She took the words right out of my mouth...

This is what I want to do...only I wish I could get away with it like this cutie can. I am so overwhelmed I want to ball my fists up and just scream...then I will get back to reality...which is that I really can get through this crunch in my life right now. I will make it through this computer crises.

So here's my story...we purchased a Mac because they are supposed to be indestructible...but unfortunately we purchased a mac with a faulty hard drive that inevitably was going to die. A hard drive with cancer if you will. So for the past year our computer has been getting slower and slower with my husband blaming me for having "too many pictures" on the computer. Um..hello! Movies and I Tunes take up just as much space Mr. Music Man.  

I'm gonna trim the fat on this one and just say, my original hard drive died December 27th, 2008 - ON MY ANNIVERSARY! The Apple Geniuses from Apple Care told us that all we could, do based on the error message that came back from disc utility, was to erase everything and start over. Yeah...I was like...WHAT!?!?!

Of course this was NOT an option for me because my whole business is on this thing. I know your asking, "Didn't you have everything backed up?" Well, I DID have an external hard drive that I bought and was not compatible with my mac. I took it back right before the holidays and the store didn't have anymore that would be compatible. With the busyness of the holidays I never got another, completely INTENDING to get an external hard drive right after the bustle of Christmas. Thinking, "Ooooh...I'll get one on SALE!" How funny that it crashed two days after Christmas.  

Anyway, my options were to pay a couple grand to Drive Savers, reshoot everybody, or try out my local Apple Care Technician. We went with the third and THANK GOD he was able to get all my files from the dead hard drive to a shiny new hard drive that Apple gave us. I guess the guys at Home Technologies said they had never seen anything like this situation and they only had one shot to get my files. They had to be in a clean room that was basically a freezer...I guess the hard drive was overheating too. If it overheated and shut off, then that was it. That was the only chance they got. They also had to buy a $1,000 software to get all my files transferred.  They were cheaper than Drive Savers too.

I still LOVE my mac...I'm not going back to the other side...but I just learned the lesson that alot of folks haven't yet. BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP!!! Please do it. I know it's a pain in the butt and it takes more time...but I can't tell you how many times I puked thinking I had lost everything.

So there's my adventure that happened during the holidays. I hope you will take my word and back up everything...right now...stop reading and back up your images...yes you! But seriously...I would never want that to happen to anyone. Especially if they are photographers with businesses. So, more fun and merrier images up ahead...I promise :)