Digital Catastrophe

[louisianadiver]

Yesterday, I pushed the "on" button of the computer I've been using for the past 4 years and nothing good happened. After fumbling around with a variety of recover discs and strategies, I brought the machine to someone who actually seems to understand the things. The diagnosis: failed hard drive. The cause: these things just happen. So, about 30 gigs of images have vanished into cyber oblivion. I hope to recover the files, and many of them are backed up on external hard drives or CDs. In any event, I am greatly comforted by the knowledge that every original image is safely stored in a slide sheet and filed in a binder. It would certainly take some time and money to re-scan the lost images, but that's far better than losing 30 years' worth of photos. Here's the bottom line: If you're shooting digital your storage system WILL eventually fail. Your backup storage system will likewise eventually fail. Be ready, be diligent, and re-backup your files on a regular basis. As for me, I'm sticking with film. -Clay

 

[Gilligan]

Have you checked with a computer guru to see if it possible to recover the data from the hard drive. In many instances that is possible for a fee for "data recovery".

 

[louisianadiver]

Have you checked with a computer guru to see if it possible to recover the data from the hard drive. In many instances that is possible for a fee for "data recovery".

A guru is burning incense and casting chicken bones over the machine at this very moment. We'll see. -Clay

 

[BIGSAGE136]

http://www.geeksquad.com/main.asp

THESE GUYS MEAN BUSINESS!

Best of luck!

 

[justleesa]

OH MAN!!!! That s***s big time :bawling:! Good to hear you're backed up

 

[Scubatooth]

be careful of those recovery services because those can get expensive in a hurry $1,000 - $10,000 per GB of data recovered and that may be corrupt or unusable. depends mainly on the service and how good they are.

clay thanks for the reminder as this time of year people are going to be taking lots and lots of pictures over the holidays and if not careful you will lose them permanently, as i have field several calls like this from people i know the restraunt i work for (example below). the best method for the average user is to make 2 additional copies of all files beyond whats on the hard drive (CD/DVD or other drives) and regularly check the intergrity of those backups, and if there CD\DVD's make new copies every year to 18 months as most CDs arent going to last that long (even the archieve ones wont last that long maybe ~ 3 years or so). I dont know where they get these longevity numbers that they post because it must be in a vacuem in a vault to make them last that long. If anybody would like advice on how to set up a storage plan so not to lose data PM me and i will help you out.



(as i have had to recover a servers data mid shift in a restraunt so everything could get running again you want to talk about stress ful i was real time recovering and ghosting a failing drive(click of death) so the restraunt could operate, and while i was doing this the restraunt was running on my laptop (P3 1GHZ with 256mb ram), it was stressfull but i got that server back up and running on a hot swap drive till i could get the server down and rebuild everything. needless to say they were happy as i was working that night because the normal company said "ok we can have a tech out in about 2 hours (it was 7pm at night on friday)" and the responce was "um ok were gonna look for another company then, <click>. needless to say following that night the company took my advice to have a back up server waiting incase something goes wrong, but then the IT guy in the company found out and put a stop to that as he said it wasnt needed even though a employee of the restraunt had to save his butt because of the hardware he put in. man it sucks when a person half this guys age knows better then him. even worse is that this server is running on windows 95a and the IT guy says theres nothing wrong with it even though it crash 5+ times a week


well FWIW

Tooth

 

[alcina]

This is a timely reminder for all of us - film and digital!

On the flip side of data storage - digital is cheap, easy to store and easy to search; but it can be unstable. Negatives and slides take up an enormous amount of space, take ages to catalogue and tag properly and are easily scratched or damaged. There are pros and cons for both type of media and I'd hate to have someone read one thread and avoid like the plague either of them - they are both great and both provide excellent results for a wide range of people; it's all personal preference.

I've just gone through two boxes of negatives and slides from my film shooting days and virtually none of them will get dealt with properly because it's just easier to go back and take new photos! I've got the archival storage sleeves etc and highly recommend that anyone using film/slides uses them and puts a good storage system in place so the slides/negatives stay dust free and in good shape for ages - your grandchildren will thank you! Also make notes on them!! I've recently scanned some family slides from the 40s and it took ages to clean them properly - both for dust and for scratches once scanned! And trying to figure out dates etc is a pain in the :11:

For digital users, back up regularly, use good media and check on your back-ups! Think of it as checking for dust, water damage or critters in your archives

Off to back up November's images now!

 

[fpoole]

Yeah, I lost a hard drive, 130gig of photos, and spent close to $500 and 1.5 month for someone to try to recover them. I tried several Recovery web sites, but, as stated above, they can get expensive and the files might still be corrupted..

So now, after great expense, I have 500gig RAID 10, with additional 2 external 250 gig drives.. RAID 10 works great (SATA) ie, it's mirrored, hot swappable and fast.

heheh... have I started backing them up on the externals yet??? Noooooo.... LOL, and so it goes, just one lazy photog, taking another risk..

What's that song?? "Backing (breaking) up is hard to doooooo..........yeah, yeah, yeah...."

Am also in the process of using RW-dvds as backup. One for each site/location and then add as I go along..
Hope that helps...

 

[Marriard]

When I return from a trip I copy all the images from my laptop to my image processing desktop. I leave all the images on the laptop until at least until I have processed all the images (just in case I accidently delete a raw file on the desktop PC or something happens to the desktop PC before I can process the images). I also leave the images on the Desktop PC as long as I can (i.e. until I run out of space)

After processing I burn 2 CD's of each set of files by date - sometimes multiple CD's per day and then store them separately (right now they are stored in two different places in my house - one set is in a fireproof safe along with all my old slides and negatives). The 2 CD's I use are also taken from separate stacks of CDR's just in case I buy a bad 'batch' of CDR's.

This has worked so far. Eventually I am going to have a third set produced at some time in the next 12-24 months just to ensure that the CD's are ok.

M

 

[caveseeker7]

It would certainly take some time and money to re-scan the lost images, but that's far better than losing 30 years' worth of photos. Here's the bottom line: If you're shooting digital your storage system WILL eventually fail. Your backup storage system will likewise eventually fail. Be ready, be diligent, and re-backup your files on a regular basis. As for me, I'm sticking with film.

Clay, I fully support you reminder to back up data files including images. But film isn't all that it's cracked up to be ... .

About 6 month after graduation from college (photography) the water pipe in the wall of my storage locker broke. On a weekend. By the time I got back late Sunday night about 90% of my images and portfolios were destroyed. Backup: none.

That's one of the main reasons I like digital, multiple backups (and locations) are a cinch.