# Let this be a lesson to me...and you...



## schuylercat (Jan 12, 2008)

I am writing this post on my new computer. Very exciting - big fast processor, lotsa ram, a pair of big fat 500GB hard drives, screaming fast video card.

What is NOT on my new computer is several thousand photos I've taken since Septemeber 13 2007. Those are gone. Gone gone gone. My daughter's birthday, my nephew's wedding, all the shots I've taken with my 40D since I got it and all the Photoshop experimentation I was working on. Gone. The old computer is still smoking, but through the smoke it's giggling at me. I just know it.

Do I even need to say this? Probably not for most of you, but some might look around and say "gee, I haven't backed up in a while myself..."

Back up your stuff. What if I'd had a shoot on that hard drive? Photographers get sued over that sort of stupid mistake.

I have a few friends who've said things like "oh, that's awful. Dang computers." The more astute of my friends have been less charitable: "what, are you stupid? Ever herard of burning CD's? Backup drives? You're an IT professional, right? What a moron..." It goes on and on, but hey - they're right.

So now I'm off to find all the free Photoshop plugins and tools I had downloaded, and when I do I'll back them up too. Oh, yes I will.

While I do that, I invite one and all who have not yet done so to perform a full backup routine today. Unless everyone already has, and I am the only one...

Ciao all.


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## John_05 (Jan 12, 2008)

I've had that happen once myself,  so I know exactly how you feel.  Now I have 3 external drives,  and a stack of CDs and DVDs I can't see over if I stack them on top of each other. I'm in the habit now of burning every picture I take straight to a CD when I take them off the card,  and I keep a folder on my desktop for everything else I want to keep backed up,  and I burn the folder when it reaches around 650MB.

Is it possible for you to remove the hard drive and maybe connect it to the new computer to retrieve the stuff on it?  If there's that much on it you don't want to lose,  you could probably see if it can be rebuilt or the information restored professionally.  A good friend of mine had a drive rebuilt/restored and was able to get back nearly everything she had lost,  but it cost her about $700.  For her,  it was worth it to get all her pictures back. She said it turned out to be like paying about 5 cents per picture to get them back.

Sorry to hear of your loss though.  I hope there's some way you can get back what's on that drive.


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## Sw1tchFX (Jan 12, 2008)

treid taking out the old hard disk and putting it in the new one to see if the disk still works? if ti does, than you can just drag-n-drop all of your stuff onto your new computer.


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## Mike_E (Jan 12, 2008)

And if it wants to go but can't, put it in the freezer for an hour or two and try again while it's still very cold (you'll need to have everything ready before you take the Hdd out of the freezer of course).


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## dipstick (Jan 12, 2008)

I just had a big HD crash myself. It actually happened the same day as I was backing up and reorganizing my files on a new HD. As a part of that process all my data was stored on only one HD waiting to be backed up. Before I got around to back it up my new HD crashed. I was able to recover 90% of what i lost with a $29 recovery software. I lost a lot of filenames and folder structures, but the images was there so I had a great weekend of sorting images....

Did you try any recovery at all, or did your old HD actually catch on fire or something?


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## skieur (Jan 12, 2008)

I backed up a lot of photos to a portable external harddrive as well as to my computer.

The computer power supply blew out the internal harddrive and my external harddrive that was connected to it as well.

skieur


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## elsaspet (Jan 12, 2008)

I had that happen, and had to have a very expensive rescue done.  It only took that one time....LOL.

Now I have a Trillibite of removable storage, as well as burn backup system, and ghosted secondary computer.  I keep them in 3 separate locations at all time.

Sorry you learned that lesson the hardway too.


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## rachlynn17 (Jan 12, 2008)

My husband, (a computer programmer) always tells me, "It's not a matter of IF your harddrive crashes.  Its a matter of WHEN it crashes."

Our "WHEN" already happened once too, but luckily he was able to buy another drive and trade parts to get our data back.


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## ScottS (Jan 12, 2008)

schuylercat said:


> Do I even need to say this? Probably not for most of you, but some might look around and say "gee, I haven't backed up in a while myself..."
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Ls3D (Jan 12, 2008)

Just backed up Monday of this week. :thumbup: Plus my duplicate HDD.

-S


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## JIP (Jan 12, 2008)

I have worked at Ritz camera since all this digital stuff started and I think everyday of the people who in 5-10 years after buying a new computer and not thinking about copying their images they are not going to have anything.  Prints fade and I think the prints now are being mde of a much lesser quality or people are even going the ink-jet route and not burning everthing and they will have nothing.  I am proud to say that I tried to educate all of the new digital photographers that bought their first camera from me because somebody has to.


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## nossie (Jan 12, 2008)

Thank the Bill for RAID5


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## schuylercat (Jan 13, 2008)

Hehehe...nice to know I wasn't alone.

Hey Mike E - I think I'll try the freezer thing.  Interesting idea.  As for the drive, it made the same lovely "clickety...clacketyclick...whizz..." noise in the new machine.  I may try to get the data off there at a local shop - the cost is high, but some of the pics are priceless.  Not money shots, just 4 months of my kids lives, which are far more valuable to this hopeful amatuer.

Now: off to the freezer I go!  I'm thinking seized  drive, shrink the metals in the cold...and hope for the best.  Can't hurt...

Thanks guys!


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## nossie (Jan 13, 2008)

I dealt with a guy in Canada that fixed a drive for me.  Postage, parts, his time all came to about $200CAD.  
I'm not sure if this is the same guy but it might help to talk to them anyway... http://cgi.ebay.ca/WD-Caviar-WD2000...ageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem?_trksid=p1638.m118

I think my guy's name is Dmitri or something like it.

Good luck!


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## Snyder (Jan 13, 2008)

Ive had my 300gig Hd crash on me with all my photos on it, All I did was go into msdos and type
dskchk k:/r
and bam it was fixed though I did back up all my photo onto another hd. It still crashes from time to time and I can still recover it every time.


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## tahmail (Jan 13, 2008)

Should I mention.....store a set of those CD,s DVD's, Ironmountain (what every you use for backup) OFFSITE so if you have a fire or other disaster, you still have your files.


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## leaving0hio (Jan 13, 2008)

nossie said:


> Thank the Bill for RAID5



I used to say that too - then i lost an array controller.


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## bellacat (Jan 14, 2008)

Now that i have read this post i am reminded I am due for a backup so that is what i will be doing tomorrow. Thanks for the reminder.


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## nossie (Jan 14, 2008)

leaving0hio said:


> I used to say that too - then i lost an array controller.


 
True.  There is no single device for a 100% safe backup system but you have to draw the line between what you can realisticly afford and building a hermetically sealed nuclear bunker.  I use 3 drives in RAID 5 and do DVD backups every now and then (2-3 months-ish) or straight away if they're sensitive shots like a wedding shoot.
After that point I don't really care, if I'm hit by sods law then so be it.


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## ScottS (Jan 14, 2008)

Funny that this thread is coming back up because my photography computer (vista) JUST CRASHED. 

With vista I have learned to backup all the time... 

Phew!


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## monkeykoder (Jan 14, 2008)

Operating systems crashing is no big deal a linux live cd can usually fix that...  That is however no excuse not to back up your data.  Hard drives still crash.


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## ScottS (Jan 14, 2008)

OS crashes are only bad if you dont have a backup... Then you have to pay someone to get your data off the HD before you can reinstall your OS on it. 

Thats what im doing now... take up way too much of my time. 

And on a side note, Im on my old desktop computer with a tube screen....and woa! my eyes hurt!!


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## leaving0hio (Jan 14, 2008)

nossie said:


> True.  There is no single device for a 100% safe backup system but you have to draw the line between what you can realisticly afford and building a hermetically sealed nuclear bunker.  I use 3 drives in RAID 5 and do DVD backups every now and then (2-3 months-ish) or straight away if they're sensitive shots like a wedding shoot.
> After that point I don't really care, if I'm hit by sods law then so be it.



I don't know why, but I thought you were relying on the RAID as your (only) backup strategy.  So my reply came from that assumption.  My apologies.


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## monkeykoder (Jan 14, 2008)

ScottS said:


> OS crashes are only bad if you dont have a backup... Then you have to pay someone to get your data off the HD before you can reinstall your OS on it.
> 
> Thats what im doing now... take up way too much of my time.
> 
> And on a side note, Im on my old desktop computer with a tube screen....and woa! my eyes hurt!!



Pay someone??? why would you do that?  I can think of 2 methods using a linux live cd (depending on your current hardware)  Which allow you to do it for nearly free (insert cost of external hard drive or burnable CDs to make up for the nearly)


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## nossie (Jan 15, 2008)

ScottS said:


> Funny that this thread is coming back up because my photography computer (vista) JUST CRASHED.
> 
> With vista I have learned to backup all the time...
> 
> Phew!


 
Mine never crashes. It might be something more than Vista at fault.  I'd suggest you run memtest some night for starters.



ScottS said:


> OS crashes are only bad if you dont have a backup... Then you have to pay someone to get your data off the HD before you can reinstall your OS on it.
> 
> Thats what im doing now... take up way too much of my time.
> 
> And on a side note, Im on my old desktop computer with a tube screen....and woa! my eyes hurt!!


 
Keep all your OS and Application Installations on C:\ which is one phsyical drive all to itself. 
Then get a second harddrive D:\ that is only for storing your work, photos, downloads etc. Now if the OS becomes corrupt for any reason you can easily format C:\ and reinstall everything without worrying about your work.

You can do the same on a single drive by creating a partition so that D:\ is a virtual drive. This is a good idea if you're working on a laptop but for desktop I'd go with the 2 drives.


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## nossie (Jan 15, 2008)

leaving0hio said:


> I don't know why, but I thought you were relying on the RAID as your (only) backup strategy. So my reply came from that assumption. My apologies.


 
Could easily happen but it's nothing to worry about, I didn't give all the information.

About the RAID controller failing... couldn't you replace it?  Even if it's an onboard controller wouldn't a seperate controller take up the drives again for you?


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## JonnyB (Jan 15, 2008)

As a last resort u can always take the hard drive out and give it a good old whack, like banging it off a table. If the hard drives just sticking this can occasionally free it up. The trick is to just hit it hard enough to free it up without knacking it.

Like a say though a complete last resort once all other options have be exausted and u have nothing left to loose.


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## c_lawrence (Feb 23, 2008)

If your hard drive is making noise, then it can be recovered.  I would suggest having a 'professional' do this, however, before accidentally creating irreversible damage... this can be expensive, though.  The good news is if there is a university near you, track down their computer education department and/or IT department and they can recover your hd for you.  Of course nothing is free but they will generally take on anything for 'educational purposes' and at a relatively nominal fee.  A friend (non-university student) had his hardrive recovered by UGA for $75.00.


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