Digital loss ...

Its confirmed. Nothing can be done to retrieve data stored on my cranky old laptop (am presently using the new one as i type). I find myself grieving somewhat ... all those pictures (admittedly some weren't very well taen) taken over the years, snippets of precious oh-so-fleeting moments, stored in digital format ... all gone! :P

Then there's all those marvellous digital scrapbook files I downloaded at a price ... it was a sort of experimenting. My trying to figure out what suited me -traditional scrapbook or the digital art form. But with my then cranky ol' computer, the only digital scrapbooking I could do was print out pictures that were minimally edited (used the automatic correction alot!). Did try for a while though to figure out the features of Adobe Photoshop ... but it was all really a stab in the dark kind of effort. The uncertain clicking of buttons, not quite sure what the effects would all be. And with a machine then that froze ever so often (something about not having enough virtual memory) I usually gave up in frustration - never quite seeing the end results of my experimental 'clickings'.

Of course, there are those scrapbook projects in the pipeline. I had either painstakingly pick and chose pictures (using MS Word) and saved them under a certain project title or saved the journaling that went along with the pictures ...

Its all gone now.

Got only myself to blame. This silly goose NEVER bothered to back them up! :P Now with the DVD-RW that comes with this computer I intend to put that feature to FULL use. Digital back-ups is the way to go!

Anyone know of anyone who owns like a CSI type of computer lab...? Am not quite ready to give up quite yet - although the tech-guy here tells me that my hard disc is 'kaput, gone, dead, unsalvageable ....' Am sure with the right kind of equipment the documents on my hard disk (I only want MY DOCUMENTS, the rest can be thrashed) can be retrieved ...