Warning !! Last night the unthinkable happened !

Two years ago I bought a Maxtor 250 gb external hard drive. I have since used it to store my MANY photos. I have spent countless hours categorizing about 25,000 pictures into about 80 different folders based on photo type or client and each folder has subfolders based on cropping and then turning them into samples.

Last night the unthinkable evil took place. It malfunctioned.
While I was sleeping, apparently hard drive gremlins snuck into my office and did something to my external hard drive.
Both of my computers (laptop & desktop) indicate that the external hard drive needs formatting. Shit ! If I reformat my drive, all that data will be lost forever. Thus, I just read several articles on data recovery and concluded, that it just isn't worth the $1,500 or so to partially get it back in some altered form. I've reached this conclusion based on several additional bits of crucial information.

The first salient point, is that I still have all the pictures on (memory) compactflash (CF) cards. They are the memory cards my Rebel XT (camera) uses. I do not re-use my CF cards. I typically use 4gb, 8gb or 16gb cards and when they go on sale, I buy lots. I have 4 extras awaiting future use and a one half used one in the camera now. My ex-gf used to complain that I was wasting money and that once I download the pictures I should erase the CF card and re-use it. That's what most people do. But, I protested, even when the cards were much more expensive. I never fully trusted the hard drive, nor CD Roms, which I used exclusively to back up my photos back then. More recently, I bought the external hard drive as an easier and more capable solution to the back-up problem. I got it at Office Depot for about $100 over two years ago and since I only turn it on when I use it, I figured its stability would outlive my internal hard drive. Wrong ! The internal in my desktop is still puttering along. I guess that's because it only moved once, when I moved last summer. The external has moved many times a week. Indeed, its even been on vacation with me.

The second applicable aspect, is that I've been eyeing a new external hard drive. Prices of those have come down, or should I say, that capability has increased. This past week I saw a TB (terabyte = 1,000 gb) one at Office Depot on sale for about $100 and 1.5 TB for about $135. So, I have decided to get 2 of the 1.5 TB ones. I will use one as a primary back-up and the other as a back-up to that one. Thus, if the hard drive gremlins get to one of them, I will have the other and then copy that onto a new one and lose little time (insert evil laugh here). At that time, only Bill Gates knows how large in capacity they will be.

The third point is, that I just backed up all my best photos (cropped) and the corresponding samples (my info "plastered all over them") onto my laptop. I do that once a week to add the new ones. Thus, in conclusion it will take a lot of time to get all those photos sorted back into the 60 or so categories and subcategories, but I will be even better off after I am done and even better prepared for hard drive disaster. "Use stumbling blocks as stepping stones" has always been one of my mottoes, as is "be prepared". The latter concept was ingrained into me way back during my Cub Scout years and I've always carried several rubbers in my wallet since and often been very thankful I have.

Regardless, I wrote this as a warning to you all - be prepared !! As the computer articles that I read this morning all pointed out, it's not a matter of IF you'll have hard drive failure, but a matter of WHEN. May it R.I.P.