Backup drive failed: Wedding images & portrait images lost

[natalie_l]

<p>Hi everyone,<br>

My backup failed and I'm not sure what to do. Everything from 2009 was on it. I had started burning CDs of it as a 2nd backup but didn't get through everything. I'm a nervous wreck right now. Has anyone had an success recovering images with a WD external drive?<br>

Thanks,<br />Natalie</p>

[carbon_dragon]

<p>Did your primary storage fail too? A backup isn't a backup if it is the only place where something is stored?</p>

<p>Assuming you ONLY have your images on your backup drive, have you tried a program called SpinRite from grc.com? I've never had to do such a recovery, but they tell stories about being able to make a disk bootable again if it doesn't have an actual hardware fault. if you do get it booted again, copy all your data off to at least two locations.</p>

<p>If that doesn't work, there are companies who try to recover data from disks. It typically costs in the thousands of dollars. They take the disk to a clean room and carefully dissassemble it. They then replace the parts of your drive with donor drives in order to recover the data.</p>

<p>The lesson is to back up in multiple places. And in fact for purposes of a fire or natural disaster, one of your backups should be offsite. I'm not a professional, but I have a iMac with a 1TB hard drive with a Time machine backup (on a 2TB external drive) and a super duper backup mirror to another 1TB external drive. Then I take a portable passport USB drive and use super duper to back up to that and then I take the drive to work. Every month I take it home and do the back up so at least I have a month old backup no matter what happens.</p>

<p>CDs/DVDs are good too, but just one is not sufficient backup because they go bad sometimes (and they're way too small) which is why I use the removable drive. Remember -- Redundancy.</p>

<p>I wish you luck.</p>

[fuccisphotos]

<p>Also, in the future, get a site like zenfolio and spend the $100 a year for a professional account. Then you can download the images any time you like. Totally worth it and there's not limit to how much you put on the site. Good luck! It's so painful when something like that happens!</p>

[acedigital]

<p>Perhaps this article can be of some help. Don't panic (yet)! I thought an external USB drive had failed also.<br>

If its external, try unplugging it and letting it cool down overnight and see if you can get it working again. Check your USB connection also (they can be fishy) or yet another USB port on the computer or another computer. Also check the power supply or MAYBE you just turned off the power strip/surge protector (you DO use one right lol?) OR, as the article says get an external USB drive case so you can try and connect the drive (if it was internal) to another computer.<br>

Also check with your local PC retailer (prob not a big box store they may charge too much), find a smaller shop who may have more expertise in this area instead of a 19 yr old kid.<br>

If the computer or drive is under warranty,also check with the manufacturer, but DONT listen to phone support to reformat and reload the computer! DUH.<br>

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/how_to/4294038.html<br>

Good luck also!</p>

 

[michaelging]

<p>Mine would not work, then my son who is in IT put it in the freezer for about 20 min. in a ziplock. It booted up then and worked long enough to see the images transfered to another HD. </p>

[rayt]

<p>Spinrite will not work well on a ATA or SATA drive. It was only good during the days of MFM/RLL drives which could be low level formatted and servo tracks were on each platter. Now servo tracks (alignment tracks) are on a single platter and everything has to line up very precisely. All Spinrite will do is tell the sector is bad and mark it in the relocation table. If something has happened to the drive to make it unreadable then Spinrite is not likely to be of any help. If the drive partition cannot be recognized by the OS, then Spinrite will NOT be able to access the partition on the drive.</p>

<p>You can try freezing the drive as this shrinks the bearings and may free up a non-spinning drive. Another method is to hold the drive horizontal and rapidly, as quick as you can, twist horizontally and stop suddenly. This sometimes breaks loose the platters if they are not spinning. Also I have had success in simply smacking the drive hard, on the flat side, on a table from about a three inch height.</p>

<p>You could also remove the drive from the current case (tough with some WD cases) and transfer the drive to another case. If the drive is SATA hook up to the power in your main case as this will provide more current than USB can provide and might just get a platter spinning. Transferring to a new case is a good option when the interface electronics in the case have failed.</p>

<p>Last resort is a data recover company. They are expensive and the success rate is not really as high as one would hope. If the platter is physically damaged, as in skid marks from the head, kiss all the data goodbye.</p>

<p>You also need to ask yourself what are the consequences of losing the images. If these are from past weddings are they really that important? If they are treasured family images then only you can judge. I would be sick if I lost all my images but I would not be down and out.</p>

<p>As for backup use one of the offsite backups such as Carbonite. It is only $5.00 a month, cheap when you consider the consequences of such a loss. Yeh, I know, not much help now. Merely stating for future consideration.</p>

[huperetes]

<p>As some have mentioned it "chilling" the drive may work, but make sure it is sealed before getting it into a wet area.</p>

<p>Have you tried to swap out the cable? Sometimes the pins are wearing out.</p>

<p>What model is it? You, or some IT savvy individual can try to take it apart. It is really just a SATA/IDE drive in an enclosure. It is possible that the USB-to-SATA interface that is failing, or simply a connector came loose.<br>

There are also software tools to "recover" some failing drives.</p>

[carbon_dragon]

<p> This is from Spinrite's site. I have run it on my internal laptop drive, but I wasn't trying to fix a problem. I just hear about it on the Security Now podcast. If the drive is external (such as a USB drive) he has talked about temporarily putting it into a machine that can be directly connected to the drive. I would advise you to contact the single person owner of grc.com and ask him about your specific situation. I don't frankly see what you have to lose by trying it before using an expensive data recovery service, assuming you decide to go that route.</p>

SpinRite provides complete interaction with IDE-interface PATA (parallel ATA) and <a href="http://www.grc.com/sr/kb/sata.htm">SATA (Serial ATA)</a> drives, and it can also be used with any other type of drive — SCSI, USB, 1394/Firewire — that can be made visible to DOS through the addition of controller BIOS or add-on DOS drivers. To obtain the best performance, IDE drives can be temporarily removed from their external USB or Firewire cases and attached directly to the PC motherboard.

[rnt]

<p>If it's an external drive it may be that the drive itself is fine but that the 'external' case power supply/electronics have died.</p>

<p>Don't do anything rash until you have a local, qualified geek look at it. There are a number of ways for an external drive to fail and not all of them are actual drive failures. If your drive -has- failed there are well qualified companies which will, for a fee, attempt recovery of files. This route will be determined by how much the drive contents is worth...</p>

<p>I don't vouch for any of them, but here is a list of data recovery services that someone thought were good enough to put in a list...:-)<br>

http://lists.econsultant.com/top-10-hard-drive-data-recovery-services.html</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

[carbon_dragon]

<p>Bob's right about that. If the drive is an external drive, and if it was a relatively recent purchase, you might be able to go get a new one and swap the actual drive into the newer enclosure (or some qualified geek can). If you really luck out and the problem is just some part in the enclosure you might be home free. Of course if you dodge this bullet, don't let your guard down.</p>

<p>Those data recovery services buy just about every drive there is to make sure they have every possible disk part. That's one of the reasons they 're so expensive.</p>

[mendel_leisk]

<p>A "backup" implies a secondary storage. Your case sounds like "all eggs in one basket". Hard drives fail, and I think the track record for external hard drives is worse than internal.</p>

<p>You need to look at what will happen, and plan for it. Having all your files on a single media is not good. Having 2 hard drives is better. Having 2 hard drives with one off-site is better still. Having an additional DVD copy or two is even better.</p>

<p>My approach is 2 internal drives (very convenient), plus 2 dvd's, one at home at one off-site.</p>

[rayt]

<p>David:</p>

<p>Read that paragraph from GRC carefully. The drive has to be visible through DOS and many USB drives will not be visible through DOS as they require a driver. Only drives connected through PATA or SATA on the motherboard are visible to Spinrite. Spinrite boots itself and does not have the advantage of the OS drivers to see the drive. Even when it can only partitions that are working are available. Lose the partition and there is no hope for Spinrite.</p>

<p>I know as I have the program and tried it on a failing laptop drive. The program did nothing but consume a lot of time. If the servo track is hosed on the drive there is no recovery from Spinrite as the servo track cannot be written. Even the low level format can no longer be done. All Spinrite does is read a sector multiple times to get good data, and if the sector is problematic, relocate the sector to the relocation area on the drive.</p>

<p>Given that the controllers on all PATA and SATA drives have intelligence in the drive to relocate bad sectors automatically, if Spinrite is reporting bad sectors the drive is hosed big time as the relocated sector is now failing. The relocation table is probably full and that is why the drive is reporting an error. Anytime an ATA drive reports an error it is time to get rid of the drive. No amount of fudging by Spinrite is going to resolve those issues.</p>

<p>Spinrite was a worthwhile tool when drives where MFM/RLL and could be low level formatted. There was no dedicated servo track platter and servo information was on each individual platter. That allowed servo track information to be rewritten to account for misalignment that occurred over time on the drives. It was necessary because actual stepping motors were used to move the heads on the drives. Current ATA drives use magnetic coils to position the heads and can do so much more precisely than MFM/RLL drives. The electronics can micro adjust the position of the head and actually do so based on the data read from the servo track.</p>

<p>It certainly won't hurt to try Spinrite but in my opinion it will do no good. It will not harm. Just waste some money.</p>

[carbon_dragon]

<p>Raymond, I can't say for sure, but I'm less pessimistic. It ran successfully on my laptop. Granted it depends on how the disk is connected internally. I'm a software engineer, but not an EE and I'm not specialized in Disk drives. When the drive has the right interface or can be connected directly in the way it needs to be connected, it can (reportedly) resurrect drives that were thought lost causes. But granted not in all cases. Which is why I recommended it would be worth contacting Steve at GRC to see if his bad drive was a good match for the product. I'd certainly try that (and everything else) before spending a couple of thousand dollars to a data recovery service.</p>

<p>When the disk is very very bad, spin rite has been known to run for days before recovering the drive. My understanding is that this is because disk problems which are intermittant can fail most of the time, so spin rite keeps hitting every sector waiting to get one good read. In my case, the drive was in a Sony VAIO A-190 laptop and the drive wasn't really failing. It was experiencing some strange errors now and then and after running I didn't see any more problems.</p>

[daverhaas]

<p>Simple advice -</p>

<p>there are a couple of possibilities:</p>

<p>1) the data is still there and fine, but the mechanics of the drive just failed. Meaning that the motor, or an electric component blew - but the platter with the data on it is there and fine.</p>

<p>2) The cable or the usb port (on either side) is bad. Plugging into another computer will determine if this is the case.</p>

<p>3) The actual storage media is bad. </p>

<p>4) The data was somehow trashed or the drive reset to it's native state. (ie reformat or accidental erasure)</p>

<p>1. Don't attempt to run a recover program on your own at home. If used incorrectly or by someone that doesn't know what they are doing - it can cause more harm than good.</p>

<p>2. Try the following: get another usb cable and try it. Try switching the computer off, unplug the drive, then power up the computer, when it's running - plug in the HD to the power and a different usb port. If that doesn't work - then try it on another computer.</p>

<p>3. Kroll Ontrack is the 800 lb gorilla of data / drive recovery. They are the guys that the cops go to when the dude down the block gets busted for kiddie porn and wipes his drive thinking that it is all gone. They know what they are doing and can save almost anything. I know they have a facility in MN, and not sure where else, but I know they take walk in and provide shipping support. www.krollontrack.com - they are pricey but if they can't recover it, no one (and I mean no one) can.</p>

<p>Keep in mind the goal here is to get your photos off of the drive, not to save the drive. (okay so saving the physical drive is a secondary goal, but it is not the primary one)<br>

Dave</p>

<p> </p>

[Hector Javkin]

<p>Natalie,</p>

<p>Find a professional data recovery service. That will give you the best chance of recovering your images. For the future, make sure that your backup is truly a backup -- a separate thing to be used in case your primary storage fails. I'm not a pro photographer, but for the files I need for work I have primary storage, a backup on-site, and a backup at another location. I renew and rotate them frequently enough that I'll know in time if any of my three copies fails.</p>

<p>Hopefully, you can get your images back. It's amazing what data recovery pros can do. Use this incident, and the costs of data recovery, to help you prevent the next one.</p>

 

[wedding-photography-denver]

<p>What Hector J said.</p>

[becky_mcguire]

<p>I have had 2 external storage units fail on me. You can put the external storage unit in the freezer. When it is really cold you should be able to get some of the images off of it. You will have to put it back in the freezer and trying again. I know it sounds weird but it works.</p>

 

[david_schilling___chicago_]

<p><em>"A backup isn't a backup if it is the only place where something is stored." -David Griffin</em><br>

<em> </em><br>

How often is the importance of backups discussed here on the forum? Another advantage of having a pro account at smugmug is that you can have a backup of all your final edits stored off site.</p>

[savagesax]

If you have the cash, try drivesavers. A pretty amazing place.

[andrewg_ny]

<P>I had two different Western Digital external drive enclosures (different models) die (would no longer power up) on me about a year ago but in both instances it was the enclosure that was bad, not the drive itself. I was able to open the WD, remove the drive (still good), and install it in a new third-party enclosure. Based on this experience, I will probably not buy another WD external drive kit--even if the hard drives themselves are good, the enclosures stink. Not only do they die more often than I'd expect, but they are difficult to open--not really designed for end users to remove & install drives. Better third-party enclosures are designed to allow the hard drive to be relatively easily installed and removed.</P>

<P>I am relatively pleased with this <A href="http://www.icydock.com/usb1394.html" _mce_href="http://www.icydock.com/usb1394.html">Icydock enclosure</A>. There are tons of other choices though.</P>

[peteraitch]

<p>I had a WD external drive fail, but it was the external power supply. If it won't physically spin up at all, it will either be that, or the box electronics (or possibly a stuck platter, as suggested elsewhere). If it spins up (you can hear it/ feel it) but doesn't read data properly you can use WD diagnostics (from their website) to get lots more information about the nature of the problem (as long as your system "recognises" the drive first). If unrecognised, but spinning up OK, then that suggests a connector/interface problem - you need a new box.</p>

<p>With modern WD drives, you should have had some notification of failing sectors etc. through S.M.A.R.T. reporting, unless it was a sudden catastrophic failure. If there were no nasty noises just before it stopped functioning it is probably unrelated to the physical drive mechanism, so a new box and power supply should have you home free. </p>

[john_hugens]

<p>Frankly, why people buy external drives in enclosures I don't understand. Most drives don't run so hot unless they're 10,000 RPM and up that they'll need a serious enclosure. Any other drive you can by a 5-10 buck enclosure, save half on the cost of the drive by just buying a raw drive, and then easily insert it. That way if anything goes wrong, which I've never had it do with a "do it yourself" drive you know what can work, you can easily swap it, and if it did fail it's not a big expense.</p>

[steve_hovland]

<p>Re CD/DVD backup: I had a hard drive fail on a hot day a few years ago. <br>

When I recovered from CD, about 1% of the images did not come back, and the CD's were not that old. <br>

Now I only use hard drives. I mix brands so I am not vulnerable to problems from any one manufacturer. If you copy with Windows Explorer verification is done as part of the copy. <br>

If you use xcopy you have to turn on verification using a batch file. <br>

You can also use windiff.exe to check files. Checking now and then is a good way to refresh the magnetic image.</p>

[stevenseelig]

<p>I maintain 4 copies of my RAW files, if at all possible<br>

1. Primary<br>

2. Backup<br>

3. Archive<br>

4. Portable<br>

A recent lesson that I learned is archive drives can fail as well even though they are not in use. In July of last year, I made an archive copy of my 2008 images and then stored in a dry cool location. In January, I was going to do some major rearrangement of files on my Primary and Backup drives and I decided to verify the Archive copy before starting. Much to my surprise, the Archive copy would not boot. It was gone. (I did not pay 1000's to have someone try to rescue it). I made a new Archive copy from the Backup drive and am storing that offsite, and then did my rearrangement of my Primary and Backup copies. Good news--everything turned out fine.<br>

BAD NEWS-- you need to regularly boot up your backup and archive copies to make sure the drives are still ok. Don't wait for your primary to fail to check your backup and/or archive drives. I now try to do it at least every 3-4 months. </p>

[ty_mickan]

<p>Natalie, at least you have the negatives that you can rescan right?</p>