"I think I'm gonna be sick..."

Let the following post serve as a WARNING to the rest of you. If you are reading this post (the 3 of you who still follow...) you are obviously geeky enough to use a computer and so you probably also keep files on your own computer. Stuff like pictures, movies, music, blah, blah...If this describes you -- listen up...

Yesterday my hard drive crashed (crashed, burned, broke, got hashed, whatever you'd like to call it) and with the death of my hard drive went every singe picture I have taken since December of 2007. Yes...every client photo-shoot, and every single picture I've taken of my wife and children. Not only those, but audio "interviews" I've done with my children, papers my children have written for school, my entire iTunes library. All of it. Gone.

Here is the news that stinks the most. I didn't back anything up. Ok, I did back up a few things. I backed up all of the pictures I took prior to November 2007 (a total of about 8000 images) which sounds pretty decent, but I've taken a ton of images in 2008. And edited many of them.

I feel sick about this...sick.

Now...there is a possibility of recovering some or all of this data. It will cost a minimum of $300 but probably more around the $500 to $800 mark. I hate that, but am willing to pay it.

Here's the lesson: Back up your data. That means put what you care about on an external hard drive. Do it regularly. The last time I backed up my data was November 2007. My external hard drive sits in my computer desk area and I think about backing things up all the time. If I had backed up my data weekly, I wouldn't have any problem. I'd pay $80 to have a new hard drive installed and I'd re-load all of my data and would have no problem.

So, there. Happy New Year...