WAIT, before you do that...

Life has been... well, kinda not so nice to me lately. So much going on in relation to health, finance and life in general.

But I try to stay positive, but things keep blind siding me. Then, my computer crashed. I lost everything. Over 4,000 pics. I have some of them scattered on myspace, facebook and flickr, but trying to gather them up is a hassle. But, I am smart. I still have them on my SD card. I was keeping them on there until I backed them all up.

Smart gal I am.

But, once I got my computer all up and going, I went to read the pics so I can back them up. But, the computer will not read my SD card. NOT GOOD.

So, I googled for an answer. Looks like the only option is to reformat and lose them all. NOT NEAT!

There are some programs that MIGHT be able to recover some of the pictures after reformatting. But wow, what a gamble.

Well, the answers I read was NOT acceptable. So, I kept researching and found the issue.

My card is 16 GB. My card reader will only read 4 GB. YES!!!! A solution.

One solution was to buy an external card reader.

Or... download a free patch. So, I downloaded and HEY, IT WORKED!!!

I am retrieving my photos as I type.

This is the site you need to go to. This is for Windows XP only. If you have a different OS then I am sure there is a patch for that.

So, before you reformat an SD Card that your computer won't read, try this.

I know this may sound silly to you, but I cried when I found a solution. These are memories I was at risk of losing. There were my pictures of my angels, of times spent with family and of pictures I poured my heart into to capture.

Yes, I know, I should back up my data more often. I know that. But hey, I also know I should have had a salad for lunch instead of a cheeseburger with fries, but we don't always do what we know we should.

So, the moral of the story is. Do not admit defeat too soon, keep searching for an answer.