The down side of using your phone as your camera

For the last year or so I've been largely absent from permies as I have been focusing on getting settled with a day job (they keep changing my shifts around so it's hard to get a set pattern) and doing all sorts of projects for the home and property we bought. I had a few small projects I had documented with the camera as well as a major garden construction through production set.

My intent was to come on, well now, and post pictures and updates of the various activities as well as a few BB elements. Unfortunately my phone suffered a catastrophic failure to the point that very little outside of what was on the sim card was recoverable. I had pictures that predated that phone, but none of the ones I had taken were properly saving to the memory card I had installed. I'm not left with several projects that won't be repeatable that I have zero proof of doing and the major loss of the valuable proof of having done my garden build. I'm combing over images I uploaded for other things to see if they have the proof in the background, but it seems unlikely for me to pull it off. If I can, at least there's that, but all of the action shots are certainly gone.

There's not really much to be done or said about it, but feeling really bummed over the matter. I so rarely was getting to post BBs as it was and having the proof of those smaller projects and such a major one is hitting a bit hard emotionally. I suppose I am just hoping for a few words of encouragement. After all, it isn't as though the BBs are something I have been relying on. Still, it is just an emotional blow to my already small number of spoons per day.

That is soooo frustrating!

As you don't "need" the BBs, maybe keep a chart to validate for yourself the ones you've achieved? If you go through the BB lists you'll probably find more things you did but didn't have pics for, too. It sounds as if you've been busy achieving plenty, both in the day job (money always helps!) and your property.

Though it's nice to have the BBs too, the real value is in all that you've done.

Edited to add - my phone won't save photos to the SIM, either. I set it so it backs up to online storage whenever I'm somewhere the phone can access WiFi.

Well, digging around both here and in my computer, I have exactly 1 picture of the work in the orchard and 3 images mid-creation of the garden and 1 post-creation of the orchard. Since I intend to put more trees in this year, I can get 'before' pictures that way. If I take a photo of the winter-dead garden right now, I technically would have a before, during and after shot set for that one. Not the ton of pictures I originally planned, but at least proof of having done the work. Still very upsetting since none of the other projects are in there, but at least it is enough to get the largest of the projects posted for review.

Glad you have some good news! And orchard planting a a biggie!

I hear you! And I'll raise you - this is the downside of our entire modern society. We're very dependent on electronic gizmos that can disappear in a heart beat with no warning.

But those projects you did - they can give you pleasure day after day!

Yes, no BB's for them, but I guarantee that if you take and post new pictures of the finished projects here on this thread, that you will get more than just me, ooohhhing and aaaawing over them.

Did you get food this year from that new garden?

Hang in there, and I truly hope that the upcoming seasons will reward you with more progress.

I'm not sure what you've tried, recovery wise, but FWIW, both Windows and Linux boxes can read the photo files on many smartphones. A corrupted Android-formatted SD card may be beyond them. But poke around in the phone's file system before you give up hope. My 2c.

I think what you have experienced has happened in some way to all of us using digital devices. If you don't have your data you don't own it either so don't just rely on cloud based backup, who may decide to charge you storage. They do need to be backed up somewhere though, preferably off site somewhere different in case of accidents.
It's sort of one of the reasons I did a 'blog for years though. A way of recording what I have done and images from projects. I now use Permies in the same way. Pictures can be attached to posts anywhere, or start a project thread for us all to enjoy.

  They do need to be backed up somewhere though, preferably off site somewhere different in case of accidents.

My photos store on my sd card just fine but periodically I remove them anyway to a flash drive-/memory stick by using an adapter thingy that fits the usb port on the phone at one end and the flash drive on the other.

D. Logan....
I lost photos from a once in decades meet up with old friends...painful.

Hope you are able to get back on track with your photo record of your projects soon

I'm pretty happy letting all my photos auto-backup to Google Photos. I don't love Google as a company, but it seems like the best of those services for now and their storage allowance and prices are reasonable. I also leave all my images on my phone and just buy the biggest phone (in storage, I mean) each time so that I never have to delete. :)

Sorry to hear about your phone.  I know what I am about to say is of little comfort for the pictures you lost, but going forward maybe you could try something similar to what I do.  I am TERRIBLY paranoid about losing data so I constantly backup my information.  Anything on my desktop gets triply backed up--once to an internal hard drive, once to an external hard drive that I keep disconnected and unplugged except when backing up and once to the cloud.  I am certain that what I am doing is overkill, but I would rather have a backup and not need it than need one and not have it.  Maybe you could have your phone set to backup to the cloud.  Mine backs up to the cloud and to a local hard drive whenever I plug it into my desltop.

my two cents

Eric