You may not be hearing much from me for a while. I just found that the hard drive with all my photos is dead.
That’s particularly galling because I bought the drive to provide automatic backup when my first drive started getting flaky. This one is a RAID 1 drive, that means it automatically creates a mirror image of every file so that if one drive dies, all I have to do is replace it and copy the other onto the new one. Problem is, the manufacturer seems to have forgotten that the interface to the drives needs to work, too. I’m going nuts trying to figure out how to troubleshoot this, and will let you know when things are working again.
But for now: if you’re doing digital photography, immediately arrange for off-site backup. You can make CDs and DVDs of your data and store them in your safe deposit box, you can go to a cloud-based storage site or even buy a second drive and back up to it routinely, then move it offsite (your office or your safe deposit box or…) Just don’t lose five years of work due to unreliable equipment.
More to follow,
Bob