Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

Finding a safe place for my digital fotos

I always thought that hard disk crashes were happening to people who were rough on their hardware. I never experienced a hard disk crash since I started to work with PC's. Until half a year ago, that is. Since then I had 2 HD's crash on me.

The first one was the most serious. Because I'm terrible at backing up my systems, I lost all my pictures between July 06 and October 06. I don't care so much about email and other data.

That still didn't teach me a lesson. I just had my external Western Digital 500GB MyBook crash. Fortunately after a night of letting it sleep in the fridge I could recover the file using FileScavenger.

So now I'm going to deal with this seriously! I don't want to loose my families' digital memories.

I'm tackling this issue like this:

1. Rebuilding my home desktop machine (Dell Dimension 8300) with Vista

2. Figuring out a strategy to keep all my families' pictures in one folder (possibly with subfolders)

3. Uploading everything to my Flickr Pro account using 'some' tool

4. Installing a Windows Home Server for back ups

 

I'm hoping that redundany at home and over the web will create a truely safe home for our digital memories.

I'm about ready to blog about the first step...

Published Wednesday, February 20, 2008 2:06 PM by Hans VB

Comments

# MSDN Blog Postings » 2008 » February » 20

Wednesday, February 20, 2008 8:43 AM by MSDN Blog Postings » 2008 » February » 20

# re: Finding a safe place for my digital fotos

I have a question... Are there any scientific effects on letting a (crashed)HDD in the fridge for some time? or Is it your joke? :)

Wednesday, February 20, 2008 9:15 AM by Kevin Arnold

# re: Finding a safe place for my digital fotos

Now, it's true. The IT department at Microsoft Belgium tried it with my first HD that crashed but that didn't help.

With my last disk to crash, you could hear it making a thumbing nice as it tried to spin. That was gone after I put it in the fridge. I could recover the files using filescavenger but if I want to reuse the disk I will need to reformat it because Windows says it isn't formatted anymore.

There are numerous reports on using this technique on the internet. I believe it could work because some components shrink as they get colder...

I had a hard time believing it too...

Wednesday, February 20, 2008 9:37 AM by Hans VB

# Step 1: Upgrading a Dell Dimension 8300 to Vista

As I explained in my email earlier today, I'm upgrading my home infrastructure to create a safer place

Wednesday, February 20, 2008 9:57 AM by Hans VB's WebLog

# Step 1: Upgrading a Dell Dimension 8300 to Vista

As I explained in my email earlier today, I'm upgrading my home infrastructure to create a safer

Wednesday, February 20, 2008 10:32 AM by Noticias externas

# re: Finding a safe place for my digital fotos

Check out http://www.drobo.com/

They provide a nice little stand-alone raid box.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008 1:32 PM by joshpoley
Anonymous comments are disabled
 
Page view tracker