I am devastated...

blackroseivy

I just went to my computer to get to my images that I put together as montages, which I was reinterpreting as color drawings. ALL the deck files seem to have vanished! I can't find anything backed up. I had these not that long ago but for some reason the folder comes up empty. If my sister can't find these files backed up on one of her hard drives, I will be faced with all the choosing, trimming and production of the majority of my deck images! This is so daunting I have no idea whether or not I want to continue. My deck was the Ancient Celtic Tarot last I named it, I believe - I'm changing that to the Celtic Artifacts deck. Just wanted to share as I really am traumatized!
 

Babalon Jones

Oh no! i am hoping your sis has them, otherwise, ouch. I can so relate! I am so paranoid about having my computer crash and lose all that work, that I now store multiple copies. I am untrained on graphics so everything takes extra time. Most of my work is making the real art as in ink on paper, but it takes so long to do scanning, cropping, borders, titles. I have thumb drives I carry with me in case of losing hard copies and external hard drive backup. And my black and white version has to be triple backed up, since I painted over the line drawings in color no real copy exists.if you do get them back somehow, buy a thumb drive at least, they do not cost much.

If you lost them, please do not give up. You still have all the drawings you did, (unless you were working all digital?) and even if not keep on.
 

celticnoodle

Blackroseivy! Welcome back! Long time, no see.

I am terribly sorry to hear this. I do hope you will find them and I will keep this plea in my prayers. I am interested in seeing some of your cards that you have worked on. I recall you being a very good artist, so I am sure these cards will be beautifully done!

Good Luck, BRI.
 

blackroseivy

Wow! My sister says to use a cloud drive, which makes sense. There were no cloud drives when I started out, but now it looks like a good idea. I do have a flash drive (as I call it) that I SWORE I'd put my images on, but they aren't there, nor are they on the 2 backup CD's I managed to root out. My sis is here with me at the moment so she can't look, but she will as soon as she gets back home.
 

blackroseivy

Blackroseivy! Welcome back! Long time, no see.

I am terribly sorry to hear this. I do hope you will find them and I will keep this plea in my prayers. I am interested in seeing some of your cards that you have worked on. I recall you being a very good artist, so I am sure these cards will be beautifully done!

Good Luck, BRI.

Aw thank you so much cn, I just noticed you were still around, wonderful! ;) Yes, this is a setback of major proportions. Thank you for your positive thoughts!
 

Babalon Jones

Oh ya the "cloud"! Just don't trust that as your only backup as then you are trusting someone else. Personally would rather have 3-4 physical ones.

But I am praying for you to find them!
 

blackroseivy

Aw, thank you! And I certainly will keep that in mind, I know what you mean!
 

tarotbear

By Any Chance ~ Did you ever email them to anyone else to show them? You might be able to get a copy from them, or if you dig through your 'Sent' emails you may find them. You may have years of sent emails you didn't know you had.

Hindsight being 2000% - I back everything up to an external hard drive - stored in another desk so if my PC ever disappears I will still have the external. If you have an entire deck of cards designed - back them up onto their own thumb drive and store it someplace else, too. Thumb drives are getting larger memorys and also less expensive.

My cards may be in their own folders, but periodically I have sent designs to show someone and CC'd myself so that it comes back to me; these emails I saved into another email file folder so that if I suddenly lose something {the other day I hit 'delete' instead of 'Rename'} there will be a spare copy somewhere.

I sincerely hope you can find the missing files; nothing is more discouraging than to lose something you have spent time on - and not even know when it may have disappeared.

Good Luck.
 

blackroseivy

Thanks so much, and no I never e-mailed any of this. As I said, I THOUGHT I had backed it up but it disappeared from there too. Next time I'm going to be extra vigilant as to backups!!!

Oh, and I no longer even have my old e-mail account anymore. I had everything fall apart on me in 2011-2012, my old 'puter died and my old accounts along with it, long story. I just hope my sis actually has the backup I lost!
 

3ill.yazi

You should try talking to someone at a computer shop. I've known of cases where lost stuff can be retrieved. No promise, but if the NSA can find stuff that's been deleted ...

but do use the cloud. I'm working on a novel that I automatically back up into a dropbox account, just in case. Apple is making computers with less storage space to basically encourage this.