Monday, June 18, 2012

Vanishing Photos



I could cry right now.  The past week, we've spent most days cooped up indoors out of the cold and wet weather Perth has been having.  With the dull skies and grey clouds, it was however the perfect light for photo taking and so I used the opportunity to keep my camera at close hand and snapped lots of candid shots of the girls playing as well as some corners of our home.  Scrolling back through the photos I'd taken, I could see there were some great ones amongst them.

I can't express how disappointed I am that only a few minutes ago as I attempted to download all these shots, somehow, they all seem to have vanished.  I did all the steps I usually do (naming the shots by date, selecting the folder to transfer them to and deleting them off my camera at the same time).  Only once the download completed itself, the photos were nowhere to be seen.  I have searched and searched and cannot for the life of me work out where they've gone.  I even took another random shot and downloaded it to the same folder and once again, it wasn't there.  Then I discovered that other photos which should have been in the same folder were no longer there.  Very odd.

Thankfully, I do a monthly save of all my files, but as for the most recent ones, sadly I think they've vanished.  All I can do is be grateful that they weren't of a special occasion, get my camera out and start taking shots again.  I think I might make my monthly back-ups weekly from now on.

So today, I can't share the cute photos of Sophie watching her big sister blow bubbles in our backyard, or the pretty irises I bought myself which have been brightening up our kitchen.  This snap above of Sophie was one of the few I had thankfully downloaded earlier in the week.

Have any of you ever experienced anything similar in the way of vanishing photos? Do you have a system/procedure for downloading yours and how often do you back things up?

13 comments:

  1. Oh you poor thing. I bet there's a way of finding them, but I amno good atthese things. I took some photos today that also wouldn't show up on the camera when I plugged it in. I turned it off and on and refreshed etc and they eventually appeared. Sounds a bit different to your problem though.
    I have one of those WD Passport backup thingamies that I must get plugged into my new machine. Backing up is such a simple yet important thing to do. It seems like a shassle until we have a problem.
    I hope by some miracle they appear somewhere on your computer Amanda
    x

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  2. Oh no, that is dreadful. I know we lot a heap of shots from our big trip a few years ago. It was a terrible feeling. Sometimes they do unexpectedly turn up. I hope yours do.

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  3. How awful! I've never had that happen. What type of computer do you use? I'm on a Mac and the software I use for photographs is iPhoto. There is a place where you can see the last import or what's been imported the last 12 months. I have a backup hard drive that updates automatically and frequently (daily I think). It's a good system. I'm sorry about the loss of your photos. That's really a bummer. Love the photo of sweet Sophie.
    Claudia

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    1. It happened on our standard PC. We do have an external hard drive but it doesn't automatically update, we have to remember to do it. I'm going to see if an automatic system is possible having read your comment...

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  4. Oh no Amanda that's awful:( My other good friend of mine called Amanda had exactly the same thing happen to her and she had to have someone look at her hard drive to try and retrieve her images I'm not sure how much she was able to recover. I have to say that I'm not good at saving my images to a hard drive. When watching one of my photography dvd's it was said that you should have at least 3 hard drives to back up your photos and keep one off site just in case something should happen to your home. It sounds probably a little over the top to some but at least if something fails you will have another copy. I hope you can retrieve your precious photos, I'm so sorry to hear that you lost them. xx

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    1. We do have an external hard drive, but it's rare that we do an update on it. Paul accidentally lost my favourites list recently and I'm yet to work out how to retrieve it from the back up despite numerous attempts. I save all my documents and photos to a USB drive but have often thought I should have another and keep it at my Mum's place.

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  5. Oh Amanda. You poor thing. I hope you find them. That photo of Sophie is precious. J x

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  6. Oh no. I totally understand. We lost all of our photos a few years ago, N was about 2 when it happened. Ww lost his baby photos, our wedding photos. Every digital photo we had ever taken. Luckily we were able to recover most of them off the hard drive but all the data stored with them was lost, but we were so pleased to get the photos back we didn't care about that in the end! Now we have a back up hard drive just to store the photos on! I hope you find yours! xx

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    1. Golly, and here's me complaining about a week's worth of photos!! That's terrible you lost so many, I'm glad you were able to get most back again x

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  7. Oh no! I hope you find them. They have to be there don't they? Are they in your temp download folder? I know that sick-to-the-stomach feeling too. I had been recording all sorts of interesting firsts, moments, cute pronunciations and other memories on my iPhone in the notes function, and one of the twinadoes somehow deleted it! I felt like I'd been winded. Awful. I really hope they turn up. xx

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  8. I had that knot in my stomach feeling for hours after it happened. I figure they have to be somewhere too but I've searched and searched. Will double check the temp folder though. Although I find it funny I can download to other folders okay but not that one when I've tried again with random shots as a test. And it's funny other previously taken photos have vanished too. It's almost like that folder is 'poisoned' or something :)

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  9. How disappointing! I am pretty slack at backing up any of our files. We have two external hard drives that we keep photos and videos of the kids on but we don't update it as often as we should. I would be so upset to lose those we haven't back up yet. Thanks for the reminder Amanda, I hope you manage to find your missing photos.
    x

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  10. Bugger that really sux. I usually upload mine onto the computer, copy them into their folders and then unplug the camera. I dont actually delete them from my camera straight away so they are still on there in case I want to show someone. Maybe theres something in the settings that is set to automatically delete or something. Not sure. Sorry cant help more chick :(

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