Back in, what was it, late October my Seagate external hard drive crashed and I lost all of the pictures I had taken in my first year of living in Thailand. Other than the ones loaded to this blog and a few others on Shutterfly, my photo memories had evaporated.
After several people helpfully provided suggestions of where to go to attempt recovery, I sent the drive home to Indiana with my parents and they forwarded it to Data Recovery Corporation.
Today I received an email from them explaining that there has been extensive physical damage to the hard drive itself and the read/write head. The quote to attempt data extraction, with no guarantees of success: $1239.
Ouch.
Before I sent the drive, I set myself a maximum budget of $400 to pay for the data figuring that was about what the memories were worth to me. While I’d really like to have those pictures back, $1200 is too much to pay just for a chance. Besides, I still have the writings on the blog and that will have to suffice.
Sadly, though, I had planned to take the pictures and some of the blog entries and create a bound album as a gift for family members. When the drive crashed I had only completed the first three months of the project. It looks like it will not be a completed project after all.
So the question is, how much would you pay for your memories?
christao408 
Sorry to hear that…HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
yikes, that sucks. how much i shell out for memories depends on how important the event is.
Yikes! That reminded me to back up my photos… Thanks.
I would say let it go… your parents never had that hard drive to save pictures and I believe that they have plenty precious memories as well…
Yeah, my parents didn’t have a hard drive with the pictures. They still have the actual pictures and negatives and slides! Which, interestingly, was one of the reasons I was hesitant to get into digital photography in the first place: it is much easier to lose a digital file than an actual negative or picture.