Catastrophic Mistake(s)

[chas._boehm]

<p>I've been depressed for a month, or more, now not knowing the direction to take.</p>

<p>I have lost at least three years of photos on my external hard drive (a second external hard drive has photos before 2013). I attempted to recover the photos using recovery software, but viewing the results I could not discern what I was looking at. Many were just icons of a sheet of paper with the corner folded over. I elected not to buy the software to save the recovered files. On top of this I tried to copy a lightroom catalog to second catalog and made a second catastrophic error...I made catalog B the same as catalog A (should have been the reverse). All the many years of cataloging and keywording are now gone! Both catalogs are empty! There seems to be no 'Undo' in lightroom. I'm toast!</p>

<p>The external hard drive may have been added to...not certain.</p>

<p>A second hard drive contains photos before 2013.</p>

<p>Need a shoulder to cry on.</p>

<p>CBoehm</p>

[thirteenthumbs]

<p>1st download the version of Testdisk for your OS:<br /> Win 32 bit http://download.cnet.com/TestDisk-and-PhotoRec/3000-2248_4-10511775.html<br /> Win 64 bit http://download.cnet.com/TestDisk-and-PhotoRec-64-bit/3000-2248_4-75449211.html<br /> Mac http://download.cnet.com/TestDisk-PhotoRec/3000-2248_4-10511792.html<br /> Linux http://download.cnet.com/TestDisk-and-PhotoRec-for-Linux/3000-2248_4-75703792.html</p>

<p>Now add another internal or external hard drive. Put the Testdisk download on it and run photo recovery. I writes recovered files to the directory photo recovery is in. I have only used the Win version and all setup of the recovery is from the command prompt. You will have to rename the files recovered if you want to save them. Start with the catalog that was mislabeled by the copy error. Once you have recovered the catalog move on to the defective/failed drive. If photo recovery does not work they are most likely gone.<br /> Its OK to take a rest first before starting again but any information written to the drive with the lost files may corrupt the files.</p>

[marc_rochkind]

<p>You didn't indicate in what way the photos were "lost". Did the drive fail, or was it just that files were deleted or overwritten? In either case, it's possible that the data can be recovered by one of the services that do such things (never used any myself), and if you're planning on that, you should immediately turn the drive off to prevent further damage.</p>

<p>As for losing a LR catalog, that will cause edits and cataloging to be lost, but not the image files themselves.</p>

<p>In the future, I imagine you'll be making backups. There are approximately 10 zillion articles on the web about this.</p>

[digitaldog]

<blockquote>

<p>Need a shoulder to cry on.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>IF you didn't have at least <strong>two</strong> backup's of this data, my shoulder isn't available; sorry. <br>

OK. If you get to the end point of unsuccessful recovery using various software utilities that may or may not work, look up Drive Savers http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/international-service/dialing-instructions/<br>

It will cost big bucks to get the data recovered but if anyone can do it, they can. <br>

At least you didn't infect all your images and their backup's with a computer virus! So don't feel too bad. <br>

</p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>I have had good success using EaseUS Data Recovery Software.</p>

<p>http://www.easeus.com/</p>

<p>Most software recovers only files, usually with names assigned by the recovery program. EaseUS recovers the original file names and directories. A trial version will show you what can be recovered, before you pay for the actual program.</p>

[Colin O]

<p>There are two kinds of hard drives - the ones that are going to fail, and the ones that have already failed. You should have had a backup. In fact, you should have had more than one backup. Of course, that's not much consolation now. Look at it this way - you have learnt your lesson - this kind of data loss will never happen to you again.</p>

 

<p>What is your data worth? Take your dead hard drive to the best data recovery specialist you can afford. If you get (some of) your data back, you won't mind the cost.</p>

[marc_rochkind]

<p>To say what Colin said slightly differently, it's best to think of computer storage, of any type, as a temporary cache. No storage is permanent, but you can get close to that by diversifying your backup: primary + live backup + backup in separate location + online. For live backup, both Windows and Mac OS X come with that builtin (Time Machine and File History). I use CrashPlan for online backup, and I also copy image files to Amazon S3/Glacier (http://basepath.com/ZipVerifier/help.php). </p>

[henryp]

<p>My wife's company had success with Ontrack Data Recovery's services. She said they were not cheap but they were, for her company, successful. My personal advice -- if you're going to go that route don't do anything else to the drive. Good luck.</p>

<p>Henry Posner<br /><strong>B&H Photo-Video</strong></p>

[PaulCoen]

<p>I've seen OnTrack used in a professional setting as well - they really know their stuff. But it isn't cheap. I'd agree with Henry Posner - if you are thinking of going the professional route, don't mess with the drive any more than you already have. <br /><br />In general (for anyone else finding themselves in a similar situation), the one thing you never want to do if you can avoid it is to write changes to the drive in question. Testdisk - which I've used to recover data from formatted memory cards on a couple of occasions - at least writes it to a new location. Any additional writes you make to the drive runs the risk of overwriting data you want to recover. <br /><br />In general, if you can make an exact copy of the damaged drive (a block by block copy of the entire thing, including all the "free" blocks), it'll at least give you the ability to try more than one technique against the copy. </p>

[dave404]

<p>I have a NAS with two redundant drives and I have Carbonite for finished stuff. The on line backup is not good for large amounts of files like a drive full of RAW files. So, I also backup to two drives when I run my import python script, so it gets copied to two drives and converted to Adobe DNG before I remove the card. I want to auto sync to the NAS at this step but have not made it work, also the RAW files are really huge. Follow a strict procedure to import - mine is scripted - import.py <project_name> and its done and each file is verified that is good as it imports. The only time I varied my approach :-( a wedding a few months after delivery I had a hard drive crash. So the only RAW files I have missed in all these years are those. <br>

I still stagger under the amount of files I have and need to use the delete key more often. </p>