Data Disaster

Imagine for a moment you lived in San Diego where all those fires have destroyed homes. If it were you, what would you miss most? Couches and dining room sets and bedroom furniture can all be replaced -- but for me, family photos would be the worst loss. I'd even commented recently that I was glad our photos were all saved electronically so we wouldn't have to worry about such a loss.

Well, the blessing of the computer age can also turn into a curse. This past week we reformatted our computer and, in backing everything up, something went wrong. I realized what a disaster we were facing when I went to add pictures to the Madison folder....... and it wasn't there. Every picture from her first 3 months of life was all gone. I was completely devastated. We immediately began looking into programs that would allow us to retrieve the files from deep within our computer, praying the pictures would not be lost forever. It's slow going and there are thousands of files to go through one at a time. Thankfully, even if we are not able to recover everything, between pictures I've posted online & CDs of pictures I've sent to family, I think we should be able to recompile about 75% of our original collection.

On top of the loss of photos, we also lost any new files we'd created or made changes to since our previous reformat. The worst loss in that category was the address file I'd created. For the past couple years I'd been meaning to sit down & compile a comprehensive database of ALL our addresses instead of having them scattered in different places. I had a database I'd created when we got married, but it hadn't really been updated since then. So in just the past couple weeks I'd been putting all my (very little) spare time into working on our address database. I was specifically doing it to help me get thank you notes out to everyone for the baby gifts we received, noting the gift each person sent & their address - then throwing away the envelope or card to help me clean up. That information is now lost and only the old, very early file with little information is left. All our hundreds of addresses, the whole list of what people gave us -- gone. And that file we probably won't be able to restore.

So, needless to say, between that and the rough week we had with Madison's lack of naps last week, life is a little on the frustrating side right now. I just don't even know where to start to try & rebuild everything. And it feels like such a waste of time, like I'm doing all this backtracking and trying to relive all the work that's already been done.

So, lessons learned, I guess. We'll be backing up, double backing up & triple backing up files in the future. I suppose though some disasters just can't be prevented by even the most well-meaning efforts.

All that said, if you don't hear from us for a long time or if you sent us a gift and don't get a thank you, don't take it personally! We may have lost your address or card and have no way to locate you at present!