Thursday, October 06, 2005

Videobloggers' Worst Nightmare


I accidentally deleted a ton of stuff on my computer including 6 months of raw archived footage. This is one the top ten reasons never to use the program Terminal on the Mac if you have no idea how to use it. Thanks to Verdi, Kinberg, and Jay for helping me feel better. I don't realize how seriously I take this sometimes. Until a crisis and then I realize....this is my life.

22 comments:

TonyTV 2 said...

RH that is so Brutal. Everyone's worst nightmare (next to someone dying of course).

Time to reinvent.

Anonymous said...

Stop using that computer immediately. A lot of those files can probably be recovered. Deleting them doesn't remove them from the drive, just their indexes from the drive's catalog. Some of these can be recovered if you don't overwrite the data on the drive.

ryanne said...

i'm pretty sure this stuff is not coming back. i used terminal to wipe the drive clean...thinking i was doing something else. oops. i already re-installed my OS because it was being crazy. i'm pretty sure that stuff is long gone. ah to start anew.

Josh Leo said...

ok a few things here.

1. I had my computer crash in february and I swore a lot...I was very furstrated, so I understand the feelings.

2. I'm glad you let jay film you, and I glad jay filmed...sharing life (and making new footage to take the spot of the old)

3. Get a Lacie drive and backup...

4. My computer wouldn't turn on today, I kinda freaked out, but all things worked out

5. I'm sorry about losing all that stuff...just get a lot of hugs....

Randolfe Wicker said...

I lost two years of my life the first time my computer crashed. It is a terrible emply feeling and I sympathise with your situation. However, I always turn bad experiences into learning experiences. Think if you had lost twice as much stuff six months from now! I hope you can recover it. Regardless, don't forget that feeling of loss and start doing back-ups on zip discs or something. Let that "pain" help you to grow and be more careful from here on out.

Nick said...

stay positive! we're with u.

Devin said...

Now I've heard that with Unix, once it's gone it's gone. But, then again I'm not sure. I don't know the shell. Yes, terminal can be a bitch if you don't know what's going on.

I'm sorry to hear about this. I hate myself when things like this happen. Also, when you physically lose something very important (ie can't find it). And it seems so quick that it became lost, but you have no idea where it is. I just recently lost something like this, so I share your emotion slightly.

Anonymous said...

tape's your friend.
so is paper.
charlene

Anonymous said...

It's NOT a dumb thing to cry about. I know exactly what you're feeling, and IT SUCKS!!!! Since that "dark day" I decided to never (NEVER) again tape over tape, I started buying new tapes. And yes, now I have a whole buch of tapes, but at least I know if my computer gets stolen, or it explodes, or what evere happens to it that can destroy all the information in ti, at least I know I have the raw material.
My most sincere condolences...

Koan said...

Ryanne, what a shitty thing to happen... and immense respect to you for blogging that honest emotion - "naked" indeed. I'll blog mine, the next time the waterworks are on and I've my camera to hand...

It sounded, at the end, as if all was not lost? Please, let us know...

Thinking of you - however much of that archive you've recovered, you've still got the rest of your life to capture and share.

Big hugs, Koan

ryanne said...

thanks everyone for all the digital hugs! much needed. josh was able to help me fix my firewire drive, which was hiding files after my desktop was deleted...so that's what was recovered, which is better than nothing!

Dave H. said...

It's been 15 months since i lost my data and this video brought back all those horrible feelings. We are so fragile.

Anonymous said...

I'm really sorry to hear that you lost some of your video. :(

Marta Fodor said...

Ryanne...I am so sorry to hear about that!! I wish I could be there to give you a hug.... I sympathize- remember when I fell asleep on the bus and lost my negatives of two years of work? I though part of my brain was removed from me- like my memories were taken away... it was a coma of depression.... and I did a whole bunch of new work and eperimented like a crazy person and took a trip with my sister. When I got the negatives back (after a month of flyering the city) I was so over it and haven't printed them or looked at them at all, but it's nice to know they still exist ...... in some binder in some closet...
this is truly horrible and I hope that you recovered from it. It's so beautiful that that you posted that video, i can feel all your emotions trhough the screen. miss you and I am now giving you a cyber hug <> <>

Anonymous said...

That was so strange, when I heard about it at first from you in person, I didn't feel so bad for you, but when I saw you talking about it on video, I felt terrible! I guess it's 'cause you were in pretty good shape when I saw you in person. See ya this weekend.

Carl Weaver said...

Ryan, that's very upsetting. My thoughts are with you. Remember to keep telling your stories. And at least you have some videos online. Remember to keep telling your stories - they are part of who you are today. Losing the video footage doesn't change who you are, just the way you told a story. You still have them, just not in digital format. They are in human-reproducible brain memory format.

All the best,
Carl

Anonymous said...

Like one of the previous post indicated stop using your computer and minimize rebooting. The less activity the more you'll recover. I went through a similiar experience and recovered all and then some. (Though I'm on a Win platform.)

Here is a serch results page for recovery software on the Mac at Google. Best of Luck!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=recover+my+files+mac

missbhavens said...

In the immortal words of Charlie Brown: Aaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhh! I'm glad you recooped some stuff...you inspire me to back up, which I never, ever, ever do. Good luck.

Levois said...

My Dell laptop acted up over the summer. Not only did it need a new motherboard but it also needed to have Windows reinstalled. I lost a lot of good images, files, and some video. I could have backed it up but I simply didn't know how or how much it will cost. Long story short I still had to start over. Sad because there are things that are gone forever.

Anonymous said...

That sucks! I did the exact same thing once. The Terminal is just a little too powerful, especially if you don't know exactly what you are doing. I just wanted to delete a single file, but I ended up wiping out my Home folder... I lost everything. But, I learned an important lesson about doing regular backups.

I know this doesn't help, but you are not alone. I'm glad to hear you were able to at least recover some of the files.

Mortaine said...

While I was transferring files over to my new media/backup drive, the computer stopped recognizing the drive. I panicked-- I have a laisez-faire attitude about my tapes, but I didn't want to lose the digital files! My heart goes out to you. Data loss is a bitch.

Zadi said...

wow, big hug. I hope it's all better now. Backing up huge files is a bitch, but yeah - keep your original tapes, and get a Lacie drive to store your raw files, or DVDs.

Hope you're feeling better... ((()))