Reality on a Stick

I realize that the geekiest among you will already know all about this, but the average Joe has never even thought to look into it.

Many of you have recently joined the legions of digital camera owners out there. It takes a little while to learn your way around all of the lighting and zoom settings, but once you’ve got it, it’s hard to imagine life without your sexy little gadget. The simplicity and grace in loading files onto your computer, and subsequently uploading them to the web, guarantees a satisfying experience each and every time.

Of course, we all try to keep our files backed up, but sometimes–just when we’ve fallen behind in our updates– the unthinkable happens: you accidentally delete all the precious files on your memory card! ‘Not me!’, you say. Yes, you. I was sure that I would never do anything as bone-headed as that, but alas I did……and right after the honeymoon no less. All those photos, all those memories, gone. ‘If there is a God, he definitely has it in for me,’ I lamented. The only thing that kept me from letting loose a full-blown hissy fit was the fact that we were at Disney World, and I just didn’t have the heart to scar all those little kids for life as I lost my shit in front of Cinderalla’s castle.

Needless to say I spent the entire day (without internet access) asking myself whether the deleted files might still be on the card. Certainly, they didn’t appear to be–as 9,000 checks of every menu option would prove– but the real question was this: Do digital cameras automatically reformat memory cards when they are cleared? Answer: No (not my digital camera anyway). Well call me fat and kick me in the butt, there was indeed a God out therewho was looking after me all along;-).

Note:  A quick online search for ‘photo recovery’ will give you a whole host of options. Actually you can recover any kind of file that might be saved on a hard disk or flash drive as long as the disk hasn’t been damaged or reformatted.

Hope you are better at avoiding knuckleheaded mistakes than I was this time, but just in case……….;-)

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