Several years ago, when we first realized our 'economic downturn' was going to be unavoidable, we started doing many little things to cut back.
One thing I stopped doing was using 'paper pictures'. In fact, I still have rolls here that have yet to be developed and printed, gulp.
I was given a digital camera and I began to use it often. I built a small semi-private site where I housed many of our pictures, particularly our school pictures/pictures of the kids.
About a year ago, my hand-me-down computer crashed. Lost pictures- lots of lost pictures- yet, I was thankful for that web site because a good deal of the highlights of the children (birthdays and special events) were on that site.
(BTW-We also do not have a color printer by the way- the ink (and printer) are not in the budget. I think I've shared with you before that I have a cheap laser printer and buy cheap toner and refill it myself.)
Well, without warning (even though they said they emailed me- I checked through 4 months of email and the spammer on my provider and looked back through almost a thousand spam messages- no email from them), the site I was housing those pictures at decided that they were going to start a monthly fee and they DELETED ALL OF THE FREE ACCOUNTS. Uh-huh, mine included.
They claim that there is no 'back-up'- after first denying that I ever had an account, then telling me there was only one picture on the main page, then telling me that all that was left was the text on the main page, then telling me that perhaps I was contacting the wrong people, then emailing me all the text 'left' from the main page......Their final letter said it was "all deleted", "no back up", and "Sorry".
So- suffice it to say-guess this was one time that I was TOO frugal! :-(
4 comments:
Oh Donna So very sorry about that.
you will always have your memories, and have you checked your temporary files? or has it been too long since you visited?
Rachel,
I clear my files once a week and they had just been cleared when that site did that.
I still can't believe that they did that! But, I did learn a hard lesson, :-).
Heh. A long time ago I learned this same lesson the hard way -- if its a free on-line service, keep a backup.
My solution is that I bought a few of 8 gig flash drives on clearance (I think they were about $5 each) and I store a copy of all my photos directly to those drives. (I also keep them on the computer, but every time I'm downloading I just also copy to the flash.) When one is full, I unplug it, toss it in the strongbox (where we keep the deed, birth certificates, that sort of thing) and plug in another. We have six so far, its easy to do and they're easy to store because flash drives are so small.
Good luck finding a backup for you that works going forward.
Thanks for the tip!
My DH has suggested this to me but I can't find those that cheap-- I really need to look harder for some of those! :-)
Post a Comment