Nearly lost all our photos due to Lightning Damage !

[jhl]

<p>I have been a proud Member of photo.net since 3rd April 2007 and have never thought the day would come where I would reach a stage in my newfound happy capture days to be "Not so happy"<br>

Let me explain myself: Three weeks after our return from Turkey my husband and myself went to the Kruger National Park for a 5 day trip. Whilst there we received a call from our housekeeper informing us of very bad weather back at home so much so that it kept on triping all the power. Ok, it started the worry in me since we are both photographers and you can all guess where I am heading.<br>

<strong>"Back-Up's" When last did anyone do a back-up on their computor before they went on a weekend away or a trip abroad to make sure they do not loose all their photos taken over the years.?</strong><br>

Ok, I did my own back-up of all my photos in the different files but...............my "International Trips" file was not done due to the fact that it was so big I thought of doing it later and later never came. We returned from our Kruger Experience to find that our home had a "Direct Hit" by Lightning and to put the cherry on the cake our PC had a strong spike and burnt it. Ok, lots of tears and worry from my side so much so that I did not even want to work on photos taken in the park till now.Our local supplier and friend who deals in computors tried his best to see if our data could be retrieved only to let us know he cannot help. He then tried a Company in Johannesburg to see if they could help.<br>

Needless, to say how many nights had passed with me not sleeping at all or sleeping just a little bit.<br>

Ok, now after 7 weeks of worry & tears & frustration we finally , thanks to the company in johannesburg have a full back-up of all our photos they had retrieved since the 1980's.<br>

I know it sounds crazy but photos kept on computors is fantastic but, if you do not I repeat Do Not Do Back-Up's you can be in serious trouble if the strike by Lightning or electrical was more fierce.<br>

That's my story<br>

Thank you<br>

Warmest Regards<br>

Johanna Labuschagne</p>

<p> </p>

[leicaglow]

<p>Sorry for your woes Johanna. As for when did anyone do a backup before they went away? I do a sync from my main computer, automatically to an identical 1.5Tb RAID drive, and 2 - 1Tb removables, and I swap one out every other day and take it with me, so I'm not likely to lose more than one day's worth of images in the event of a fire or theft. As for a drive getting fried, I guess they would all have to get fried, but then I have a pretty potent power conditioner and battery backup on my main computer.</p>

[mrstubbs]

<p>I was siting at my desk when the power source on one of my systems melted down and filled the shop with acrid black smoke.<br /> Every day now..off with the power and unplug before leaving the shop.</p><div></div>

[waltflanagan]

<p>I do a backup every Saturday and when it is finished I always disconect both the power and data cables to protect against lightning strikes. I have a second backup 30 miles away at my Dad's house that gets swapped every weekend. This is the bare minimum I suggest for backups. Anything less would be crazy in my mind.</p>

[pcnilssen]

<p>I try to make backups as soon as I am back from a shoot, and have loaded the images in Lightroom.</p>

<p>Lately, I have even brought the backup-HD with me on my holiday travels!</p>

[jeff_bubis]

<p>If you use a Mac, Time Machine will automatically back up your data. I do this, as well as keep off site backups. I'm glad you were able to get you data back. It should be a cautionary tale for all.</p>

[will_daniel1]

<p>I back up every day to a removable hard drive, and once a week swap the drive with one I keep off site, and repeat the process. This is important to me.<br>

<strong><em>Furthermore</em></strong>, when I travel, I take one of the removable drives with me for use with my laptop. All of my stuff is never more than a short distance away from me, and I'm not likely to ever lose any of it.</p>

<p>Will</p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>There is no substitute for backing up images on durable media (e.g., CDs and DVDs). They can't be erased by intent nor accident, including voltage spikes. You can guard against floods and fires by keeping duplicate copies in another location.</p>

[will_daniel1]

<p>Yeah, I do that too. Triple redundancy.</p>

[howard_m]

<p>the only issue I have w/ Edward's statement is that recordable media such as CD/DVD is semi-notorious for being unreadable after a number of years, regardless of what number the manufacturer's throw around. </p>

<p>I'm saying that it shouldn't be considered an archival storage medium. Short/med. term backups, sure.</p>

[ilkka_nissila]

<p>I have never had a problem reading a DVD, CD, or a blu-ray disc that I burned myself, I don't know where your experience comes from. Lost many hard drives over the years though, including one instance where I lost both drives (primary and backup) within a short time.</p>

<p>I make multiple backups and try never to rely on a single copy of anything of value. Optical discs I think are much more stable than hard drives though I suppose if you step on them routinely, scratch them etc. they'll eventually develop problems.</p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p><em>the only issue I have w/ Edward's statement is that recordable media such as CD/DVD is semi-notorious for being unreadable after a number of years</em></p>

<p>While often repeated by uncritical contributers, there is no documented evidence that CDs and DVDs fade in the time frame they have actually existed, and considerable evidence that they will last a hundred years or more with proper storage. In my experience, which includes writing 10s of thousands of discs over the last 14 years, bad discs were physically damaged, defective from the onset or written poorly.</p>

<p>On the other hand, I lose at least two hard drives a year (out of three dozen or so).</p>

[will_daniel1]

<p>Edward, Ilkka -- the debate rages on over how long optical storage media will last. The discs I burn are also stable. Many of mine are more than 10 years old. But I would never rely on them as my primary means of storage.</p>

<p>Edward, if you lose (at least) two hard drives a year (meaning you have lost more than two in some years), you are doing something very, very wrong. Those numbers just are not typical. I am very comfortable using three hard drives for primary, secondary and terciary storage. I have had hard drives fail, like many of us here, but I've never had three fail at once. With my emphasis on keeping one off site, I doubt I'll ever be in that situation. </p>

<p>Will</p>

[chelsea]

<p>I try to learn from other people's mistakes, and I had 3 friends in the early years of my computer use who had harddrives crash and burn and lost everything on them. Baby pictures, weddings, family events, poof! Before I got my home computer I had worked in an office where the order of the day was to make a backup tape, there were a couple of times we were glad to have it. So...it's been my habit from the start to backup, first to floppy disks and then with the newer computers on to cds. All word files, photos, etc. were put onto some sort of media. I was glad to have it a couple of times when harddrives failed, and I only lost a few items that were of no significant importance.</p>

<p>I need to burn off some photos from the laptop again, got a few more folders in there. When I download and edit photos from a day's shoot, I'll copy the ones I like best to a "favourites" folder, then burn that off separately. I've got a few hundred cds and dvds full of pictures, and rarely pop them back in to browse through unless there's something specific I want to see. What I need to do is put a pile of my favourites on a cd and run down to the photo print shop, get the prints into some albums so that I can actually look at them now and then.</p>

<p>As for the lightning issue: we were lectured up one side and down the other by the computer techs in that office about what power surges can do to a computer, and we had surge protectors out the yingyang. (This was Tampa, FL, "lightning capitol of the world".) I get the best surge protectors available for my equipment, and even if I'm away for just a full day during storm season I'll unplug both the power cord and the phone line. It doesn't hurt to have surge protectors on t.v.s and other appliances, I know of two people who have had direct lightning strikes to their homes and had several appliances blown up. One of them was lucky he was home, the strike caused a small fire.</p>

[richard__]

<p>Power surge protectors, and even UPS systems won't protect from a direct lightning stike.</p>

<p>I was at the office a few years ago when it was struck by lightning, many of the dead computers were off but still of course wired to the network. I don't think any of those hard drives were fried, but some of the ones running were.</p>

<p>The electrical charge that was induced by the lightning over the network cabling is what killed the off systems.</p>

<p>I always have multiple removable backups done and completely removed from any running system. Since as you found out, you just never know when you are going to need them to work.</p>

[Jerry_]

<p>Not knowing what computer stores carry in South Africa, but a suggestion: find several 500 Mb or a couple of 1 Tb 'portable' hard drives to back up your image files. Using a USB cable will be a little slow, but you can store the hard drive away from a power line (and the change for another lightning strike) for safe keeping.</p>

<p> </p>

[johnathan1]

<p>I use a 1Tb external as well as a full battery backup and spike protection. I got lucky and got it second hand from a corporation that was building bigger servers and needed more protection</p>

[kelly_flanigan1]

<p>Here I have had gold 5 buck name brand disks fail; that were written 10 years + ago. The entire sward of disks did not fail; justt some today cannot be read are marginal.<br /> <br /> One buys the best 650 buck recorder and best disks and writes them as a slow speed; keeps them in jewel cases in a controlled area and some have died; the data is gone.One selects media with low error rates; does varifies.<br /> <br /> One can state that tires; rubbers/safetys; CDs; DVDs; disc drives; welds; banks, countries, businesses, bridges, traffic lamps, marriages; cameras at weddings; rolls of film never fail if one wants to.<br /> <br /> Here I have where a traffic lamp had greens going from each 90 degree road.<br /> <br /> I have seen where in Indiana there was nothing left due to a tornado but a slab house with one toilet left.<br /> I have seen where in Katrina there are only slabs;and the ground 35 Kw transformer on a pad went several blocks away.<br /> I have seen a bank of servers in Florida ALL be ruined by a lightning strike.<br /> I have seen where in Katrina folks lost stuff where there was looting; or where a bank vault got wet.<br /> I have had my own CD's fail that were written on high buck gold disks.<br /> I have also had store bought DVD movies that went under salt water that still play too.<br /> <br /> With a power surge about 3 weeks ago; we lost 3 drives, 2 old CRT monitors, one network switch. I slot about 1 man week in my time with rebuilding some scan stations; reloading software, debugging; stripping off data from HDA's that would not boot and were crashing. The CD's that failed of mine have a reflectance issue; one tries to read them on my zoo of several dozen computers;and finds one that can read some; thus one recovers some. A real old reader that runs slow and has a clean lens and is tied to a fairly modern computer is used the most. With images that were saved as TIFFs and JPEGs too; the Jpeg is often readable; but the tiff is not; or is line wrapped. In Edwards world CD's and DVD's do not fail; maybe tires too?</p>

<p>The disc makers warranty is a new disc; not the labor to retrive the data if flakey; or the data replacement. Even in film I have seen failures; a wedding in Indiana we had a brick of 620 that had poor/no/weak crimps/welds on the spools. One would load a roll; shoot; then dring reloading; or while in a pocket or bag the spool end would come off. After this we carried know good spools as a spares for takeup usage. A buddys raid system had its ATX power supply fail; the 12 volt fired all three HDA's; all data was lost. Data can be lost in many ways. If your bag is CD's or DVD's; verify the library is readabel every few years. If one section/group is rotting; retrive it and move it forward to another media.<br /> <br /> When I worked in optical recording in the late 1970's and early 1980's; optical media for data was extremely experimental; one batch would last days; another weeks; another months. One placed a new disc in the mule unit to show corporate; to insure one could read and write during the show. Modern CD's and DVD's are very reliable; but that just means more folks will get sloppy and assume its always readable. I wonder how many of the non-name ammo pack CD's of today stored in shoeboxes loose; with dust will be readable in decades. If the disc is around smokers; the disc gets a layer of tar.<br /> <br /> If one takes a CD and places at in a VISTA box and one drags and drops to burn; the resultant CD is readable on VISTA; but not all XP; and no win2000, no 98se etc. With our XP 64 bit box; ite reads some; others it does not; and with others it goes into a tissy fit and takes foreever to read any data. Our Imac 20" unit cannot read the VISTA discs either; nor any of my other several dozen non vista boxes. Your beloved US government is now issuing CD's to bidders written with theses ill CD's; thus only a subset of contractors can read them; there there are less bids. In one local bid the entire thing was postponed because of no bidders at all.<br /> <br /> Thus the makers of windows 8 could bundle in burner software to make discs only work with win 7 and 8!:)</p>

<p> </p>

[sfcole]

<p>A note to those keeping important files within iPhoto and expecting Time Machine to back them up: it may not. My iMac's OS froze up last week, necessitating a reinstall. For whatever reason, all my other files were recoverable from Time Machine except the iPhoto library, which is nowhere to be seen.<br>

Luckily, my most important files continue to be film scans.....</p>

[matthew_newton]

<p>I am glad you managed to retrieve your images in the end. I certainly stick with a redundant seperate backup. Beyond the fact that I have negatives of all my images, my scans reside on my wife's laptop and every 1-2 months I make a backup to a portable USB hard drive (640gb). With my wife's digital pictures (from a P&S), since they are family photos they reside on her laptop and then when the memory card in her camera is reaching full capacity everything if backed up to the portable hard drive (which is when I backup my scanned pictures).<br>

Whenever we leave the house for a long period of time, or any bad storms the house computers are unplugged from the wall (her laptop is unplugged everytime we go to bed, let alone a bad storm).<br>

The day I switch to a dSLR I'll figure out a really serious backup, probably Network Attached Storage (NAS) with a pair of redundant 1tb drives on top of whatever my desktop is using and I'll probably backup a select set of my most important files to a USB harddrive and keep that else where (safe deposit box maybe or at least fire rated safe) and update it every 6 months or a year or so.</p>

[debra_freeman]

<p>I use an online site Carbonite.com no-limit $49.00 a year, if my home gets hit by an airplane or tornado I'm covered. I did lose some pics from my home hard drives but recovered them from the Carbonite site, wedding pics! I heard about them on the Sean Hannity radio program. Just FYI</p>