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Real World Insecurity
Posted: December 14, 2009 (20:43) under Hardware, Offline Security, Security, Theft

Now, this is just a sad tale, one with all the classic ingredients of a tragedy, and none of the happy endings you’re used to from Disney adaptations of the Greek myths.

Vancouver artist and photographer Sharon Burns recently showed her latest works at the Interurban Gallery downtown at Hastings and Carrall streets. She’s previously exhibited at public and private galleries from the Vancouver Art Gallery to the Gallery Gachet, and her work is both critically respected and popular.

And now, it’s gone.

If you saw the show at the Interurban, congratulations; you saw the only extant record of three years of work. Here’s how it happened:

Nobody likes moving house much, and moving house single-handedly they like even less. Burns had to move house, didn’t have any friends free that night, and decided, since it was a small job, to dispense with a moving company and hire some freelance labour. All appeared to go well, and she’d been settled into her new apartment several months when she had occasion to double-check her photo-storage hard drive for an image for the upcoming show.

You know what happened then.

The loss of a hard drive, whether due to “the confusion of moving” or to some more sinister cause, is always a blow, but if you’ve got a backup of your data somewhere else, it’s a surmountable blow. In contrast to the common assumption, online data storage can often be more secure than offline storage, and more flexible as well. Don’t get caught out like this, losing three years of work. But then, if you’re reading this blog, you probably know you’ve got some safety options; use them!