---

Just had a 250GB hard disk full of photos crash with the loss of a significant number of the images. I think I have most of it backed up in various scattered places but will take weeks to sort things out. The disk was showing errors some weeks ago so I should have replaced it then before it finally died but the operating system thought it could keep repairing the errors till now.
Also have had two 1TB hard disks fail in the past but 'fortunately' they failed within the first week or two so I had kept a full backup based on one of the rules of computing that if something is going to fail it will fail almost immediately (or when there is some vital urgent report to write).

I know this has nothing to do with Diptera but it seems everyone is producing loads of digital images and will have to store them somewhere. A friend used CD's then DVD's and has filled a room completely with them, whereas I went the opposite route and chose hard disks instead as I have a tiny flat and no space for storage. CD's/DVD's deteriorate over time and can loose all the data within a few years, hard disks are supposed to be much more reliable unless they get a virus or similar but actually they can suffer problems too as I have shown.

Anyway I am sure everyone will say their Diptera files are fully backed up with copies in flame proof vaults in several geographical locations. As to the real specimens though thats another matter.

---

What a sad note, and food for thought, too.
I still stick to using of DVD-ROM discs for image backups, it seems to be a cheap and easy way, but I also know that their storage capacity is exaggerated when speaking of long terms...

---

Well its not really 'sad', instead just annoying that I did not listen to the warning signs. I hope to recover everything and the images on the recently failed disk were all scans of slides and I still have the original sides. It is just that it will take a lot of work to do it all.

Interestingly when I was dismantling the computer last night to replace the disk I found it was full of a fine white dust, several months ago when I last opened it up it was clean. I wonder if this was the result of some of the late summer dust storms in the Sahara, I hear they have been sending plumes of material up to northern Europe - perhaps loads of biological aerial plankton (inc Diptera) came with it too?
Ha! see the post was about Diptera after all.

---

Our photos are stored on the hard disk drive and backed up periodically on to CD, but it has to be said that we have had at least one serious scare when we wondered whether the images would be recoverable. We have been talking for months about getting an external hard drive to back stuff up on and I think your story will prove the spur to actually do something. It does strike me though that as hard drives get bigger, the more devastating any crash is, and as they get cheaper, the more likely the quality control is increasingly poor.:(