all my digis :(
 

I'm so bummed. The flash drive with all of my digis got bent and now it won't work. I have tons of digis on there and I don't know if they will ever be recovered. :(

you need to find a computer GENIUS...or Geek Squad person and see if there is anything they can do to recover that stuff. That is too valuable a stash to let go without a fight!
Good Luck!!

I have learned (the hard way) to back up everything that would break my heart to lose. There is a site where you can back up 2GB of information online for free. It's not enough memory to store photographs, but I bet it can store a ton of black and white digital files: http://db.tt/jpEvKTVp

Oh, no! So sorry. I worry about that too.

I am so sorry!! Years ago I had a hard drive crash and lost everything so I understand the sick feeling. Do try to find a geek to recover the digi's if possible.
Now, I not only have an external hard drive that backs up every hour, but I print a paper copy of important stuff. I include the header and footer so I have the URL and can find things if I need to .

My external hard drive backs up everything including my gazillion bookmarks.
External hard drives are not expensive. You can buy one for around $50.

I'm so sorry too.
But I can only echo what's already been said, even though it's shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted - with any digital data backups are so important.
I hope you find somebody who can recover them for you.

Thinking about it has me wondering would it not be possible to store them in Google docs, so that they'd be accessible online?

How bad is it? Can you carefully straighten the damage out. Can you take it out of the case? Do you have any computer geek or electronic guru's you can take this too? The data is probably not lost. USB keys get bent a lot because they are so portable. People usually throw them away. Crackers love to get their hands on these keys because with a bit of fiddling you can get tons of info off a key. Sometimes crackers are known to set in libraries, coffee bars, wi-fi hot places and watch you with that key. Then they will come over and accidentally hit your notebook or kick your bag and your key is damaged. Then you will throw it away with your coffee mug. Cracker comes right over and plucks it out of the trash can and has all sorts of goodies to play with.

Unless you demagnetize your key, beat it with a hammer and then "shred" it the data is still there.

I know the pain you're feeling. If you have an extention cable for your usb port, even though the end is bent, you may be able to connect with that. If that doesn't work, and you think its worth the cost, you could take it to a computer repair shop to see if they can recover the files for you.

I ran over a USB cable with my computer chair once and had to unbend it with a needle nose pliers to get it to fit in the port but it did work. I don't recommend jamming it into the actual port if you try this but as already suggested, use a USB extension cable do you don't break any ports on your computer. If you look inside you'll see about 4 copper strips and that's all that needs to make contact so any experienced "geek" will be able to manipulate this if you can't get it to unbend.

Good luck, I can understand how heartbroken you are. I wonder if sellers keep a record of the digis you've bought, but I know there are a lot of limited time freebies that I would never get back.

First, I'm so sorry that you lost everything. I can sympathize because like this stamper, I had an external hard drive and that just crashed on me. I shoot tutorials for my blog every week and now they are all gone. Ugh!

So sorry to hear that! I don't use digis but I've always wondered what one would do if the hard disk/drive with the digis crashed.

Try searching on the internet what people do to recover data from bent USBs - I'm sure this must be quite frequent.