Web Applications and Disk Crashes

I've been making Digital PhotoBooks for awhile.  I've used many services, checking to see who offers   the best quality (and not necessarily best price...).  I've used:  My Publisher, Snap Fish, Douglas, Picaboo, Pica book, Vivi, to name a few.  Some of them offer web-based solutions, other downloadable software.  But basically, the idea, you drag and drop photo's, create your personal photobook, and it's sent to you via the mail.  Cheap it's not, but when done properly, the result is beautiful.

So, recently, I suffered a disk crash (yes, this happens to VC's too).  And now, was showtime for my Sysadmin (we all know, backup is only 1 part of the process... it's restore that we want to see!).  Without going into too much detail, the restoration process went quite smoothly.  That is, until we started to reinstall apps!  We do not backup applications (why bother???).  So, when your system dies (or when you upgrade to a new computer, etc.), you have to reinstall one application after the next.  Only, in many cases, the version on the web is no longer the version that you had running; you encounter licensing issues, and backward compatibility issues.  Those were the least of my problems!  My challenge was reinstalling one of the digital photobook applications - Picaboo.  Now, the application was installed with no problem, and I still have all of my digital photo's, but Picaboo stores their files somewhere that.... of course was not part of my backed-up data.  This I realized only when I read about how to backup my digital photobooks (-- which, I did post disk crash).  Basically, all the work that I had done was gone.  This is hours and hours of work, much of which already exists in beautiful hardcover photobooks, but there were still those books that I hadn't completed, etc.

While I was contemplating the correct response to my Sysadmin, I sent a note to Picaboo customer support.  Miraculously, they had the ability to recover all but one of my photobooks, including those which I had not yet printed.  I was delighted.  Their customer service was indeed outstanding, and for that I commend them.

At the same time, it does raise the issue of separation between data and applications.  When you're working on a web app, do you know what is being saved where on your computer (for purposes, such as backup this is quite useful information). I like to think of myself as a semi-sophisticated user, but I had never paid attention to this point.  I will now!

technorati tags: digital photobook picaboo digilabs picabook mypublisher snapfish backup and recovery

Comments

[anon]

Four quick comments:

a. It hardly ever happens with Open Source apps. These are my first choice whenever I need something - a search in sourceforge.net finds several candidates in a jiffy, even for Windows.

b. Sometimes it seems that it's in purpose, e.g. MS abandoning some file formats and forcing you to upgrade (a true story).

c. Your story is child's play vs selecting and maintaining a development environment for avionics / industrial / medical embedded systems with a 10-30 year life cycle.

d. It's a good practice to keep the original installation files of the apps used, and have the full ones, not an online installation type stub.

[Tomer]

This is why system images should be made periodically (after new software installs anyways)... Unless ofcourse your sysadmin doesn't have much to do and reinstalling is his bread and butter.

[Rick]

By any chance do you remember or have the information on how to restore the Picaboo books? I am having the same sort of issue, where the application became corrupt for some reason and won't open and my wife will kill me if I can't get her work back!

[Tali Aben]

If you've ever "viewed" your picaboo book while editing, the picaboo system automatically creates a backup on their systems. Contact Picaboo support, and they should be able to get it for you. Good Luck!