My computer died a few months back and since then I’ve been using my boyfriends computer which doubles as our media center. Before my computer died I thought all of my important files were backed up. Recently I discovered that wasn’t the case. Only a shortcut of my main photography folder was backed up, not the actual photos. I won’t lie, I bawled like someone I loved died.
Fortunately, my boyfriend’s skills include data recovery. He did his computer wizardry and I’m left with a folder with tens of thousands of photos to sort through, more than half of which are broken. Many of the photos are from cookies, duplicates, thumbnail sized or itunes album clipart. It’s slow going through a folder that sized and tediously deleting the junk.
For some reason this photo had about 50 copies of various sizes. I don’t even know how that happens but it’s pretty annoying to sort through.
Everyone once in a while I’ll see a corrupted photo like this from my trip to the White Mountains of California and my heart will ache again.
The process is long and repetitive, punctated with sadness and occasionally hope. Every once in a while I’ll find an intact photo.
Death Valley 2007, one of the few survivors.
I’m still sorting through it all. After I complete this long process I’ll be backing up all of my important photos to flickr.
Quill Alley 