Backup drive failed: Wedding images & portrait images lost

<p>Hard drives will fail no matter what. I always backup on 2 hard drives and a DVD. Why? I too lost a wedding one year and I felt so bad that I vowed never again will I lose the files. Although the bride had her DVD (thank God). Now I use 4 roswill (R2) that house 2 each SATA hard drives. I have roughly 8 TB that I manage and it's a lot of work. What I have found over the years is LONG transfers and heat is what kills a hard drive. Like when you have to copy over a TB. v/r Buffdr</p>

<p>Natalie, I've sent you the software that can restore all the data back from your hard drive.</p>

<p>I didnt have a proper backup. I'm going to try to put this in the freezer and then contact a professional data recovery company. <br>

This week I'm going to implement a primary and backup storage system. I started looking into raid options. What do you recommend? I'm flexible on price since this lesson has been a scary one.<br>

Natalie</p>

<p>RAID only protects against drive failures, but not accidents, mistakes, etc. In other words in RAID if you delete something and don't notice for a while, you are out of luck. You are still operating on one logical copy. If you get some weird virus the deletes everything, even though its across multiple drives, it deletes it because the computer told it to do so.<br>

There is a good chance a recovery service can get to the data. There are actually computer forensic tools out there such as dd_rescue and foremost that can recover picture files without having a valid partition table, but you need someone who knows what they are doing to run these on the drive - they are command line linux based. If you are talking an entire year of photos, then the fee may not be as bad as you think. But don't throw the drive away out of frustration. Even if you don't want to do it this week or month, put it off to the side in a safe place. The majority of the data on the platters is probably still there. Think record player with a big scratch in it. You can't play the entire song without it skipping, but you can play 98% of the song if you don't mind listening to it that way.</p>

 

<p>What Stephen said! A RAID is NOT a back up solution. There are several variations of RAID implementation but a RAID 0 is for speed. Say two 1TB drives that the computer now sees as one 2TB drive. And Raid 1, the mirror RAID, in which one drive is an exact copy of the other. Again, NOT a back up solution. What happens if a power surge fries everything? What happens if you accidentally erase something (or maybe someone else does!)? What if, what if what if..... <em>That</em> is what you need to protect against. This means keeping a copy of the data somewhere else, not attached to the computer (unless performing the back up!). It isn't a matter of <em>if</em> a hard drive will fail, it is a matter of when.</p>

<p>On another note, don't worry about RAIDs in general. A true hardware RAID (which is really where the benefits start), are fairly expensive and really don't offer much in the way of benefits. There are MUCH better ways to speed up your workflow: more RAM, a 2nd monitor, and so on; rather than dropping money on a RAID system.</p>

<p>Howdy!</p>

<p><strong>I also highly recommend Drivesavers.</strong> They are not that expensive compared to other companies, and they do an awesome job. I lost everything several years ago on a striped drive (silly me) and they got it back within a week. They take the drive apart in a cleanroom if necessary, and read the individual platters on a different mechanism.</p>

<p>I wouldn't use the freezer. That could damage things. Electrical devices are designed around maximum and minimum temperatures.</p>

<p>Later,</p>

<p>Paulsky</p>

<p>I used to offer data recovery services (software based tools), but these days consumer hardware tends to fail hard and the "stress" that data recovery tools put on the drive (seek and read every sector, with retries and/or hard resets after errors) accelerate the failure. In the last three years, every drive subjected to my recovery tools has failed completely before the tools completed their recovery.<br>

If the photos on your drive are worth $1,000 or more to you, don't fool around with tools designed to overcome corrupted file systems when you likely have a hardware failure. Send the drive to a data recovery service (I have used OnTrak) that has a clean room and can deal effectively with hardware failures.<br>

BTW, after loosing external drives in a heartbeat, I feel comfortable about my backups only when a copy exists on at least three drives.</p>

<p>I agree that RAID is not a backup of your data. I view it as a 'stable' primary source, self healing when one of the drive mechanisms fail, but if the housing fails, everything is gone unless you can easily replicate the housing.<br>

Nothing better than multiple copies across independent mechanisms and even that is not perfect. Wonder if anyone has come up with a digital to film negative service? I am sure they have, but have not looked for it.</p>

<p >The freezer trick is for really OLD hard disks where the lubrication is shot. When the parts are cold they shrink and allow the disk to spin. WD USB drives are not that old … I would take the drive out and try to connect it to a regular computer as a secondary drive. If you don't know how to do this, then a good computer tech should be able to help.</p>

<p >If that fails then you need to go the data recovery route.</p>

<p >Rafi</p>

<p>I had a power outage in my town kill a drive - I was copying data onto it at the point the power went out and from that point on it never worked again...at least never again in Windows.<br /><br />I got a Linux installation that ran from CD or DVD (you can Google one easy enough - download, burn to CD and it'll run off the CD so you don't need to install anything on your PC).<br>

Linux found the drive fine and I was able to copy all the data off it. It never worked again on Windows - I'm not techie enough to understand why but no PC can find it when it's plugged in to the USB port - but nothing was lost at least! :-)</p>

<p>I'm no expert at all - but I've heard similar stories to the above. Recovering data from a drive when the discs are damaged is a case of diminishing returns. The best opportunity is the first attempt.</p>

<p>I would agree with many of those above - if the data is of value - get the recovery done by a specialist from the outset.</p>

<p>Good luck,<br>

Martin</p>

<p>The first time I lost a drive I was a consultant, so I took it to a big place and they got it all back for $2000.<br>

The next time I lost a drive I was a freelance photographer, so I took it to a Vietnamese guy in a strip mall and he got it all back for $50.</p>

<p>What about online backup/storage sites like Mozy? It automatically backs up your files whenever you designate it to, and the program just runs in the background. </p>

<p>Another vote for drivesavers. Don't do anything to your drive yourself (you might make it worse) and call them.</p>

<p>I have a RAID array on my office computer, and it has not saved me in a couple instances when I've accidentally deleted something-since it's a mirrored array, that file was deleted everywhere. What I have on my home machine is 2 1TB drives internal, with an external 1TB drive that I update once a week, and store at my office. I also give my clients their photos on a DVD, and upload everything to SmugMug, which backs up their data in 3 different places, so that makes at least 6 copies of each couple's wedding in case of disaster.</p>

<p>Sorry for your loss Natalie, the fragile nature of computers really only hits home once something like this fails.<br>

<br /> In addition to being a photog I am also an IT guy.<br>

<br /> My first suggestion is to not buy external HDs for storage unless they are a secondary or tertiary backup solution. Typically they have bottom of the line components inside to save costs.<br>

<br /> A RAID solution sounds like just the solution for your case. A RAID 6 array is the safest and could cover two points of drive failure (two disks could fail and you still have everything) and using windows Shadow Clone (free part of windows) windows automatically backs up all your files and keeps versions of the files available for roll-back at anytime. So if you accidentally saved some changes to the files that you didn't like or you accidentally deleted the file, you can simply open the folder and revert the files to their original state. The fancy thing is that this has been part of windows for some time just most people dont know about it. Complement this with a UPS battery backup and you have a very robust storage solution that can survive just about anything short of fire or other physical damage.<br /> Now for the bad news, a professional storage solution like this will run you $1500-$4000 out of the box, but a competent computer technician should be able to make a custom build for you in the range of $700-$1200.<br>

<br /> Here are a few good consumer level out of the box solutions that I have built for customers (its just installing drives essentially)<br>

<br /> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108028<br>

<br /> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108032<br>

<br /> Both are very fast for their price range.<br>

<br /> Personally for my photography and other home files I am using a 4U rackmount server with 10TB of RAID 5 storage and a pro UPS battery backup (tolerates losing 1 disk).<br>

<br /> The beauty of a box like this is that I have Microsoft iSCSI targets setup so my drives appear to my operating system on my main computer as drives that are directly installed, this is very handy for keeping all your files in one safe redundant location yet avoiding noise or clutter in my work area. (I also installed a UV blacklight and some multicolored UV reactive cables inside of it just for awesomeness!)<br /> <img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v519/staticlag/Server-1.jpg" alt="" /><br>

But I digress.<br>

<br /> Natalie if you or anyone else would like help on choosing storage solutions please shoot me an email me. I can give you good advice on products I have worked with and would offer to build you or anyone else a custom solution like mine for a small fee.<br>

<br /> The beauty of a custom solution is that it is far more expandable than out of the box solutions (mine can hold 15 drives) at a far cheaper price.</p>

<p><strong>Moderator Note:</strong> Daniel--e-mail addresses in post are against forum guidelines. People can e-mail you by clicking on your name and using the e-mail facility.</p>

<p>Natalie, sorry for your loss. </p>

<p>When it comes to harddrives, it is a matter if WHEN and not IF they will fail. One must always assume a harddrive will eventually fail, and when you start thinking this way, you will be compelled to back up your images to a 2nd and 3rd set of harddrives.</p>

<p>Harddrives are dirt cheap; often less then a dime a gigabyte.</p>

<p>Stear away from optical (CD/DVD)....they are not reliable in the long run....the best way to go is two mirrored harddrives, and a 3rd off site (kept in a different geographical area). </p>

<p>Every 3-5 years transfer your data to a new set of drives....they're dirt cheap and in this way, you keep moving your files to (1) cheaper media, (2) higher capacity media), and (3) more reliable media...all this conspires to insure that a failure will be 100% recoverable, and this strategy provides a redundancy factor of 3.</p>

<p>As to your immediate issue, the data is more then likely there and recoverable...I would be very surprised if it wasn't. But recovery can cost a lot of $$!</p>