Stupid! Stupid! STUPID!
Bend The Light
Registered Users Posts: 1,887 Major grins
Hard drive failure!
2 years of photos lost.
Including all the ones of my 2 kids. :cry
Might just be power failure. Here's hoping!
But if it's not said once...it's said a hundred times!
BACK UP!
:cry
cry
2 years of photos lost.
Including all the ones of my 2 kids. :cry
Might just be power failure. Here's hoping!
But if it's not said once...it's said a hundred times!
BACK UP!
:cry
cry 0
Comments
Thanks guys. I have 5 "beeps" (not beeps really, but short "seeking" sounds, first high pitched, and the last 4 are lower). Then light stays on, but dim. No actual "spinning" noises...
It has been suggested it's a power problem, and a new controller board might do it, but we'll see. I don't have a desktop, let alone one with SATA connectors in which to plug it, the bare drive, I mean, to see if it can be read that way.
I have a couple of friends who will be taking a look in the next couple of days. In the meantime, off I go for a couple of 1Tb drives and will be backing up RAW files as a matter of course!
As far as a recovery service I don't have any inputs based on direct experience as to which on would be best to use.
I do know one person who was successful getting things recovered at a Best Buy.
Tallyn's does recover http://www.tallyns.com/datarecovery.htm and their prices seem pretty reasonable.
SpinRight may be able to recover some of your data http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm . It boots from a cd so your disk doesn't have to be working to use it. It may not work on your drive or be able to recover what you lost, but it has a no questions asked refund policy.
http://www.danalphotos.com
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I'm sure you've learned your lesson, but for others reading this thread: unless you don't give a damn about your pics and other personal data, you should always have an absolute minimum of two copies of everything on separate media.
http://backblaze.com will backup your entire everything for $60 / year.
You've already bought more hard drives for local use.
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As said above, the more you mess with it -- in any way -- the less the chances of recovery.
To quote Cheech Marin in Ghostbusters 2 when the Titanic arrived in New York:
"Well... better late than never!"
I back up my stuff to an external drive and to my laptop. My most critical files are also backed up to encrypted flash drives which I take with me, so I have some off-site backup. Pics are backed up online.
And off-site storage is a good idea too. If you don't trust uploading it online, a small portable 2.5" drive which you can encrypt and leave in your car, a relative's house, whatever, in case of a house fire or disaster, is a great idea too. Just remember the password,
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1) RAID array on all systems (or more frequent backups if not available).
2) Nightly off-site versioned (snapshot) backups.
3) Weekly on-site "last known good" backup.
4) Quarterly backup restoration tests. << Skipping this can make all the money you spent on 1-3 moot.
I've worked as a SysAdmin contractor all over the world. I've been hired in post-data loss scenarios to try and recover data. I've seen many companies and lives ruined. Grown men weeping like children! Entire countries not able to pay workers (for weeks)! World-wide embarrassing press coverage! Hardened company executives praying in the office with their staff for God to grant them a miracle to restore the data, weeping! Managers pleading with technical staff to save them from being fired! Much, much sadness. Heed the three ways. Doubly so if you make a living on that data.
My condolences on your loss. I hope you are able to find a way to recover the data. By the way, look in to SmugVault if you aren't already using it. I use another cloud provider for backups, but SV should work great as well.
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Thanks. Will look into some online storage...Thanks.
I don't intend messing, apart from extracting the drive from the casing and trying it in a desktop. If that doesn't work I will be passing it to the friend-of-a-friend who does this sort of thing. I won't be doing anything major myself.
I think another drive, stored in the car or wherever may be an idea, although at present, my images are less of an issue than everything else in the house should the house become a burnt out shell. I can see that images become more important if they are business, though. Cheers
Will check out the RAID idea...not really had anything to do with that before...cheers.
Yeah, I know. See the thread title! I know, I know...!
Thanks for that. I will be working on improving my backups. To be fair, other than pictures of my kids, it is not the worst event of my life. Two years of images, yes, but a large fraction of them were crap! It's only recently I have improved a little. I am not making money from them...but in the future I need to have things in place, as things may be different then.
BTW, I have got all my kids photos...I sent a folder of large JPGs to my father in Law. Not RAW files, but all the pictures I processed are there.
Off-site is essential for full disaster-proofing, but forget about the idea of keeping an external hard drive in a car, for several reasons:
1) Your car might be stolen, and then not only have you lost your backup, but any sensitive data you might have on the drive along with your pics and videos becomes food for identity thieves or other criminals.
2) Your car might be wrecked or damaged in a disaster such as a flood, water main break, severe storm, or severe storm, and then your backups are gone. Still, losing your backups this way simply means you need to replace your HDD and make a new copy of your files, but it's a greater risk than keeping them in a building, IMHO.
3) Heat and cold are the enemies of electronics. Store a HDD in a car, and you're just begging for it to die on you, either by being fried in summer time heat, or by having components pop off the boards due to repeated expansion/contraction cycles of overnight cool/daytime warm.
HDDs are okay as backups, but keep them indoors, in reasonably secure and safe buildings like homes or businesses (as opposed to storage units or hidden in outdoor structures), preferably in climate-controled areas (as opposed to basements, garages, or attics).
Fair enough...there are a few places available to keep copies.
Certainly a few providers are not trustworthy. Stick with the mainstream ones and you should be good. If you have some real reason not to trust anyone, then there are still options. They all cost time or money. Usually both.
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I connected with a cable...
It didn't want to know...I tried an old IDE drive which did work, so thought my luck was out...Same noises with the broken drive as it was in the casing. Decided to...erm...give it a little TAP!...And it started spinning! And it works! Ha ha ha! Backing up now before trying it back in the casing...
Whew! Once you get the data off, I hope you're planning on tossing the drive. Miracles are not to be taken for granted.
No, won't throw it, but will be used just as a non-essential drive. Might use it as an enormous scratchdisk...can use it as a memory boost in Windows 7.
But for photos? Nope!
Congratulations.
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Thank you.
Your thread prompted me to be purchase a couple of USB 3.0 2TB drives to backup stuff on our computers.
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Good stuff...gl;ad to be of assistance, and glad that I haven't lost everything in the process.
Still backing up the RAW files...very slow...but it is still working!
$60/year for unlimited backup? Wow! Thank you for sharing!
I'm so gonna try it...
The most surprising thing about this is what you do for a living. My wife (and she is not alone) never stops telling me that I drive her mad. Every angle has to be covered, every possibility explored and accounted for. Not only do I worry about things that haven't happened yet I also worry about things that may never happen. My background is in IT (software development) which may explain some of that attitude. Which is why I was surprised on discovering what you do for a living!
Looking at your various site links, I'm getting the definite impression of someone who is very busy. Maybe the problem of not backing up your data is not really the problem at all, but just the outcome of something else? Everyone here is suggesting useful back-up methods (which is great) but perhaps you should also take a step back occasionally and ask yourself 'Is there something I ought to be doing, which I'm not doing?'
Hope you don't mind the personal comments: I'm only trying to help. Even I sometimes realize that there's something I should have been doing but am not. Normally, I have that realization when something goes horribly wrong.
For the record... I back up regularly to two external hard drives (and I also virus check them). I also back up daily new files to a laptop in my wife's office. If you use Windows you can set up a local network and copy stuff wirelessly.
I definitley should stop and ask "Is there something I should be doing?"...and I do do this...mostly the reply to myself is "Yes, there is. But I haven't got the time!". And I also have a solution to that, which is to quit the day job...but sadly I can't afford that even though it is the one thing that would help me and my family immensely, were it not for the financial implications of the decision.
So, anyway, I have the back ups whirring away...I have enough links to off-site back up to preserve each Tb of data about 100 times. I'm on it...but forst I must go to work, teach 150 kids, and mark 60 books and a few exam papers...all before 2.30 today. Sigh!
Ooo! You don't want to do that. I did it (voluntary redundancy) and I now have lots of time.... but no money
Yeah, I know. That's the problem.