On Friday, my 400GB SimpleTech external hard drive containing all of my images died.  Fortunately, I had most of the RAW files backed up on a separate drive, but needless to say the loss is still pretty upsetting.  I drove home to retrieve my backup drive, only to confront a family loss (more on that in a future post, its still too fresh a wound to discuss right now). 

I have since purchased two new 500GB Western Digital My Book Essential hard drives.  I plan to go through my existing backup drive, rename, reorganize, reprocess, and transfer files.  Since my backup consisted largely of RAW files, I lost many of my processed TIFFs along with some of my newer shots - those from the Pole Farm and of the sycamore bark.  I still have the external drive that failed, and may attempt to have it recovered in the future, when either the fees associated with data recovery decline or I have excess money to fund on recovering the data.  It will take me a while to catch up on all of the lost images, and I likely won’t be posting much in the next few weeks as I deal with both the loss of my hard drive and the loss in my family.  Thank you for your understanding.