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Speechless

I went to save an image in my \sweasel folder tonight, and the \sweasel folder is no more. It’s gone. It ain’t there. It done vanished.

It isn’t accidentally dropped into another folder. It isn’t in the recycle bin. It’s not on a different drive.

A couple of nights ago, I did a thing I never, ever do and emptied the recycle bin. My C: drive is getting full up. I must have accidentally deleted \sweasel into it some time before. And, because it was the weekend, I didn’t notice until today. That’s all I can think.

What an extraordinary series of coincidences.

Oh, well. It’s only the place I save photos before uploading them, so they’re all here with you. There was some unfinished junk that had been kicking around and some other stuff I guess. If I can’t name it, I won’t miss it.

But gosh.

Comments


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 22, 2022, 8:01 pm

I tried a few free file recovery tools and got most of it back.

It’s shit.


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: August 22, 2022, 11:29 pm

At the dawn of the digital age we were promised that digital storage meant files would exist forever. However, I have actually found that digital is a pretty fair synonym for ephemeral. To be fair, a lot of that has had to do with changes in storage media as much or more than with file formats. Still, while one would think that ‘cloud storage’ would have resolved the media problem, for me it’s only made the losses larger. As Ms Weasel’s experience shows, whole folders vanish irretrievably without a sound or warning.

Quite seriously, about 10 years ago I did some (for me) fairly good photographs. The only proof of their existence are those which I printed on old fashioned paper. Their originals and their never-printed fellows are simply gone forever.


Comment from bds
Time: August 23, 2022, 12:45 am

I’m paranoid, especially about pictures. I have everything on my computer. And on a RAID server. And on an external backup drive. And backed up to the cloud.
I will probably never look at 99.9% of it ever, but if I want to it better be there.


Comment from thefritz
Time: August 23, 2022, 12:51 am

Relying on the cloud is relying on the false belief that mankind won’t eventually screw the pooch with a random EMP or a directed attack that will wipe out gazillions of bits of info instantly. Sure, Dropbox and Carbonite and all the rest advertise they are backed up in multiple locations around the world…and “the check is in the mail and this is just a cold sore…”
If it is absolutely, positively important in your life, get a solid state, multi terabyte, external hard drive and disconnect it from your computer after each daily download. You’ll still have those adorable cat videos after the EMP, just no no way to share them on the broken interwebs…


Comment from Durnedyankee
Time: August 23, 2022, 12:52 am

I lost some stuff a while back that I thought I’d moved from a memory stick, and now I can’t find the stick.

Guess what I didn’t move.

About the only stuff I’d miss is my music collection.
I chuckle about photos since, as I suspect most of did, I grew up when “want to come see the slides of my trip?” was something our parents did for an excuse to go sit with friends and get soused. I know we hosted a lot of soundless Super8 movies of summers in Maine.

I try to imagine suggesting anything like that and just laugh at the response I expect we’d get, assuming we TOOK vacations worth filming 😁


Comment from dissent555
Time: August 23, 2022, 2:00 am

I try not to keep any data on C drive. I have two separate internal drives; one is the main data drive and the other is a mirrored copy. Then I have my external backup setup.

I still manage to lose things. But then, that’s my superpower.


Comment from BJM
Time: August 23, 2022, 5:23 am

@Stoaty…never fear you can recover files after emptying the trash, but time is of the essence as the system will overwrite the files as freed space.

Go here…it’s just five steps.

Records you really must keep should be printed out and stored in a fire safe (mine is small enough to grab in a bug-out). I run a Linux file server, w/RAID5 and a solid-state external drive…but all of that assumes I’ll have a machine that can read the stored data…AND all or any of it can fail without warning. The digital world is an immensely useful tool…but it’s also a trap.

Apart from an EMP wiping out the cloud data centers; I don’t trust the bastards…there are massive sums to be had in holding cloud data ransome. The sunk costs will become unsustainable. Ain’t nothing free online…as they say in telecom; someone has to pay the backhaul.


Comment from OldFert
Time: August 23, 2022, 2:54 pm

Years ago wasn’t there something about Amazon sucking back an electronic book because of copyright problems? I think the book was 1984.
(Yup, just looked it up)
https://grouplens.org/blog/amazon-erases-1984/
Heh.


Comment from BullDawgGuy
Time: August 24, 2022, 12:24 pm

Is there where you have your list of DP winners and those who have requested one of your sweet elephant shit particles drawing?

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