That "Oh No" moment

Sorry I haven't been keeping up to date with my 30 day challenge posts but I recently realised that I have been importing all of my pictures to my C drive and this was causing Picasa to work rather harder than it should so I spent several days moving over 30,000 photos from my C drive to my external hard drive!!!! One folder at a time!!!

I read lots of advice on the Picasa forum and am hoping that I have done everything correctly, I have now set Picasa to import directly to my external hard drive but this was not before I had my "Oh No" moment.....

Since transferring all the files to the external hard drive I have been trying to remember to change the import drive location on Picasa before pressing the import button so that all my photographs are imported directly to the external hard drive but on this particular day I forgot.

I realised my mistake as soon as I clicked the import button which meant that all my photos would be imported to my C drive so do you know what I did I clicked the cancel button!!!! I'm not sure what made me do it but I did!!

My "Oh No" had happened not only had I cancelled the import but I had also ticked the delete everything on the card box.

Almost everything was gone, the only photos showing were about ten pictures all of which I had imported a couple of days before so I already had them in Picasa.
I was so cross with myself you wouldn't believe it.....and I honestly thought that was it -  I'd lost all my photos.
My camera not only had that days photos of our trip out with friends to the local woods but it also had photos from several days before some of which I really wanted to keep.
There was only one thing for it I trawled the Picasa forum yet again and found out that I might be able to recover my photos from the memory card as long as I didn't take any more photos on it.
The way to do this would be to use a recovery program, there are lots of different companies offering recovery programs and after much deliberation I plumped for Recuva.
I nervously downloaded the program to my computer and attached the camera via the usb cable and set the program to scan and waited.
Amazingly there they were my 217 photos recovered in a jiffy.
My "Oh No" moment was now a "Oh Yes!" moment.
I quickly moved them to the external hard drive and apart from three photo's that didn't get fully recovered I had all my photos safely ensconced once more in Picasa!!!

This has been a hard lesson to learn but learn it I have...and after reading another Picasa forum post I now realise that I can set the import location permanently to my external hard drive, which I have now done. I also only tick the delete copied pictures too which should ensure that this doesn't happen again, but if it ever does then I know that there may be hope in the name of Recuva.

Sorry this has been a word heavy post, normal photography blogging shall resume shortly........