A public service announcement.

I'm so sorry this happened to you! It happened to me a couple of years ago, all of Gabe's baby pictures are gone. I remember how much it hurt, I'm sorry you're going through this too!

NNNOOOO!!! I'm so sorry. I can't imagine. At least you have your blog, right?? This has been on my to-do-list. I may have to move it to the top. So sorry.

Julie, there are people out there that can recover your hard drive!!!!! As crashed and erased as you may think it is! Trust me! Find someone to do that before you hand it over to Apple to be fixed!

I am so sorry! To me that is the most valuable thing I own is memories..

I know someone who this happened to and she thought hers was gone. There is a company in Texas that she sent her harddrive to and they were able to retrieve everything. It was costly..about $1,400 but it worked. If you are interested in I can find out the company's name and email it to you.

Hugs,
Lisa

oh julie!
i hope you find another way to retrieve them. i am hoping there is SOME way that some genius will think of and pass onto you.
that totally sucks.
there is no word that fits better....

i have tears in my eyes...
AND i think my blood pressure shot through the roof. prayers your way!

take it to someone...call everybody in the phone book...it can be done.
promise!!! don't give up!! call my bro-in-law in mv. he uses mac and may know!!

I'm so so sorry. I know your pain. My mac died on me last year and I lost about 10 months worth of pictures. (my third's FIRST 10 months of life!)
BOO!
I really do know how you feel...I'm still holding out hope that when I save up enough pennies I'll be able to take it in to see if they can retrieve some.

I now back up to an external drive AND burn them all onto disks.

Lesson painfully learned.

oh.my.goodness. i wish i could give you a big hug right now.
i'm so sorry to hear that happened. i'm backing up tonight. i can't believe the crazy irony of this after what Kamee shared about losing her photos. evil irony.

oh my gosh. what a bummer. worse then a bummer. i am so sorry. i better check if i have a back up, my photos live on my computer. lesson learned for me, i need to get them off.
so sorry.

you hear about these stories, but never think it can really happen! did you ever download your pics to Shutterfly? or a place like Walgreens or Target to print? they might have copies on file???

I lost 2 weeks worth of pictures because of technical difficulties with my card/camera. They included my son's 1st birthday. Thankfully I had a few pictures on my blog, otherwise I would have had a melt down. I'm so sorry for you!

P.S. My dad has used those recovery people before (I think it was at least $1200) Actually he's used them twice. He's got bad luck with computers. But it worked! I would give it a shot.

awful for sure. my husband backs up my pc every 30 days to an external drive we have. they are so inexpensive now that it's a must have. our photos are priceless as you know. also just becuz you pc crazed you can still possibly get your hard drive out. don't give up yet. also don't let anyone take advantage of you. go to someone you trust.

Oh no! I'm sorry :(

I am so sorry friend. So sorry.

I echo Morgan - See if someone can look at your Mac. I had a friend go on mine and was amazed at how much he was able to recover. And it was motherboard fried from a large iced tea dead.

Good luck!

Oh no! I am so, so sorry :( I'm pretty sure that I lost a tear when I read this :(

xo

Oh no no no! I am so very sorry. I am crying for you =(

aaaaaahhhh!!!! will talk to hubs about this tonight, i hinestly have no idea if we do this or not...

Oh, friend...I feel your pain!! This same. exact. thing. happened to us 3 years ago. We found a computer guy who specialized in recovering lost data & he got almost all of them back. I won't put in print how much it cost us, however, because I can hardly bear to type the number. But go google someone!! Worth every penny.

~Keri

Are you sure it's the hard drive? I have had a lot of success using external hard drive enclosures. You can get on amazon or Fry's. You take your hard drive out of your computer and insert it into the enclosure. It makes it an external hard drive that you can access from another computer. It has saved many friends data. I'm a PC, but I would think it would be worth a try on a Mac. If it's for sure a bad hard drive, I am sorry. If you're not sure... give this a shot!

I am SO sorry!!! I have been in exactly your shoes and it SUCKED!!! I know run a back up drive with Leopard plus double back up my photos on a small drive. I was SO sad!!! Sorry!

ugh! so frustrating!! my macbook's HD died last week, too! I just got it back today. Thankfully I didn't lose absolutely everything but it still sucks. I'm so sorry for you!

Oh Julie...
First the dishes, now this? I am so so so SO sorry! :-/
I JUST got an external hd .... now I just need to USE it.
I am just sick for you. Darnit!

So sad. I hope you are able to get some of them back. I once lost the photos on a memory card, but it still made me sick. I can only imagine the tears shed over this number of photos lost. Hugs from one mother to another!

Oh no!

I'm sorry this happened to you...I'd still hold onto the hard drive though, just in case you stumble across someone who could possible access the photos.

This happened to me a few years ago and I still carry my sad little hard drive around.

And it still upsets me. =(

OH NOOOOOOO! :(

I've been using a time capsule to back up just in case that were to ever happen.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am freaking out for you.
I am sick to my stomach for you.
I want to cry for you.
There must be some Apple Geek Squad Guy who can get them back.
Praying for a miracle.

Hate. It. At least you were kind enough to share some of your gems with us & are on the blog for 'safe keeping'....glass half full right? Love!

I'm not sure it will help, but Blogger puts all the photos from their blogs knto a Picasa Web Album. I can access every photo I ever put on my blog that way and have them printed or download them to my computer.

As precious as the photos are, it's the memories that i 've written about on my blog that are just as important. To make sure I don't lose any of the past three plus years of blog posts, I uploaded each year to blurb.com as a new blog book and then exported the files to a flash drive that is stored in a fire proof safe.

Hope that SOMEONE can help you!!!!!!!!

Sooooo Sorry!!!

Here's hoping you find a way to get those pictures back... so sorry!

:(

I can't imagine.

That stinks! I learned the same hard lesson TWICE on the same MacBook. My hard drive crashed 8 months after I bought it. They replaced it and it crashed again 8 months after that. Needless to say, I've been backing up since hard drive crash #1.

Something good to know, though...if you lost your music from iTunes, you can email iTunes and they should let you redownload anything you had purchased from them. They allowed me (and several other people I know) to do that. :)

this happened to me a few years ago and a friend who is in IT got everything off for me luckily. I think it's worth a shot if you know anyone in IT. There's a program they can run to get everything off even badly damaged hard drives. Or so I'm told. I hope you work it out!!

:(

So, so sad for you my friend. Praying that they can be somehow gotten back.

I know just how you feel. Mine crashed with all our wedding pictures on it :( I recommend SmugMug as a backup. I love it!

Oh no, Julie, that's terrible.
David's been bugging me about doing this for quite awhile now. I need to back up asap.

I am so so sorry. I know just what that feels like.

Crud! What happened? Our Mac just bit the dust yesterday and it's less than 3 years old. Maybe PCs are trying to invade our world and are causing these problems. Total conspiracy.
Apparently our IMAC has some "bad sectors" on it.
Looks like we need a new hard drive. Fortunately, we have everything save through Time Machine. I recommend it. And I am so sorry for your loss. That stinks!

So sorry to hear this! I had something similar happen a couple of years ago with my work computer and that was painful-partially because it was so many years of important stuff that I had used and needed for my job and partially because my husband is in the line of data protection and storage and I had not backed up, ever! Lesson learned. In any event, don't do anything with your computer now-what you think is erased is not necessarily. As other ladies have mentioned, it can be costly, but it is possible to be retrieved! I will be thinking good thoughts!

What a horrible thing to happen, I'm so sorry :( My sister lost photos last year through her laptop being stolen and not having backed up the hard drive frequently enough. There are some things that don't seem like a priority when you have a little one to run around after. I also think we should all print out more physical photos. In this digital age we have so many photos just languishing on the computer, but I still like to put the really special ones into proper albums. Must make the effort to do it!

Do not morn for them just yet! I had this happen a few years ago. I have a friend who works in IT, and she was able to recover ALL of them! Do you have a Best Buy near you? They have a department that handles computer repairs. If not, I'm sure you can find someone! Don't give up!

Oh, I am so, SO sorry! I hope you're able to find someone to recover them for you. We signed up for Carbonite just last month - might be something worth looking into for the future. Best of luck!!

OOOOOOOOH NOOOOO! That is awful. That made my stomach hurt just reading it.
BUT on the bright side...
I just shared this with my husband, who is a an Enginerd and Rocket Surgeon... and he said that the pictures are still there.
FIND HELP FAST!!!
Love and Prayers...

I'm so sorry! The same thing happened to me when my first daughter was five months old - I lost all of her early baby photos and was thankful I had posted the best ones on my blog or I would have had nothing. I can't imagine how much worse it would be to lose 2 years worth.

Julie, we had a similar situation with our Mac and used Data Rescue II to recover the stuff on our drive. It cost us $99. If you haven't reformatted a highly suggest you give it a try!

My husband swears by this program, it saved our baby pictures!!

http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php

That is terrible! The same thing happened to my Mac a few months ago and I had to get a new hard drive... no more pictures, no more iTunes, no more anything.
I feel your pain!

Ugh. I am so sorry to hear that. I can't imagine how you're feeling. As many others suggested, it's *possible* to retrieve the data by going to a specialist. Here's one I know of near me, but there must be others everywhere:
http://www.thedatarescuecenter.com/

ouch.
it's just awful.

MY DAD WORKS ON COMPUTERS AND THERE IS HOPE. HE RECOVERS HIS CHURCH , SCHOOLS AND LOCAL DR. OFFICES CRASHED COMPUTERS. I PROMISE DONT TAKE NO FOR ANSWER THERE IS SOMEONE OUT THERE WHO CAN HELP. I CAN EVEN GIVE YOU MY DADS NUMBER IF YOU WANT ME TOO! GOOD LUCK!

I am so sorry! This happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I shed more than a few tears.

I have been thinking about that a lot lately. Thanks for the heads up.

That is terrible. One way to protect your photos for the future is to upload them to the kodak gallery. You have to spend like $20 per year in photo purchases but that is not hard at all to end up doing. They store your pictures for you and if you ever lose them on your computer you can always order a disc from them with all of the photos. As for your current situation, definitely take the computer to an expert and see what they can find. They may not be completely deleted. Good luck.

I have felt your pain. I know what its like to cry tears because of all the pictures you'll never have back. I can barely even think of The Great Computer Crash of 2008 with out crying. :(

♥

my friend was able to recover all my pics when my mac crashed a couple months ago. want his #??

Sorry this happened. I know how you feel. This happened to me several years ago. I was so upset especially since I lost pictures of the day my son was born :(

I am so, so sorry :( I'm pretty sure that I lost a tear when I read this :(

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Oh no! This happened to us when my daughter was born. Poof...all her pics from birth gone! I was heartbroken. I think my husband grew tired of listening to me cry about it. We ended up paying BIG bucks to them restored and I was happy once again!

Oh my goodness, the SAME EXACT thing happened to me just a month or so ago!!! My husband had put all of our pictures on to an external hard drive and then deleted them OFF our computer. I had asked him to back them up on DVD's or CD's as well, but he didn't want to at the time. And to my DISMAY, my 18 month old son threw the external hard drive on the floor!! That night my husband tried to hook it up to the computer.... NATA, nothing, it didn't work! We had some specialist guy take a look at it but he said it was beyond his capability. So now we have to send it in into a data recovery place as well, but we're having to wait b/c we also hear it could cost lost of $$$. The guy said he thinks there's a 99% chance they can retrieve our data on there, and I am just praying that we aren't the 1%!! I have cried and cried... I lost about 2 years of pictures as well. ALL of my second sons birth, his baby pictures, special milestones, my son's 2nd and 3rd birthday, GONE..... I totally, TOTALLY know how you feel! Some days I start to think about the many pictures that have been lost, and about a special moment that I captured on camera, but I have to stop myself from thinking too much, because it's just too hard, I just want to ball my eyes out!

Noooooooooooooooo! So sorry! Forget that "everything will be okay" advise. . . This is tragic! I am so sorry for your loss! I studied art in Cairo for two years (before digital) and took my rolls of film to be put on CD... They ruined them. Over 50 rolls. How do you replace that? I cried for days!

Recovering your hard drive is super pricey. . .but if you live close to a University, ask around and find a grad student that would do it for you. You have an amazing blog with tons of followers, maybe they'd do it for a plug? =(

Hugs your way!