Good News:

I just came from China anew for a business/luxury trip, even though there were no transactions done. I have a few shots which turned out ok. But as I computed, of all the shots I took, only 60% was usable; others were duplicates, or just plain not usable, either blurred, OOF etc. (more about this later)

That was the good news...

For the Bad News:

As a Christmas gift to myself, I bought a 160GB laptop HDD to be fitted in my external enclosure for my backups. All the storage I have is smaller than this drive so it came really handy. But lo and behold, just after a few months, this drive failed. I have transferred lots of pictures, mp3, videos, on this drive for safe keeping but instead it failed on me big time. I was really frustrated since some of the transfers were already deleted from their original locations. I was really really worried since major photo ops were transferred to that external HDD, including my last China trip as well as the Miss Earth shoot and the Photo Summit shots. aarrghh..

I was hoping that the data will be recovered, but as part of the warranty, they were only able to replace the unit and wasn't able to retrieve any data. It was a long shot though since recovering data from a failed HDD costs a lot.

It got me thinking, if HDD backup isn't 100% fail safe, what options am I left with? Disks (CD's and DVD's) can be really tricky sometimes, any suggestions on a near fail safe backup solution?

It's time for some digging of files, hoping everything is still intact. (I know some birthday photos are disappeared forever)

Regarding China, As I was looking at my shots, I was really dissatisfied with what I was able to turn out. Did I become complacent with my shots? What happened? The shots lack cohesion, meaning, and just became bland. It got me thinking, what do I look for in photography now? Why am I not inspired with my shots? Am I starting to lose focus in this craft? I hope not because I really do adore Photography. What can I do to keep me inspired?

Oh BTW, I gained lots of friends because of that China Trip, also I realized something...

I need to learn how to speak Mandarin..



cheers! (with reservations)

Ryan Tanganco

UPDATE!!

After an exhaustive search of the two PC's we have here, it turns out that my previous China trip (2007) was the only major photo op that wasn't spared. Thank God else were still intact. But then, my nephew's birthday's pics were already lost.

On the upside, the pics remaing of my previous China trip were full-res edited jpg's which is a consolation. The thing is I won't be able to review them again for another round of editing.

Well we can't have it all don't we.

Also included in the missing files were House albums (HK, FA and others) and podcasts.

I'm now in the process of backing it up in DVD's for safe keeping.

Thanks for the people who responded to my miniscule query. I really learned a lot.

Cheers!

Ryan T.


P.S. get NAS!! hahaha Time Capsule?
P.P.S. Time Capsule is one hella expensive SOB
P.P.P.S. Why bother? I don't even own a mac.
P.P.P.P.S. Maybe I need a mac.
P.P.P.P.P.S. Any sponsors?