A Photographer's worst nightmare!

I don't know who to share this with. or who could even begin to understand the pain I'm feeling right now. I only have 31 really good photos that I truly like of my own, and I had them saved on my External Hard Drive in a separate folder among other folders with other memorable but not great photos. I usually don't leave my hard drive plugged in, but I wasn't feeling good so I went home and left it, I came back and opened up Bridge only to find that all 31 photos were erased from my hard drive, they are not in the Recycle bin, they just dissappeared. I hadn't even thought to save copies in another folder (though I will not be making that same mistake ever again!) I have these photos on my facebook but they are too small and if I were to save them from the website to my drive...well you all know how that goes. Believe me, I checked everywhere I could, I even unplugged it and restarted my computer HOPING it was the computer messing up....so I thought I'd share this, knowing fellow photographers would know this empty, painful feeling of losing photos you truly cherish.

Typically it's a good idea to have all your images backed up on at least two separate drives. Ideally those two drives are in separate locations as well... in case, for example, your house burns down, you wouldn't want to lose your life's work as well! Shame you had to learn the hard way!

This is sad Andrea. Floris makes a good point but don't give up hope there are utilities that can recover deleted files you should investigate these before giving up.

Such as http://www.winundelete.com there are many others and I hasten to say I have no experience with them but they would be worth a shot.
And dont save anything more to the disk until you have attemped to recover
the files as that may reduce your recovery odds.

Finally don't make the same mistake next time back-up back-up.

Have you used anything else besides Bridge to look for them?
You might consider trying a demo. version of PhotoRescue to try and recover the missing files. They say it works on hard drives that aren't system drives (in other words, drives that don't have the computer's OS on it).

There is hope, Andrea.

Just because they are deleted doesn't mean they are gone. You may be able to recover them. I once accidentally deleted an SD card and was able to recover all the photos using software that came with the card. If the hard drive wasn't reformatted or written over by new files, your files may still be there and you may be able to retrieve them with the right software.

Good luck.

Andrea, using Bridge it is very easy to accidentally move a folder inside of another. I've done it. Make sure you look inside every folder on that disk. Failing this, I also agree with others who have advised you to use one of the undelete programs available.

I would definitely try some disk recovery software to see if you can recover the files, if they are on an external hard drive it may be more likely that they are recoverable because there will be less disk writing activity than the one your OS is stored on. When files are deleted the data is not deleted immediately, it just tells your operating system that that space on the hard drive is now available to be overwritten with other files.

You may want to look into some online storage at least for your best photos. http://www.adrive.com gives 50gb of free storage space, depending on the resolution size and whether your files are raw or jpeg you could back up at least several thousand of your best images at full size.

Andrea

A friend of mine accidentally deleted all the images on an 8 gig CF card a few months ago, I had the recovery program that sandisk used to send with CF cards and I was able to recover all but one of the files on the CF card (the last file was corrupted).

If the files have not been moved to another folder I'd consider one of the recovery programs before giving up hope.

Andrea,

I have a copy of SanDisk's Rescue PRO that is yours if you'd like it. I've used it to recover accidentally deleted photos on friend's external hard drive.

Great news! My stepson, my awesome stepson recovered them!! did I mention how awesome he is! I thought I was going to have spend $49.95 on the winundelete software, because I had found them but could not recover them without spending money, I was so depressed! And then my stepson manages, without spending a dime, to recover them and other photos I don't really care about!!! I can not begin to express how happy I am right now, and how many back ups I am going to do of them! And how many backups and copies I will make of each future photo that I deem good enough to show others!!!!

Andrea, that's great!

I think it would be of benefit if you could post the procedure your hero stepson used to recover the files.

Glad you got it sorted out!

-P

Great news Andrea

I sure feel your pain, but, as the others have said well, THERE IS HOPE. Please let us know how you fare..

Sandy r

PS I obviously did not read every response, and see now that you recovered them !! yay!!

Andrea and all who posted to this topic - archival backup is difficult. Simply copying files to multiple locations is a great disaster recovery strategy, but it should not be considered safe for long term storage. To preserve integrity, data written to magnetic media must be refreshed every 5-7 years, otherwise the information can be lost due to the decay of the magnetic fields on the drive platters. Similarly, data written to flash memory can suffer from exposure to stray magnetic fields and emf. There are lots of "archival" CD/DVR media out there, but the plastic carrier used to encase the media also decays.

For approx $60/yr Carbonite and similar data warehousing services will give you unlimited storage and they follow data archiving protocols for maximum safety - redundancy, refreshing etc. The only gotcha is that they do not back up external drives ie drives that are not installed in the computer - so flash, NAS portable and any other sort of storage will not be recognized.

Hope this helps avoid that sinking feeling of looking for something that is no longer there -

Thank you all for the advice, I will have my stepson show me how he did it, of course that won't be til he gets out of school today. I consider this a lesson learned, even though I still don't know how it happened, one moment they were there, I left my office with my hard drive plugged in and came back about an hour later and they were gone, just that file out of 40 other files (the other 40 are family memories that I make into DVD slideshows). Right now I have to backup files and all my files backed up on a DVD, and I will search online better ways of protecting files and what not. Thanks again!

DId anyone already mention that you need to think about getting a new disk drive? If you did not do anything yourself to delete those files, then there is a good chance your hard drive is about to totally crash. I don't know hold old your drive is. If it is old, then you need to protect yourself there. It's like a kind of insurance. You do not want to wait for an old drive to totally crash before replacing it. As others have said, you need to have multiple backups in multiple locations. I would be crushed to lose my just under 10,000 images as you would be for your 36. BACKUP your files!!!! Not just your images.

I am glad it worked out, but just remember, you can always start from scratch. Ansel did (he lost a large amount of his early work in a fire). I am not saying that you shouldn't back up your images, because you should, but sometimes a tragedy like that is a great creative spark! Brett Weston burnt all his negatives on his 80th birthday, because he knew only he could print his work. I think I might blow my hard drives up on my 80th

Carl, I thought about that too, only right now I hardly am able to get out and spend a day photographing or even an hour, I'm so busy with our business it's hard to find to enjoy my passions. I think that's why it struck me so hard, the idea that 36 GOOD photos took like 6 months to get, I just got this camera back in March and have only in the past 2 or 3 months had the time to really learn it and get some real experience. Troup, it's not my hard drive, it's my external portable drive, I don't keep any of my photos on the computer due to the fact that my computer is part of me and my husband's business and I don't want to slow it down. My laptop's hard drive did crash, with a lot of my photos on it, but a friend of my husband's was able to retrieve them all. Anyways, thanks for everyone's advice again

Andrea,
Glad you recovered your images. I've never experienced such a disaster, but I've heard many stories. I was shooting next to a professional wildlife photographer all day last spring. We both shot some incredible stuff in great lighting conditions. He lost a full 8 gig compact flash card, he thought, in the snow. He later found it in one of his bags.
Those are the losses you really cannot recover, but you almost can recover files seemingly "lost" in yoyr computer. It may cost money sometimes to do it, but rarely is something gone forever.

I agree thank you.