My Garbage, a Treasures Trove: Back Ups!!

Over the past three years the idea of "backing everything up" digitally speaking has, for the most part, fallen on deaf ears - my ears, specifically. After all, I had a Mac and the horror stories I heard about shooters and the like losing data and files were resigned to the "poor souls who opted to buy a PC." Well that all changed three days ago and, if not for the late arrival of the garbage man, and my discovery of a treasures trove, this story would not have a happy ending.

Three days ago, following six months of sporadic writing for my newest book, Understanding Digital, a companion to Understanding Exposure, I finally reached the finish line. It was time to move the file from my ever trusty Macintosh Powerbook G-4 over to my Mac G-5. A simple burning of a CD was all it took and, just like the file, it was now sitting securely on the desk top of the G-5. The following day, I opened the file once again to make some minor corrections and did my usual "save" when I was done. Only this time, that famous "rainbow wheel" of the Mac, just kept spinning and spinning and spinning until I finally had to resort to using the "force quit" option. I have done this move many times with other files and software such as Photo-Shop, I-Tunes, and even once when working with my Nikon Cool Scan. But this was the first time the computer got "stuck" while working in Microsoft Office. Following the "force quit" command the desktop looked no worse for wear and, sure enough, there was the folder that held my entire 43,000 word manuscript. Clicking on it revealed a horror right away that I hope I never have to experience again!

The entire text had somehow been completely altered into "computer speak"; in other words, there was not a single word that I could identify! The text NO LONGER existed!

Earlier that morning I chose to straighten up the office and that, of course, included throwing stuff I no longer needed into the garbage. Now, of course, that included the copy of the text for my book which I had burned to the CD. Once I had verfied that the text had indeed been burned onto the CD and transfered over to the G-5, I was just as quick to put this folder into the trash of the Powerbook which I of course had "dumped" the night before.

As far as the local garbage pick-up goes, these guys are here faithfully every morning by 7 a.m. - the sound of the garbage truck will wakes me every morning if I am not already up. However on this day, I had arisen at 6 a.m. and had not really paid attention as to whether the garbage men had come or not. Faced with the only possible recourse I knew, I charged down the back steps, all three floors worth, and went to the garbage room and made the most wonderful of discoveries - the bag of trash I had placed in the bin the night before, as a treasures trove, was still there! The last time I made mincemeat of garbage like that was about 15 years ago when I mistakenly threw out a vaild American Express card. Needless to say, the sense of relief that overwhelmed me was no less intense than the relief I felt at being released from jail in Burjumbura, Burundi in 1987. I had been arrested two days earlier for "spying" (employed by a Tanzanian Rebel Group) according to the charges. Shooting with a 600mm lens out in the "bush" can arouse those kinds of suspicions, at least in Burundi.

Returning upstairs to my office with the CD in hand, I reloaded it onto my PowerBook and this is where it once again rests. After transferring the file to the desktop, I made two more copies and burned them onto a CD and now have these safely stored in a CD wallet. The G-5 is now in the shop, since it was also on that same day that it corrupted a number of TIFF files, refusing to save them as photos but choosing instead to save them as "striped colored bars of sandpaper".

This was my first and, hopefully, last time I will have that kind of scare. There are obviously two lessons here for me; BACK UP EVERYTHING and don't be so smug about owning a Mac. I should also add that since day one of getting started in digital, I have backed up all of my RAW files, making two copies of each folder onto DVD's and also copying the folder onto a 250 gig external hard drive. However, I had never made back-ups of text until this memorable day.

Bryan Peterson

Comments

[Joe]

I had a similar experience not to long ago, but on a PC. As I sat in front of my computer with my cup of coffee first thing in the morning, I turned the computer on only to get the dreaded blue screen of death. My first thought was to all of the photo's I had loaded in the past few weeks and had not backed up. After several attempts I got the PC loaded, however it kept crashing periodically. I rushed to the store and bought a new hard drive, installed it, and copied all of the files over in between crashes. It was only then that I was able to reformat the original drive, however never to be used again for storing my pictures. I spend the next few hours backing everything up to CD. I didn't practice what I preached..., back up early, back up often..and I got bit...and learned a valuable, and almost painful, lesson.

[Kathleen]

Yikes, Bryan! That's a scary story. I'm off to make some back ups now!

[Virginia Ross]

WOW! Incredible story, Bryan. Just wanted to extend my sympathy/congratulations, as you were so understanding through my own, and other students, computer crashes in our classes.

Besides, I am patiently waiting for your new book to come out, & would hate to see it delayed.

[Jeff Wignall]

Hi Bryan, Trash talking Macs, oh my! :) OK, writer to writer, here's something I do every night when I finish writing: I email myself whatever file I was working on that day. That way no matter what befalls my Mac my text still exists out there in cyberspace. I've been doing it for years and with a cable modem I can send huge files. I also email them to a friend just in case my email account gets corrupted for some reason. I've even started putting some of my images up on a secure ftp for the same reason. By the way, I still recommend your creative seeing book to everyone! Jeff W.

[Pam M]

Hmmm well ... Scarey stuff! Recently went through hard drive failure also ... didn't lose anything but trying to do backups while the computer is crashing is definately a heart-stopper! Mac users can be exceedingly smug ;) ... but hard drive failure is possible anywhere anytime.

I've met many SMUG SMUG SMUG people who do daily backups and I say "that's good but do you have a copy stored in a location other than your office?" I usually get some smug retort until i point out that fire, flood, and [gasp] theft really don't care who you are or what you've done or what computer you use (ok maybe thieves care about these things). Safety Deposit boxes are very handy for "off-site backups."

Also ... don't forget to make a backup copy of all that expensive software that's been purchased and even given to you. When it comes to that investment, we tend to keep the originals in the safety deposit. The first time we did this we were floored to realize we had thousands invested in software.

ANYWAY the real reason I stopped by your blog is this (and you will find this particular entry of yours is an excellent place for this story;)...

Since, until recently, I've been in denial about wanting to passionately pursue photography, I have only ever had one book on the topic (My excuse now: I'm just part of the "new poor" and read at the bookstore ;).

This one book ... thru various events (generally contained under the heading of never let your husband pack) ended up burried in storage ... deeply burried and I'd only had it about a month!

I remembered it was a steal of a deal that i found at a discount store. I remembered that I snapped it up for two reasons: one) beautiful photographs of a place I longed to visit but, over time, all i could remember was pictures of mountains and beaches ... two) even though it was about traditional film photography there were lots of principles i could use with my point and shoot digital camera.

I've remembered many of the principles out of the book and I've taught them to others

and ... ok, no, i couldn't just run out and replace it (nor read it at the bookstore) because I could NOT remember the name of the book nor it's author. Not my usual MO.

... but ... i've really missed the book and hoped that it would surface again!

And this week it did!! Understanding Exposure (the original version) purchased four years ago ... foreshadowing to my upcoming move to Portland and my love of BetterPhoto?

Just love life's ironies and thought you might enjoy the story ;)

Have fun,
Pam