Posted by Dan Borzynski on June 12, 2007 at 10:54 AM
Okay, I have shot a lot in the last three weeks, had brought everything to my hard drive in the last couple of days, needed to go out for a bit for a another shoot. Come back a few days later to start dealing with the mess of files, semiprocessed work for an exhibit and back everything up on a new drive I bought while out and...
The drive is dead. Dead. Dead. No warning, so I don't think it is catastrophically dead - just mostly dead. Sort of like the Man in Black in the "Princess Bride".
Looking at what I lost and knowing the amount of time and work to reprocess for the exhibit, using a data recovery service is beginning to look real good. Any ideas for costs, or recommendations?
I can find the name for you but I had a drive that went south on me and I called these guys. It was a minimum $500 and a week and they'll recover what they can recover, or a lot more, $2500 and they were guaranteeing getting everything.
My wife just went through it, but she can't remember the name of the company. It was recommended by our lab, H&H Color Lab in Kansas City ( 800-821-1305), so if all else fails give them a call and ask for a reco. Service was very fast and friendly. Forgetting must be running in the familly today, because I forgot to ask her how much it cost.
Is the drive truly dead? Is there a power problem? Are the connections to the mother board, other drives and the dead drive loose or compromised in some way? I'd check these out first before plunking down that kind of dough.
Good luck with this, Dan. Let us know what results are.
-PB
Posted by David Bostedo on June 12, 2007 at 12:43 PM
If you can, I'd try putting the drive as a secondary device into another machine you know is working. It may help you figure out how dead it is. Hopefully not all dead.
The drive was under warranty, as part of the computer I bought a couple of months ago. I brought it in for service and (hopefully) they ran the tests you mentioned. Their service guy gave it last rites and suggested that if the data was really that important to me, I start looking at third party recovery services.
Just to be sure, I was planning to install it tonight as a backup when I get everything returned just to see what happens. I've got nothing to lose.
Thanks.
Posted by Richard Wong on June 12, 2007 at 4:20 PM
I know it's not much help now anymore, but rule #1 is backup backup backup. Even if the hard drive is under warranty, there is no warranty on the data. And a hard drive can go anytime! If it's a "head crash", that means the head crashed on the surface of a disk, or a defective motor, than it will be very expensive be done by a recovery service. I learned it the hard way too, and now I'm backing up on an external hard disk (USB) AND on DVD.
But I hope, that you can get your photos back easily (maybe there are just a few bad clusters on the hard drive), the method - mentioned above already - putting it as secondary HDD on another system will show if the HDD is still spinning and you can at least get onto your data to back them up. Good luck!
Usually I am pretty good with backup - actually, anal is a pretty good word for it. But I let it slip in the last few weeks.
Fortunately, the people who evaluated the drive seem to be a bit lacking in competence. The printout report I got when I picked up the computer essentially said the drive is completely unusable and does not respond when hooked up as a second drive. This agreed with the phone message I got shortly before the original post. They had some fancy terms for that, but in English, that is what is was saying. So just to be sure, I hook it up to my machine, with a new hard drive installed under warranty and surprise! Everything I care about can be read. Four bad sectors and as a guess from the file names, two Windows files were corrupted.
Now the downside is that I asked the RAM to be upgraded to 2 gig as well. The machine was crashing left and right for a while until I stuck the older 2 512 cards back in. Now all is good, or at least the machine hasn't crashed for the last two hours while I gradually try to backup the work I hadn't previously backed up.
I've had similar things happen. . .lost 2 drives and 1 system in 3 days before a big solo show show. I recovered some stuff by hooking the drives up in extrenal cases long enough to recover the needed files, the rest was archived on DVD or 2nd and 3rd external drives.
Discussion
9 repliesThe drive is dead. Dead. Dead. No warning, so I don't think it is catastrophically dead - just mostly dead. Sort of like the Man in Black in the "Princess Bride".
Looking at what I lost and knowing the amount of time and work to reprocess for the exhibit, using a data recovery service is beginning to look real good. Any ideas for costs, or recommendations?
Thanks.
Good luck with this, Dan. Let us know what results are.
-PB
The drive was under warranty, as part of the computer I bought a couple of months ago. I brought it in for service and (hopefully) they ran the tests you mentioned. Their service guy gave it last rites and suggested that if the data was really that important to me, I start looking at third party recovery services.
Just to be sure, I was planning to install it tonight as a backup when I get everything returned just to see what happens. I've got nothing to lose.
Thanks.
But I hope, that you can get your photos back easily (maybe there are just a few bad clusters on the hard drive), the method - mentioned above already - putting it as secondary HDD on another system will show if the HDD is still spinning and you can at least get onto your data to back them up. Good luck!
Fortunately, the people who evaluated the drive seem to be a bit lacking in competence. The printout report I got when I picked up the computer essentially said the drive is completely unusable and does not respond when hooked up as a second drive. This agreed with the phone message I got shortly before the original post. They had some fancy terms for that, but in English, that is what is was saying. So just to be sure, I hook it up to my machine, with a new hard drive installed under warranty and surprise! Everything I care about can be read.
Now the downside is that I asked the RAM to be upgraded to 2 gig as well. The machine was crashing left and right for a while until I stuck the older 2 512 cards back in. Now all is good, or at least the machine hasn't crashed for the last two hours while I gradually try to backup the work I hadn't previously backed up.
And the DVD burner is just flying now!
I've had similar things happen. . .lost 2 drives and 1 system in 3 days before a big solo show show. I recovered some stuff by hooking the drives up in extrenal cases long enough to recover the needed files, the rest was archived on DVD or 2nd and 3rd external drives.