mistake to make.
On the plus side - last months photos totalled to almost 7gb worth of images. So I get to reduce the 10 CDs that they're on down to 2 DVDs. Ahh, space. Tis a good thing.
I do most of my work on my laptop. Due to extensive travel because family members are spread all around this country, I use a laptop. Downloading is easier
.Well, last sunday I was doing a shoot for a ferret calendar. I did the shoot, came home, and went to work editing them. It was also due for the weekly backup of all my files. Well, I put it off to monday evening, as sunday I wasn't ready to back up. I also had to take my laptop to work to work on a customer's image before sending it out to be printed at our outlab.
So monday it was fine, customer came in, I edited the photographs, and got them ready for printing. then it started to get busy, so I put the laptop into a suspend mode. Well, apparently, it didn't go into that mode. In fact, it didn't really do much. Screen went blank, and I couldn't get it out of whatever mode it got itself into. So I just did a hard shutdown (I hate windows, but thats another story). I went home, to turn my laptop back on.
Nothing happened.
It powered up, you could hear the CD drive starting to power up, you could hear the hard drive power up. The screen didn't turn on, and then the CD and hard drive powered down. Turn it off. Remove battery. Wait 10 minutes.
Tried again. Nothing happened.
So we went to take out the hard drive, in the vain hopes of pulling my stuff off the hard drive, and backing it up (or at least the images) onto another computer (we have so many its unbelievable - we've got four laptops and other desktops). Couldn't get the harddrive out.
So since its still under warranty, we went down to CompUSA before I went to work (thats where I got the laptop from originally). They turned it on, lifted it up, and you could hear a rattling sound, like something came loose. Nope, since its under warranty, they can't fix it, they wanted me to spend some rediculous amount to back up the hard drive (but they wouldn't remove the drive, so how the heck could they back it up if there was no display to see what the laptop was doing??).
10-14 BUSINESS days. They'd call when it got sent to HP/Compaq, and they'd call when they get it back. Well, I STILL haven't received the call that they have sent it out, so I figure it'll be at least a month before I get the thing back. I never got a chance to back up my files - including all the zoo shots I had taken the weekend prior (which can be seen in the general photography forum).
So, if i get my laptop back with all the files, good. If not, well.. yeah. I'm toast. Not that I can sell the zoo shots anyway, but there's some enlargment worthy photographs there that I could have used to promote myself to get some potential work.
So, on Wednesday, I ended up going out and spending money on a desktop PC. With DVD burner.
Painful lesson I have now learned - BACK UP. In fact, Now, I backup after EVERY photoshoot I do. Thankfully the shots I would have potentially have lost for the ferret calendar were still on my compact flash card, so I didn't have to go through the hassle and embarrassment of reshooting that project.
So yeah, after any major assignment or just after an important personal event, I urge you all to back up your files. Its an expensive mistake to make.
On the plus side - last months photos totalled to almost 7gb worth of images. So I get to reduce the 10 CDs that they're on down to 2 DVDs. Ahh, space. Tis a good thing.
