Massive Data Cleanse

I'm finally hitting that thing on my to-do list that I've been casually delaying for, oh, about six months now.

Of course, it immediately went awry.

Like most of you, I carry a smartphone that at any given point in time contains hundreds of photos I've barely perused since they first appeared on the screen. Sure, every once in awhile I'll thumb through them, trying to remember what day that hike was or when exactly that aunt visited, and occasionally I'll trip over something oddly memorable.

Like this.

Or the day I took this.

Or ... Seriously, how many cat pictures do I have?

  

This one caught me a tad off guard.

And of course, there are the food photos.

I seem to be a digital hoarder.

Well, no longer. In the midst of my data cleanse, after I'd pulled everything from the last two years off my memory card and while I was sorting through it, I got The Message.

Card Corrupted. Formatting Required.

What?! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Several minutes of angry ranting and flailing followed.

Note: That first part was important. I'd managed to get two years' worth of photos (pulled from a phone I've only had for a year, which was nice). Shortly before offering a sacrifice to the tech gods, I found that almost everything from before then had been backed up already, too.

Which meant, perhaps, that what I'd really done was an overzealous cleaning.

A few deep breaths and a reformat later -- along with the finding of a new card adapter because the first one apparently couldn't be trusted -- the rebuilding began. As with many of these tasks, what should have taken an hour ended up spanning eight. (Luckily, I could start a data transfer and walk away.) And while I'm going to have some glitches while I retrain various apps, I've mostly just re-learned a couple valuable lessons.

1. Back-up often.

2. For the love of Pete, don't trust an adapter with a cord.

3. Maybe consider deleting extra photos as you go this time, you weirdo.

.... Yeah, that sums it up.