I Lost It All!

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

My computer picked up a virus. While my son was fixing it, he lost all our files, pictures of our grandchildren, power points for classes that I spent 100’s of hours on, 5 years worth of Sunday Scholl lessons and our taxes that only had one item to complete, poems that I wrote and never printed or put on my blog my Resume’. In the future I am going to print everything, every picture…everything! Then put it in a fire box.

This paled in comparison to almost losing my wife, she had a procedure and got a staff infection and had to have another surgery to save her life. It has been a tough two weeks.

On the bright side “my son is pregnant”…a missionary term for only having 9 months remaining. I got a letter yesterday I will share later…my boy is growing up. For a parent nothing is better, except when they are babies.

[LDSToronto]

My computer picked up a virus. While my son was fixing it, he lost all our files, pictures of our grandchildren, power points for classes that I spent 100’s of hours on, 5 years worth of Sunday Scholl lessons and our taxes that only had one item to complete, poems that I wrote and never printed or put on my blog my Resume’. In the future I am going to print everything, every picture…everything! Then put it in a fire box.

This paled in comparison to almost losing my wife, she had a procedure and got a staff infection and had to have another surgery to save her life. It has been a tough two weeks.

On the bright side “my son is pregnant”…a missionary term for only having 9 months remaining. I got a letter yesterday I will share later…my boy is growing up. For a parent nothing is better, except when they are babies.

Sorry to hear about your wife, Pa Pa - I hope she's recovering.

There is no need to print everything out. For around $100 you can purchase an external hard drive that will backup your entire computer. Couple that with some free (or very close to free) software and you can have everything backed up automatically.

It only takes a few minutes a week to do.

H.

[Messenger]

PaPa,

I'm sorry to hear about that. My biggest loss was just after my mission about 25 years a go. I had painstakingly shot slides of Australia with my Canon A-1 and had quite a presentation. The slides were stolen with the projector when I was moving. Some of my best photography work was lost. But, over the years I've had to keep telling myself to copy the most important things. So, all my poems are printed in a book. Also, all my digital photography, including raw images, are backed up - I currently use the Cloud Drive. Also, I do invest the best anti-virus software out there, and I never let any person be alone with my computer, PERIOD. I know that's a hard thing to do with family, but get them a cheap $400 laptop and when its full of viruses, then you can point to that and tell them they cant be trusted with yours. My son has his own, and when he visits he brings his and connects to my network. That works out well.

In the end, there will always be some losses, but I always tell myself its better the 2nd time! After all, what we have in our memory is what we eventually take with us.

I am so lucky to have the things I have, and especially the talents and inspiration to make them. Losing my talents would be the ultimate loss. So, when something gets lost, its good to know that we still have our talents to create new things from them.

Edited April 13, 2012 by Messenger

[Messenger]

double

Edited April 13, 2012 by Messenger

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

Sorry to hear about your wife, Pa Pa - I hope she's recovering.

There is no need to print everything out. For around $100 you can purchase an external hard drive that will backup your entire computer. Couple that with some free (or very close to free) software and you can have everything backed up automatically.

It only takes a few minutes a week to do.

H.

That an idea, then I can put it in the fire safe. Thanks.

[thesometimesaint]

There are also companies that will backup your files on their computers for a small monthly fee.

[Garden Girl]

I thought that the stuff on our computers is "out there" somewhere and can be retrieved by someone who knows how??

I'm sorry... some pictures are irreplaceable, etc. I do hope you can reconstruct most of your files.

GG

[MorningStar]

That's horrible. I'm so sorry. Another way to store pictures is through Picasa Web Albums. That comes with a gmail account. I have an external hard drive and I upload everything important to Picasa too in case the hard drive fails. You can also put your pics on CD. I like to have multiple backups. You just never know what's going to happen.

[zielkee]

My computer picked up a virus. While my son was fixing it, he lost all our files, pictures of our grandchildren, power points for classes that I spent 100’s of hours on, 5 years worth of Sunday Scholl lessons and our taxes that only had one item to complete, poems that I wrote and never printed or put on my blog my Resume’. In the future I am going to print everything, every picture…everything! Then put it in a fire box.

This paled in comparison to almost losing my wife, she had a procedure and got a staff infection and had to have another surgery to save her life. It has been a tough two weeks.

On the bright side “my son is pregnant”…a missionary term for only having 9 months remaining. I got a letter yesterday I will share later…my boy is growing up. For a parent nothing is better, except when they are babies.

It probably isn't all lost. Take the hard drive to a specialist; I bet they can recover pretty much everything. Here's hoping!

[guitarist]

There is no such thing as having too many backups! I typically have some 3 or 4 backups in various locations of all of my data... sounds overkill but it's worth the extra peace of mind to me. Online backup is the new thing as well--doesn't require a fire safe that way. BackBlaze is a great company that allows you to back up everything on your hard drive (unlimited data) to their "cloud" for only $5.99/mo.

You can try to take your drive to a professional data recovery center like zielkee, but bear in mind that such services usually start around $1,500 (but thankfully, if they're unable to recover your data, they generally don't charge you). So despite the pricelessness of the data on there, most people still have a tough time justifying spending that much for those kinds of services.

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

It probably isn't all lost. Take the hard drive to a specialist; I bet they can recover pretty much everything. Here's hoping!

I did my son makes six figures doing this type of thing. In a National competition from 60 Colleges across the U.S. he took 1st and 2nd place representing Weber State. .

[Libs]

Wow, that's awful, Papa! You remind me that I need to backup my computer. I have never done it, and I sure would hate to lose everything I have stored on this computer.

Sorry to hear about your wife. I hope and pray she makes a full recovery.

Congrats on the new grandchild! My son just announced that "they" are pregnant, as well..due in November! Very excited! This is grandchild number 7.

Edited April 13, 2012 by Libs

[LDS_RM]

pa pa, unless your son put an electronmagnet to the drive items can be recovered. do not format the drive, take it too a recovery specialist. or purchase a program that can search for the files.

Libs, get an external drive, unless you back up to dvds or an eternal drive backing up the computer is useless in the event of a pc catastrophe.

[Messenger]

That's horrible. I'm so sorry. Another way to store pictures is through Picasa Web Albums. That comes with a gmail account. I have an external hard drive and I upload everything important to Picasa too in case the hard drive fails. You can also put your pics on CD. I like to have multiple backups. You just never know what's going to happen.

If a person had enough money, they could break into someone elses computer.... But, they probably wouldn't see the economics of hacking my computer for some bad poetry! LOL

[Libs]

Libs, get an external drive, unless you back up to dvds or an eternal drive backing up the computer is useless in the event of a pc catastrophe.

Thank you for the suggestion. I haven't backed up to anything, yet, so I don't really know how to do it. I think I will ask my son to help him. He is my "go to" for stuff like this.

[Messenger]

Also be aware Amazon has a cloud too, the first 5MB is free, then there is a charge for the extra space you buy. That was an easy choice for me since I am already an Amazon Prime Member. The levels that you can buy go from 20MB to 1000MB. But right now I am only at 70% of the 5MB.

Also, Its takes quite a bit of effort to remove all bits from the hard drive. In fact, it can take 6 hours to actually convert all data to zero bits. Most viruses remove the fat table, which is the file names, and the computer interprets those as no files, but the data is still there. May I suggest you get a 2nd opinion. It couldn't hurt. Also remember if you have a virus, and you have confirmed that there is indeed no way to recover files, definitely spend the 4-6 hours converting the bits to zero and reload all software including the operating system. This way you know the virus is gone. If you don't know how to do that, then either pay someone to, or work with your computer manufacturers pay-per-use help.

In the mean time, here is a screen shot (see file attachment below) of the Amazon Cloud Drive. Nearly like a normal file folder on your computer. Organized by file types, then by the individual files. You can also add sub-folders too. Photos can be previewed before downloading into your hard drive. And of course, everything is encrypted. My last computer purchase decision was made on less hard drive storage than most photographers would accept, because of the cloud drive availability. And this time I have no Microsoft software besides the operating system and that's windows 7.

My new software consists of the following:

1) RealdrawPro - Basic photo editing and Computer Graphics ($55 Download)

2) Google Chrome - Internet Browsing (free)

3) OpenOffice.org - Word Processing, Spreadsheets and more (free)

I am more economically minded these days, and I just couldn't see purchasing Microsoft Office products this time for the following reasons ...

1) Price - To get the equivalent in the same software above I would have had to spend over $450!

2) Viruses - Because everyone has Microsoft, its a target for hackers.

Also, I have a little story for you this morning! One of my friends is retired NBA basketball star Cliff Robinson. I've known C for nearly 10 years. Cliff and I met on the dunes while on vacation years ago. We've met up on many trips after that. On one trip, Memorial Day at Sand Lake Oregon, I had flown another friend of mine out for the long Holiday weekend. Prepared for months for this trip and spend of lot of time increasing the horsepower of the engines on both quads, and also upgrading many parts as well including billet aluminum parts. On the first night, after mid-night my friend and I were night riding, which is very popular in that area. My 530 chain broke, and I was stranded in the middle of nowhere. My friend eventually found me, towed me back to camp where I found the master link was damaged which caused the chain to break. I had just spent thousands of dollars on this trip, and I didn't have another master link, and all parts stores were closed. Also, the chain is rare; much more heavy duty than most, so we couldn't find anybody else that had a new master link. Yep, I got a bit depressed. Afterall, this was supposed to be the trip of the year with my friends, and C and his friends. I just sat in my camp thinking it was over. My friend that I flew in, Brian, apparently told C that I was out of it (LOL). Not two seconds later Cliff comes over to my camp sits down next to me and gives me a little talk. Now, I don't remember his exact words, but he said that he knew a lot about losing, and a lot about winning. He said, its Saturday morning, we have 3 more days .... DON'T GIVE UP! You are welcome to use whatever I have to find a fix, but don't sit at camp when you have time to change it. Wow, I had just got a pep talk from the man himself, one on one. So, I scavenged all my friends parts, I found a master link, but with now key. Then, another friend had a key, but it was too thick. So, I took it, when to C's camp and he had a grinder and I modified the key to fit the new link. I reattached the link to the chain and in 2 hours I was up and running. Here is a photo from that trip .....

(Photo: Kboo, NFL Player, Cliff Robinson)

Also, below are some other photos. This is the very first time I met Cliff. It was years before when, in front of hundreds of people watching, he rolled his new Bronco he spent years building. He had been to my website and he heard I wanted to take some photos of him and his busted up Bronco, I thought he would have said no, but instead, C came out of his trailer, shook my hand, and started dancing on what was left of his Ford Bronco .... He knew how to lose, but not until it was over.....

(photo on left: mutual friend and Kboo) (photo on right: Cliff Robinson dancing on his busted up Bronco)

In a way, C has taught me some incredible things over the years. He has also taught me a bit about charity and the role it plays with Friendship. Pa Pa, I consider you a friend as well. Please don't give up until you are sure you are done. Then, when you are, have a little "dance" on top of that computer. Life is too short to let this stop you. Remember, there is always another season!

Mark

Edited April 14, 2012 by Messenger

[sweetpotatoh]

Avast! anti virus is your friend. Best of all the free program is awesome. The best anti virus software I've ever used. I just bought a new computer and I uninstalled the mcaffe and put on avast! I know this won't help your current situation but it will prevent the infection of viruses.

Mike.

[LDS_RM]

used to use etrust. now I just use the free software from microsoft.

[LDS_RM]

Thank you for the suggestion. I haven't backed up to anything, yet, so I don't really know how to do it. I think I will ask my son to help him. He is my "go to" for stuff like this.

it can be quite simple or complicated. a very simple solution is an external drive and one just copy and paste important files to the drive.

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

pa pa, unless your son put an electronmagnet to the drive items can be recovered. do not format the drive, take it too a recovery specialist. or purchase a program that can search for the files.

Libs, get an external drive, unless you back up to dvds or an eternal drive backing up the computer is useless in the event of a pc catastrophe.

The kids have all the pictures and the rest is not worth $2,000 to get back. Although someone has it now try to get some of it...I knew him growing up so hem not charging me.

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

If a person had enough money, they could break into someone elses computer.... But, they probably wouldn't see the economics of hacking my computer for some bad poetry! LOL

Was I just insulted.

[Messenger]

If a person had enough money, they could break into someone elses computer.... But, they probably wouldn't see the economics of hacking my computer for some bad poetry! LOL

Actually talking about my bad poetry, not yours!

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

Actually talking about my bad poetry, not yours!

It might be better than you think.

[Messenger]

It might be better than you think.

Even if it was to the level of publishing, who buys poetry these days? So, that makes my poetry worthless to just about everyone except me. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy writing poems, and many times I have felt inspired to write something and even gained more insight when I was writing them. Most people, not all, don't really understand the art form. I have had professionals look at some of my best work, and they say they are very good. But I have yet to find anybody who would consider publishing them, simply because of the market. One of my friends is a manager of a bookstore, he tells me about it all the time. Perhaps someday poetry will come back, but I am afraid that will be long after I have passed away! Besides, I'm not really in it to make money, but it would be nice for an LDS publisher to just take a few, for no fee, just to let others be inspired by them - if they could. Again, very few actually understand the art form. When people read my best work, which professionals have acknowledged as very good, their eyes sort of roll back in their head and I swear I've even seen smoke come out of the ears of a few and they were trying to understand the meaning. That's ok.

With art, everyone is a critic. Few can actually look at a painting, and study it, and learn what the artist was trying to say. So what else is new?

Mark

[Whiskeypete]

You should have both a fast local backup (ie, external hard drive hooked to your pc or local network) and an offsite backup solution as well.

If you were to have a house fire/ robbery/flood..., you could lose both the PC and the backup drive

When something like carbonite is available for about 5 bucks a month it is almost a no brainer.