Monday, April 20, 2020

A Vacuum in Vegas

Tonight I discovered that at least one and a half days' worth of photos are missing not only from my primary hard drive, but all three backup drives plus my cloud storage. In a situation like this, you might be tempted to imagine that the photos in question never existed, but thanks to my blog and Facebook, I know the photos were taken and, once upon a time, stored in the right place on my hard drive(s).

I know that I'm missing December 26, 2011, because that was the day Sylvia and I toured Fremont Street in Las Vegas. I remember shooting many photos on Fremont Street, including three that still exist on my blog or on Facebook: two of Sylvia posing with an Elvis impersonator, and one of Sylvia and I posing in front of a Christmas tree on Fremont Street.

I'm also missing all the photos of the Hoover Dam I shot on January 1, 2012 - but not the photos of the Grand Canyon I shot later that same day. I can almost see a complete folder disappearing, but I cannot understand a folder remaining in place, but all the photos of one subject disappearing from it.

My only hope of recovering these images is to check and see if I was still making CD backups at the time. I did this for several years, until I figured that an original and three backups plus the cloud was probably enough security.

Evidently not.

I'm unreasonably upset about this. Sure I'll be dead in three or four decades (if I'm lucky) and no one but me is interested anyway, but my photos are really important to me and to have part of a significant life experience go missing is really quite depressing. Not to mention infuriating, considering the lengths I go to to back up all my digital files.

Oh well. Entropy always wins anyhow.


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