Digital Photo Clean-up

Things have been very, very quiet on the blog lately and for those of you who follow me on Facebook you will no doubt know why but for those of you who don't (and you know you totally should!), I will tell you - embarrassing as it is.
 

A few weeks ago I finally had an hour to myself to begin a long-overdue clean up of my Photos folder on my PC, transferring one folder at a time from my hard-drive to a CD.  As I transferred each folder across I checked it had copied and then I deleted the folder from the hard-drive, which was the whole point, to get the stuff off my hard-drive, free up some much needed space and have my photos elsewhere but still easily accessible.  This is where I came absolutely, revoltingly unstuck and I still cannot fathom how it happened.
   

Everything was going perfectly and not taking much time at all and then a question popped up, "this folder is too big for the recycle bin, do you want to permanently delete it?".  Well, yes, of course - I had a rhythm going and it was working for me.  W-R-O-N-G.  Hugely W-R-O-N-G.  I realised immediately what I had done.  I stared at the screen.  I wanted to be sick.  I am fairly computer literate - I wouldn't have been that dumb.  I couldn't have been that dumb.  Well, turns out I was.  My entire photos folder containing every photo I had taken since 2004 had been swiped - in an instant. And, no, I had never, ever backed up my computer.  I know, dumber than Dumb & Dumber.  Pathetic. Total ding-a-ling.  At this point I was still staring at the screen thinking the folder would reappear anytime soon.  It didn't, and I knew I was in trouble - BIG trouble.
 

I raced my hard-drive off to the local IT specialists but after almost two weeks of attempting a recovery they admitted defeat and recommended another company who had "forensic level" IT expertise.  If they couldn't retrieve my data then I would probably have to accept I wouldn't be seeing my photos ever again. I felt sick all over again but thankfully, and I mean THANKFULLY, they worked away and were able to retrieve around 90% of my photos.  I was so very happy and so very grateful that they had been able to work their special IT magic and drag back my precious memories from a very close, permanent grave. 

So, on the weekend I was finally able to continue with my project and copied over all of the recovered photos to CD's.  I have checked, double-checked and triple-checked the CD's and I am happy that everything has worked this time so now I will delete the folders from my PC to free up some space.  I still want the photos to be easily accessible so they are on CD's in chronological Event order, which is my preference for photo organisation.  And because I had a CD Stomper in my box of tricks (it was given to me at a Kris Kringle about 10 years ago and I totally forgot about it until recently but now I love it), I labelled each CD with its list of contents to make finding a particular photo very simple.  I used the Marbig CD/DVD Pockets which hold 3 CD's per sleeve and then just popped them in a binder.  It's an easy system and I am ecstatic that my photos are now safe in their new little home.  Phew.  What a massive relief.

 

Sorry about the quality of the above two photos.  My "big girl" was charging so I used my i-Phone and it does annoying things like putting ugly blue lines through my photos! :(

Now I've gotta dash and get myself an external hard-drive and start a backing-up schedule. Lesson well and truly LEARNT!