October 17, 2011

I Have Made a H U G E Mistake.....

If you was wondering why all the images were not showing my blog in the last couple of days, here's why.
I set my new smartphone to automatically synchronize with my Google account and it had uploaded all my photos to the phone memory. Thinking that I do not need all these hundreds of images, eating up memory space on my phone, I deleted all the albums from my phone. That was a mistake. A HUGE, stupid,  f&^%$^& mistake!

I never knew that when I post an image on my blog (I upload them directly from my hard drive), it automatically add it to my Picasa account (which I don't use for a few years now). So by deleting the albums from my synchronized phone, I actually deleted all the images on that Picasa account. I didn't stop to think about this whole synchronizing thing, and that it could effect all my Google account content...big mistake.

So I woke up the next day just to find out that ALL the images on my blog are missing. And there are hundreds of them! All the images of my long beading journey, back from late 2007 until today. Gone, gone, gone! [shout] I tried to look for help to see if there's a way to restore those images - deleted from the internal memory of the phone, unfortunately not from a micro SD card -  on the phone manufacturer site, on Picasa and the internet, but couldn't find any way I could do it securely.

The meaning of this stupid mistake is that I need to upload all my images to the blog, one by one... And if that's not enough to make one scream, since I didn't keep my blog images in one organized folder, I have to look for them all over my computer and backup devices I have from past years.  I really don't feel like doing this.. I don't have the TIME for this! :((

I have already uploaded the images from 2011 & 2010 - it took me about six hours to find the images and upload them - and the rest I will have to complete in the next few days.

What I learned from all this?

* Learn how Google products are connected to each other, especially if you are dependent on their services;
* Learn more about how this Sync function on your smartphone works;
* Think carefully before deleting anything and know if and how you can undo the deleting later;
* Work in an organized way - create folders and arrange them by dates;
* The most important thing - BACKUP all your content regularly on a separate device; backup your digital images stored on the internet.

Now back to work. No, not to work on the unfinished beautiful beaded earrings project I have on my table, but computer work... Sigh... big sigh...

11 comments:

  1. I guess I would have cry for a day! Minimum one day! I wish you power to go on with your photos...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oooohh! Esto es sorprendente! Que fastidio! Lo siento mucho y espero que puedas encontrar tu galeria a gusto pronto.

    Muchas gracias por comentar lo ocurrido y por los consejos.

    Mucho ánimo y gracias.

    --------------------------------------------

    Oooohh! This is amazing! What a bore! I'm sorry and I hope you find your gallery at home soon.

    Thank you very much for commenting on what happened and for the tips.

    Lots of encouragement and thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  3. OMG! I didn't know this either. But I think that if you have backups it's already better than it could be. I can imagine how much time will it take :(
    Big hugs!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ohhhhhh !!!! Je suis de tout coeur avec toi .
    Je t'embrasse fort.

    ReplyDelete
  5. So sorry - i almost made the same mistake once, but got a warning message, so i didn't do it.
    I know it's hours and hours of work to reload everything.
    jaycee

    ReplyDelete
  6. OH GAK!!! Horrible! And I was just telling someone what a delightful tool Picasa was. User beware I guess. Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanks, everyone! This is taking so much more time than I thought... I will be adding older photos soon.

    Marsha -- there's nothing wrong with Picasa - it was completely my fault for deleting the albums, and for not backing up all my images in one place...

    ReplyDelete
  8. Oh no Smadar!!! What a nightmare!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  9. I make the same mistake!!!! everything is gone from my blog!!!! but my problem was that I upload my photos to the new google features and deleted!!!! Ouggghhhh!!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Sorry to hear about your photos loss, Christina :( Technology can sometimes be overwhelming...

    ReplyDelete