I am one of those ridiculously focused types who, when I really want to get something done, will obsess until it is. So what I thought was a little photo problem has become way bigger as I begin to dig.
Sean and I went to Moab last April. Beautiful scenery, had a great time, took a lot of silly pictures. I downloaded them with photo software, either Kodak Easyshare or some kind of Adobe photo-looking-at program. I forgot about it.
I go to organize my pictures and decide, hey, I wonder where the Moab pics are. I have looked through all the jpegs on my computer (and everything named moab and kodak). I also searched my external hard drive, which I back things up on all the time. I have tried to reinstall Kodak Easyshare which was not working properly and the software CD won’t work. I can’t find the Adobe program. So, in short, I have 400 photos on this computer that I can’t get to and spent a good eight hours on this problem only to be in the same place I started.
I go to defrag and, wait, there is not enough memory to defrag. You need 11% free and I’ve got 9%. Yikes. Maybe it’s these 12,000 other jpgs I have on my computer clogging up my memory and slowing me down. No more.
I am downloading my favorite albums into Picasa web albums (after putting them on Mr. External Hard Drive) then deleting them to free up precious space. Picasa let’s you store 1000ish MB for free (and after that you can upgrade for a small yearly fee) but let me tell you, putting them online will be piece of mind. If I ever find my Moab photos, I will do this immediately for them.
Will some photos off my memory and a defrag help me find Moab? It couldn’t hurt. After I do a little cleaning house (here’s hoping that’ll fix the getting the Kodak program working problem), I will go way back in time to a restore point sometime last summer when these photo programs did work. Then I guess we’ll see. My computer (and myself, actually) will probably need some professional help if these steps don’t work.
Your comments and thoughts of free or cheap online photo storage are most certainly appreciated.