Cherished memories lost, maybe forever…
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- January
- 2
I am very good about backing up my photos. I keep copies on a portable hard drive and I regularly burn DVDs. If only I had been smarter about my e-mail. It’s funny, you don’t think about treasuring your e-mail, but in my case, I do. And now a tech disaster has me heartbroken that three years of sent messages are gone, perhaps forever.
Since my daughter Pumpkin was born in May 2005, I had been sending friends and family regular updates on her life, from little quick e-mails on her daily achievements to longer notes when she had her regular checkups and made milestones. My e-mail was kind of like a virtual baby book for me.
I had been saving all of these notes in my sent messages folder. I intended to use them to make captions for photo memory books. I haven’t done this project yet because I’ve been waiting to buy a new computer. I foolishly believed these notes were safe in my e-mail program.
Well, about a week and a half ago, I got a little flash drive in the mail as a promo item from a local company. I had forgotten my iPod that day, which I normally use as a hard drive to take files back and forth between work and home. I popped in the flash drive and saved my notes. That night when I plugged it into my computer at home, I got a big system crash. Oddly, it wiped out my e-mail account in my Mac Mail program. I was initially concerned because my entire inbox was gone and I had some work notes in there. I was able to restore the account and my inbox came back. I thought all was well.
Well, today, I opened an e-mail from my sister-in-law asking for camera buying advice. A few weeks ago, I had put together some camera links for a friend. Rather than replicate the work, I searched in my sent box for the word “camera,” figuring I’d just cut and paste. Well, it didn’t come up. Then when I started scrolling through my sent messages, I found that although all the subject lines were still there, the message content was gone.
For example, on this e-mail from 2006, this is all that I see when I open the message: “The message … has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it.” I fear the messages are permanently gone. I don’t know how this could happen.
Now, I’m the tech reporter. I should know better. I shouldn’t have placed faith in technology for my precious memories. I am learning the hard way. If you are an expert in Mac’s Mail e-mail client, or Optimum Online, please offer some advice here or e-mail me at jalterio@lohud.com. And, for other moms and dads: Consider this a cautionary tale. Hopefully, my disaster can be a learning experience for other moms and dads who assume their computers are safe places to store cherished photos, video or even e-mail.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 4:45 pm by Julie Moran Alterio.
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yeah you can export your emails to files and save them I should have done the same but didnt. I had to rebuild my machine 3 times. I lost many a years worth of personal and work related emails. losing a ton more information.
sigh such is life… good luck.
Julie, I have a lot of friends who hire a service to back up their computers on-line because of the business info they wouldn’t replace in case of theft, fire, mispressed buttons, etc.
I don’t know how to fix this, but perhaps you should either hire a service to back up your hard drive daily or get the new passport drive (one or two) and back up your e-mails to files and back up the computer every few days.
I often wonder what I would do if I lost my computer – it gives me nightmares.