Some lessons are hard to learn. And expensive.

The past couple of days have been rough for me. But I guess I've learned a lot. It all started when Spencer asked me to videotape his class play about geology, since Dave couldn't be there. No problem, I thought. But I knew the memory card for my camcorder was almost full, so I spent several hours the morning of the play trying to download some of the video to my computer. I had 5 hours on my internal memory, but I'd never been able to download it because my computer's CD Rom doesn't work and I couldn't install the software to read the video. I'd recently started taping on a memory card, but it was almost full too. So I deleted some videos from my internal memory - mostly mistakes from when the camera was accidentally left on. This freed up plenty of space for the play, but then I had to switch from recording onto the memory card to the internal memory. I was frantically trying everything I could (it was almost time for the play to begin and I didn't know where the owner's manual was), and I pushed a button that I thought was switching to internal memory when in fact I was reformatting the internal memory, completing wiping out 5 hours of video spanning the last 9 months of our life. This includes vacations, the family reunion, Christmas and most importantly Levi's birth and first four months of life. I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach and I freaked out. I tried not to think about it because every time I did I got mad at myself. I'd think of specific scenes I'd lost and feel bad that I could never see them. I talked to Kristen, who said she recently learned in her camera class that things that are deleted aren't gone, they're just inaccessible until they've been recorded over. I called the camera store, and they said they only did cameras, not camcorders. I spent hours on google, called camera and computer stores, and they all said the same thing - they didn't have the ability to retrieve it, or it was impossible and no one could do it. Ellen said if there's one thing she's learned watching crime detective shows it's that things are never gone. Some forensics lab somewhere could recover it. Christopher suggested I ask the police. I called Best Buy this morning and the Greek Squad guy told me it was gone forever and that it was impossible to recover it. I broke down and cried some more. Then I pulled myself together and continued my search. Finally I called some data recovery companies who said it might be possible. I'd have to mail my camcorder to them where they would have to open it up in a special clean room. They wouldn't charge me unless they were able to recover my data. But here's the thing - it's extremely expensive! I was thinking it'd be around $200. One place in Canada charges $450. One back East was $600. And one in Wisconsin was between $300-$400; he was the most helpful. He knew exactly what I'd done and what would be involved to retrieve it, citing an 80% chance of recovery. I got excited at the idea that it was even possible, but discouraged by the price. Dave thinks it's way too expensive and we don't ever look at our videos anyway. So I guess I will just keep it on there, never taping over it in case I can retrieve it some day.