Why You Should Always Have A Back-Up Plan

I think we all take computers for granted. They hold our memories of birthday parties, family gatherings, important essays written, nights out, and so many other files. And you can access this all with just a few clicks. What if, all of a sudden, you couldn’t access those files and lost everything?

A few months ago, an external hard drive of mine failed on me for the first time. Ever. I had about a year and half of weddings, memories, and side photo projects all compacted onto this one little device. It disoriented me so much that it was hard to stay focused…yea that bad. I definitely know well enough to back up all of my work (heaven forbid if you are a photographer who doesn’t back up your work), so none of my weddings or other work were lost in this major fail. However, I had not backed up personal photos from my trip to Europe, Christmas photos, family photos, and when I got fly over San Francisco in a Cessna…so my life in photos for the past year and a half was up in smoke. Poof. EPIC fail.

Thankfully, there are services out there that recover failed hard drives and external hard drives but you should only use that kind of service in an emergency situation. It can get pretty pricy and there is never a 100% guarantee that they are going to recover all of your data. This is why you should always have a back up plan. My back up plan? Internet storage and an additional external hard drive in a safety deposit box at the bank. (Thanks for the tip Sarah Dawson). It may seem a little excessive to most but now I can sleep at night knowing that I’m not at risk of losing everything.

To my surprise, they were able to recover the entire external hard drive after several phone call updates…And for that I am so grateful. Seriously, someone above was looking out for me. In lieu of this experience, here are some recovered photos from the external hard drive that I am so happy to have again.

This photo of my Mom and Dad.

This photo of my Dad, Mom, Grandma, Cousin, Aunt, and myself. I was really happy this photo was recovered because it was the last photo I had with my aunt before her passing.