Sad News - and a Plea for Help

We recently learned a valuable lesson a very very hard way. The hard drive on our computer crashed, and we lost everything.

And I do mean everything.

We had all of our digital pictures from the past 4 years on there. We had all of our important documents, including but definitely not limited to taxact files, resumes, all the Kiddlywinks stuff, school docs, everything I have created in CorelDRAW for the past 4 years, all the songs we had downloaded, all the videos we had downloaded, that is enough, it is making me very sad.

So if you have any pictures with any of my family in them, please send them on to us. If you know us, you already probably have contact info. If not, then please leave a note (with no personal info like addresses or emails for security's sake) in the comments section and we will get ahold of you somehow.

I am more than willing to either arrange a FedEx pickup of anything you can burn to disk, or pay for shipping, replace disks you use to send us pictures, or if you are willing to send us print pictures I guarantee I will scan them and lovingly return them within a week, including a copy of the pictures on disk so you can have a digital copy as well.

As far as our lesson goes, here is a breakdown of our new computer (great timing, huh? guess what we got for Christmas. =(

* HP model d5100t, customized to include the following components
* Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q9550 2.83 GHz
* 6 gig of RAM
* 500 gig of a Raid 1 data security hard-disk configuration - this means there are 2 500 gig hard drives, one solely to back up the first, and connected in such a way that it is highly unlikely that BOTH will fail at the same time
* A 1 terabyte external hard-drive for serious backups (images of the full system and actual files of all important docs, pics, all of that listed above and more)
* Of course, graphics card, sound card, Lightscribe DVD/CD burner, and all that Jazz

We learned our lesson the hard way. Don't wait to learn yours the same way. You can get external hard drives for fairly cheap for good-sized models. Here are a few suggestions:

PC World review of top external hard drives for 2008 - a good place to start since they perform tests not just on size, but on performance and reliability, with prices ranging from $129 to $755, but you can find smaller drives for less money, like some of the following:

Amazon.com listing of hard drives...starting at $69.99

More external drives (just click on the different types for different configurations and prices.

Heck, Walmart carries them. You can just go there and browse.

You can even buy a DVD burner and periodically backup your pictures and vital docs every quarter or so. DVD burners can be had for about $50 (maybe less), and a single layer DVD holds up to 4 gig...a double layer up to 8. DVD disks are about $1 to $1.50 each (can be had for less - shop around), but that is a small price to pay to make sure you don't lose stuff in this digital age.

My plan is to once a month take an image of my primary drive and store it on my external drive, along with all pictures and important docs in their original format. Every 6 months to 1 year we will backup pictures on dual-layer DVD and store them in my safe-deposit box.

I went from nothing to overkill, but this was a very bad experience.

Don't let it happen to you.