Do you ever feel like you just want to sit down and cry? I do. These last couple of weeks have been particularly hard, for some reason everything seemed to fall apart at once. One of the biggest problems: my external hard drive. When I returned from holiday I discovered that my external hard drive was not powering up. What? This can not be happening. I contacted Western Digital to see what I needed to do to get the thing fixed. After all, the hard drive is less than a year into it's five year warranty.

As it turns out, if something happens to your hard drive, all they do is send you a new hard drive. They do not cover repairs. WHAT?!?!?!?! Awesome. What good does that do me? How do I get my images back?

I contacted a company called Drive Savers, they are the best at what they do and I knew that they could help me. I sent my hard drive to them and they were able to get all of my files back. Luckily I am a part of the Professional Photographers of America and had the indemnification trust to help me pay for the recovery. They paid $1500 and I paid almost $3000. Oh, that hurt.

So, that was a hard lesson to learn. But, I certainly did learn it. So here is what I got out of this experience.

1. A RAID system is no good. Having two drives in one casing that supposedly gives you a double back up does not matter if the hard drive looses power. Have your second copy in a separate system.

2. Keep an off-site copy of everything

3. Do not get lazy. Back everything up NOW.

My new system for backing up files is as follows:

1. Everything gets immediately dumped onto two separate hard drives. The backup drive is only plugged in when I am putting new files onto it. The working drive is where I store the second copy and it stays on so I can always access my files.

2.After I edit the images I create jpeg files and burn everything to disc. These discs get stored at an off-site location.

So, there you have it. Please learn from me, if your files mean anything to you be sure to BACK THEM UP!