Loss of NEF Files:

Can anyone advise me how to resolve my problem. I have a Western Digital 500GB

external hard drive, and yesterday when I attempted to open it I received the

following message:- "The disk in Drive K is not formatted". Do you want to

format it now?

 

Given that I keep all my NEF Files on this drive I certainly do not want to

format it, but am unsure how to retrieve the drive to access its content.

 

Luckily as soon as I download NEF files from my camera I also burn a DVD so

have a backup of the files, but am completely at a loss as to why my drive is

no longer accessible, any help or advice would be gratefully received.

Since you have the DVD back-up, I don't see a major issue. Of course its a pain in the --- to have to download all of those files again.

 

A prime example of how proper back-ups save the day.

Probably you need to look into one of the many disk recovery programs that are out there. But, before you try anything else, I suggest trying your drive on another computer to rule out the possibility that the computer is the problem and not the drive. I had some really strange problems recently along these lines.

What I am going to say isn't going to help your immediate problem, but hard drives are, sadly, similar to our human bodies: it is not whether it'll fail, it is when it'll fail. But in the mean time, you can get some good mileages from it while it is working.

 

That is why my images are backed up onto 3, 4 different hard drives and the duplicates are stored at different locations. Whether my images have the quality to deserve getting backed up 3, 4 times is a different issue.

 

There are all sorts of data recovery programs and services to recover data from hard drives. Some of the services are, unfortunately, very expensive.

Is your hard drive connected to a Mac or a PC?

As Shun said, disks fail from time to time. Since you have a backup, (1) take it as a warning and not as a disaster. (2) Make a copy of your backup DVDs and (3) Try some of the available diagnostic tests.

 

Western Digital drives usually come with a program called "Data Lifeguard" which you probably installed when you first used that disk drive. It can run some diagnostic tests and do repairs on your disk. The program varies for different disk models. See if something can bring the disk back, extract the data or format it.

 

If you didn't install the "Data Lifeguard" tools, you may have them on a CD from Western Digital. If you don't, check their web site, you may be able to download.

Mike -

Welcome to the planned obselesence club of the modern age. Try another usb or firewire cable, depending on which drive this is. It might be bad. Or, try another PC, even perhaps with a different operating system. It might, just might, be able to be read that way ... at least to copy out the contents, if need be. Otherwise some disk utility program might be able to ressurect without overwriting. You have DVDs, so you are probably breathing easy. Many folks threw negatives into a shoebox similar to how we treat digital files at times, I know I do :-( . Shun's redundancy is the single BEST thing to do. I manage my company's network, and what is true for biz records and photos too. Best of luck. Jim M.

In my experience, messages saying a drive is not formatted or accessible mean that the drive is dead or dying. You can format it and re-load everything but it will probably happen again down the road.

 

I'm like you - everything goes to CDs and/or DVDs right away. The external drive has become somewhat of an expendable convenience.

Put the hard drive in a freezer bag. Then put the hard drive in a freezer overnight. Next day

remove hard drive from freezer and immediately try to extract data. Have back location

ready because this is usually a one time shot.

hard drives are only rated to last 3 years flash drives are rated to 12 years. I think nikon

offers 20GB of storage for 30.00 per year.

Good luck.

Get a copy of spinrite from grc.com and run it on the drive. There are probably a few errors in vital parts of the drive, but most of the data will likely be recoverable.

 

Alan

I've just started scanning all my Slides and decided from the very beginning that I would have in place a secure backup system - so I use Carbonite and have selected the directory where I store the slides as one of the backup sites.

 

Take this as a warning and look to how you will keep your files secure if there was an accident with the house itself e.g. if your house was flooded.

Thanks all for the very interesting views and advice, I intend to try all the least expensive options first, but I have certainly learned a valuable lesson today and that is the backing up of images on to DVD or any other media each time you download images from a card is essential, in my case it has saved my enormous archive of NEF files, though in all fairness many of them have been converted to Jpegs and are stored on other drives, the failed drive by the way is a Western Digital 500GB Book and is just eighteen months old, and has certainly not been worked to death as all I have used it for is storage of NEF's and nothing more. I would be interested to know if anyone has any comments or experience with the Western Digital Passport drives that seem to be gaining in popularity with laptop users, the ones that are connected via USB only, I would imagine them to be a drain on battery power and also very slow, but I would be more interested to know how reliable they are as an option for file sorage and portability.

Stuff happens. I backup my photos on two seperate hard drives and eventually on DVD.

 

I have found files can often be retrieved from a FUBAR hard drive by booking your PC with A Knoppix Linux cd. The entire OS operates off the cd so it doesn't bother your regular os. bUT Knoppix can read Windows files even when the file directory is corrupt. I've rescued a lot of windows files off corrupt drives using Knoppix.

Mike, what kind of computer & OS are you running?

 

assuming u are using Windows XP Pro, here is what i would do, if i were in your shoes...

 

1. Shutdown & power off everything. Recheck & reseat all the cable connections. Make sure they are in good & tight. Then power back up, log back in, and try again. See if you get the same msg.

 

2. Sometimes cables do go bad and that can cause spurious results. Try using a different USB cable that you know is good.

 

3. See if you can access the file system thru MyComputer drive list. See if its the Windows OS that is giving u that error msg, or if its a 3rd party software like what came with the WD drive. Or maybe its some camera related software from your camera vendor.

 

4. Check the System and Application logs under the Control Panel => Admin Tools => Event Viewer to see if the system has logged any detailed error msgs related to that WD device and interface. Those msgs might tell you if the WD is bad.

 

5. If you can see the WD drive under the MyComputer drives list, AND if you can see folders and files underneath, try running the Windows File System Checker on it. Right-click on the drive letter, and select Properties, then Tools, then the button under Error Checking.

Check both sub-functions to find and fix any problems. Then run the check process, and see what happens. If Windows can see the file system on that WD drive, the checker will do a complete check and tell you if there are any problems.

 

6. There is a possibiligty that you have picked up a virus thats causing this. They can and do cause strange behavior amoung system components. So i suggest you do a complete virus scan, AFTER you have updated your anti-virus software to make sure its got all the LATEST definition files.

 

7. Temporarily disconnect any other USB devices, so that ONLY that WD drive is connected to the USB interface.

 

8. Dont use a USB mini-hub. Just plug the WD drive direct into the computer USB port using a known good cable.

 

9. If your computer has multiple USB ports, try the WD on each one. There is the possibility that one of your USB ports has gone bad.

 

 

I do have one of those WD pocket drives, 160GB in size. Mine has been running fine for a long time. But when first installed it, I blew away everything that was pre-loaded on it, since I didnt want their software, i just wanted the hard drive. I then did my own format, to format the whole 160GB drive space into a single NTFS volume and file system. It took an hour or two to format the whole NTFS voume, but then the disk could be attached or removed just fine. No problems, and no special procedures. It automatically maps when i boot my laptop. And then i can create my own set of folders and sunbfolders. To be honest, i dont really like or trust those 3rd party software apps that come packaged with external hard drives.

If nothing above works, Amazon sells a Sabrant USB-IDE converter adapter cable for $20 that might be worth a try.

Mike -

 

I would suggest contacting Western Digital and see if they can advise or do anything for you. If it is extremely critical to get the images back there is probably a data recovery shop near you that can do this for you. Be warned though they do charge an arm and a leg for the service, but if they can save your images, it's worth every penny.

 

Dave

I know Paul mentioned Carbonite as a backup source, but does anyone have another company they recommend as well? <p>Paul: Is it ok to backup vast amounts of images to Carbonite? We operate a wedding/portrait business, and I need an off site location to backup our images.