to expect an external hard drive to actually save data?

[jumpjockey]

When dd was born we got an external hard drive so we could back up all the photos and vids in case anything happened to the laptop. Lo and behold the laptop got nicked, we thought "It's ok it's all on the hard drive". Except it's actually failed to back up 4 months worth of videos, for no reason that anyone can work out.

The manufacturers are no help, just say "Unfortunately it sounds as if the data wasn't backed up". And their website says "Our limited warranty does not cover data loss Back up the contents of your drive to a separate storage media on a regular basis". FFS, that's what I bought the bloody hard drive for, to be a separate storage media.

So effectively they're saying this glorified floppy disk might fail at any time, you need to back up to CDs - ie may as well not have bothered getting the bloody thing in the first place.

It sounds more like the backup utility didn't work properly rather than the disk itself failed. What a bummer. It is a good idea to always check that the stuff you expect to be on the backup disk - whether hard drive, CD or whatever - is actually there.

The problem is that it backed up all the other kinds of files (photos, word docs etc), just not the vids. And bizzarely it backed up the folders they were saved in as well, but not the contents. I guess we made the mistake of assuming it would be working when each backup it said "backed up 300 files" or whatever, we didn't check after the first couple of times

I have thousands of photos of mindees, I pat 17.50 a year for Flickr Pro, onto which I cant upload unlimited photos and videos, (which I can then share with Parents), as I lost a lot that were on my external that did the same.

We have a flickr pro account, I guess we could do the same. Why didn't I think of this before?

Are you a childminder in Cambridge by any chance with a vacancy this winter? You sound ideal!

Sorry love, in Dorset and full