I have no idea who said it but the following quotation is very true … and applies to whatever computer platform you work on …

“It is not a matter of whether a hard drive will fail, it is a matter of WHEN”

As a professional photographer (who also used to work in the IT industry) who cares about my client files, I do everything in my power to ensure your files are safe.  I am not, as it turns out, as careful with my personal data, photos, etc.  I only found this out when my drives went KABOOM last week.  Not literally, that would have been a little dramatic.  But when you get the black screen of death, which followed the screen which said “hey, look here, this drive is screwed” (or words to that effect) a little bit of you dies inside.  And you throw up in your mouth a little.

Thankfully I have a backup machine (aka laptop) with which I was able to access my backup drives to see what state I was in.  Well thankfully as always I had backed up all my client work.  At least, all the raws, the vast majority of the output jpegs and the vast majority of album designs.  I was faced with re-doing some work from scratch but actually I didn’t care.  I had all my clients’ work, safe, on external drives.

But absolutely ZERO personal work.  Nothing.  Holiday photos, gone.  Family photos, gone.  Personal files, gone, finance files, gone (ok so JT had the latter on his drives thankfully, as he is my accountant, but I thought I would try to inject a little bit more drama haha).

So what do you do in this instance.  I am fortunate to have an IT guy who is really switched on.  Unfortunately he needed to have the machine in front of him so he could see what was going on.  He lives in Berkshire.  So, cue JT in the snow, hurtling down the motorway to get the machine to Paul.  I don’t drive in snow.  What a husband !  Paul did his best but althought he could SEE the data, he couldn’t access it.  He installed a new SSD for running windows and programs and sent me it back.

What now.  Well, there happens to be an awesome company in Stafford (like 10 mins drive from me) who spoke to Paul and told me to bring the machine in.  Fingers crossed.  Oh, by the way, they are called DataWreck.  Their website states that they can take up to a week to get data back, so I knuckled down for the wait.

OMG.  I got a call literally at lunchtime yesterday to say … hey we can access your data, drop us your new drives around and we’ll get it all sorted for you.  They’re also screwing them in and setting the RAID volumes up.  Brilliant.

YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW RELIEVED I AM.

So what lessons have I learned …

First and foremost that I need to start treating my own data the same as I treat other people’s … it is just as important, to me.

That the above quote is so true, believe me, true as a true thing from true-tonia.

That installing SSD drives is a waste of time (apparently) and that if one of those puppies goes you might as well iss your bank account goodbye trying to retrieve data (and yes, they do go, frequently).

That all said, now that the Christmas and New Year break is over and my IT hell is coming to an end, normal service will soon be resumed.  Very soon.  With photos and EVERYTHING !!

My wedding season starts this weekend with a beautiful York wedding … what a great start to the 2013 season !!

All images Copyright 2024 Gill Taylor Photographer ... please don’t steal them, it’s not nice !