Right, I have had a bit of a problem. The hard disk for my laptop, which contains all my photos from this year (except the water level Bitterns thankfully!) has gone badly wrong. I have taken it out of the laptop and put it in a disk caddy and tried simply copying the data from it onto an external hard drive, but it would appear that it is worse than that. I tried error-checking on the disk, but that failed, and I am now in the process of running a file recovery programme called Recover my Files, but I was wondering if anyone knew of any good file recovery programmes?
Any help greatly appreciated
Oscar
Posted by Phil Ellard on April 12, 2012 at 5:30 PM
Not sure Oscar, my only advice would be dont bugger about too much if you are not sure and take it to a repair place in my experience they can recover most things and the cost is not too great either
when moving from laptop to caddy did you reset the little pin formation - not sure what they are called but it is group of six or eight with a little bridge crossing two of the pins which makes the drive into a "slave" unit - sorry that's not very technical description, there should had been instructions with the caddy unit
If its not that as Phil says take it to an expert.......
Oscar, unless you have a good understanding of things, then leaving things well alone is the best course of action and contact a Data recovery company. There was one I used near Sherperd's Bush, but that was about 6 years ago when an ext drive went pop when copying/backing up to another. Can't remember them and am away until next Thursday so cannot check the company. At that time it was £1 per MB so...
You should save your images/work on two ext drives and have them 'mirrored' so if one goes wrong you have another BU. A tough lesson, but one you will not make again, good luck.
No idea what any of these companies are like, but it might be a starting point, or perhaps someone else can advise you, always good to get a personal recommendation.
Posted by John Robinson on April 13, 2012 at 6:24 AM
Oscar
When you say it "went wrong"- what actually happened. ?
Itvmay not be as bad as you think.
Mike is referring to the jumpers which have to be re set to slave but then some externals use the master setting,so as some have said- don't mess about.
Cheers
JR
Posted by Dave Bartlett on April 13, 2012 at 7:34 AM
It might not be as bad as it seems. I have used 'Handy Recovery' on two occasions and it has recovered files both times (once from a CF card and once from a hard drive). There is a free version and a version you pay for. The freebie worked with the CF card problem I had and also found lots of long-deleted junk as well.. Failing that, as others have said, the cost is not too great to go to a data recovery company.
A least you still have the bitterns which by now I am sure you have backed up on at least three continents!!!
Dave
Posted by Paul Whippey on April 13, 2012 at 2:26 PM
Oscar, the best software for this sort of work in my experience is Testdisk. Its free open source software and its available for pretty much every modern operating system. You can download it and read the documentation on http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
I've carried out several successful recoveries using this software as long as the disk is actually seen by the operating system when you plug in the caddy. Drop me a PM and I'll try my best to help if you want.
Well Oscar, horses, stables and doors and all that but I'm sure you will get out and buy yourself a couple of ext hard drives and set up a back up routine now.
I hope you recover your files as you are consistently producing excellent work and it would be a tragedy to lose any of it.
Good luck.
While I was first typing the topic, I was running a programme called "Recover my Files," and it seems to have worked rather well. Almost all of my files have been recovered, except a few jpegs, and so I still have almost all the jpegs and almost all of the raws, which has made me so relieved.
John, what happened was that when I turned the computer on, it would get to the black "Starting Windows Screen" with the windows icon in the middle, but wouldn't get any further. I ran start up repair which didn't work, so I ran a diagnostics test, which came up with the error message "Hard Disk self test failed" with error code 0146. This meant that I had to replace the hard disk, but I am not completely sure what actually went wrong with the disk. When I put it in a caddy and plugged it into our desktop computer, I couldn't simply copy the data from it onto an external hard drive as every time I tried to open the disk on the computer, I was asked if I wanted to format it, which of course I didn't! I tried this programme and it seems to have worked.
When I get my new hard disk, I am going to copy the images back onto that, so I will have 2 copies of it, and I will also upload the best to Windows Skydrive, where you can get 25GB free.
When I get the new hard disk, I will be able to start posting some images again!
Thanks again,
Oscar
Posted by Nick Mckeown on April 14, 2012 at 5:34 PM
PHEW!
Nick.
Posted by Paul Whippey on April 14, 2012 at 7:00 PM
I'm glad you got your data back Oscar. That was a close call!
It sounds to me that from the SMART error 0146, the drive has a physical problem, eg an un-writable/readable area of the physical disk surface. From your recovery it gives more evidence to show this, ie. you have lost some but not all data. In modern filesystems, data is not written contiguously (in one long stream), but split into blocks and written almost randomly across the physical disk surface (hence the use of defragmenting software in Windows, which I guess is your operating system). So you lost a few files, even though the damaged area is probably in one tiny single area of the physical disk surface. A chckdisk /r can fix this sometimes if you are able to get to safe mode or the recovery console, but you did the right thing and recovered your files.
I would still recommend Testdisk if anybody else has issues, it can do recovery beyond most proprietary software, but it would have given you the same results in this case Oscar.
Glad you've recovered most of your shots.... It's an awful feeling when you realise that you might have lost irreplaceable things!
It rather sounds like you've just a single disk in your computer and that means you'll be storing your important files on the same disk as the operating system (windows) and that's not always wise - if the OS crashes (very likely with windows ) or needs to be reinstalled, then you run the risk of losing your files when you have to replace the disk or reinstall the OS. Assuming you're using a desktop pc, I'd recommend you buy a 2nd internal disk and place all your important stuff on tha ( and back it up too!). It's then much easier to restore or replace the OS/disk when it dies or needs to be upgraded as you're not worrying about losing or overwriting your files (and if you buy a new computer... You just take it out and put it in the new one). If you're using a laptop, then you've not really got that option, although you could still use a fast external disk. Main thing is... Always keep your data separate from the operating system disk if you possibly can.
Discussion
11 repliesAny help greatly appreciated
Oscar
If its not that as Phil says take it to an expert.......
You should save your images/work on two ext drives and have them 'mirrored' so if one goes wrong you have another BU. A tough lesson, but one you will not make again, good luck.
No idea what any of these companies are like, but it might be a starting point, or perhaps someone else can advise you, always good to get a personal recommendation.
Steve
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=data+recovery+companies+in+london&fb=1&gl=uk&hq=data+recovery+companies&hnear=0x47d8a00baf21de75:0x52963a5addd52a99,London&ei=E8-HT4SzGoWp0QWa6vCyCQ&sa=X&oi=local_group&ct=image&ved=0CCYQtgM
When you say it "went wrong"- what actually happened. ?
Itvmay not be as bad as you think.
Mike is referring to the jumpers which have to be re set to slave but then some externals use the master setting,so as some have said- don't mess about.
Cheers
JR
A least you still have the bitterns which by now I am sure you have backed up on at least three continents!!!
Dave
I've carried out several successful recoveries using this software as long as the disk is actually seen by the operating system when you plug in the caddy. Drop me a PM and I'll try my best to help if you want.
I hope you recover your files as you are consistently producing excellent work and it would be a tragedy to lose any of it.
Good luck.
While I was first typing the topic, I was running a programme called "Recover my Files," and it seems to have worked rather well. Almost all of my files have been recovered, except a few jpegs, and so I still have almost all the jpegs and almost all of the raws, which has made me so relieved.
John, what happened was that when I turned the computer on, it would get to the black "Starting Windows Screen" with the windows icon in the middle, but wouldn't get any further. I ran start up repair which didn't work, so I ran a diagnostics test, which came up with the error message "Hard Disk self test failed" with error code 0146. This meant that I had to replace the hard disk, but I am not completely sure what actually went wrong with the disk. When I put it in a caddy and plugged it into our desktop computer, I couldn't simply copy the data from it onto an external hard drive as every time I tried to open the disk on the computer, I was asked if I wanted to format it, which of course I didn't! I tried this programme and it seems to have worked.
When I get my new hard disk, I am going to copy the images back onto that, so I will have 2 copies of it, and I will also upload the best to Windows Skydrive, where you can get 25GB free.
When I get the new hard disk, I will be able to start posting some images again!
Thanks again,
Oscar
Nick.
It sounds to me that from the SMART error 0146, the drive has a physical problem, eg an un-writable/readable area of the physical disk surface. From your recovery it gives more evidence to show this, ie. you have lost some but not all data. In modern filesystems, data is not written contiguously (in one long stream), but split into blocks and written almost randomly across the physical disk surface (hence the use of defragmenting software in Windows, which I guess is your operating system). So you lost a few files, even though the damaged area is probably in one tiny single area of the physical disk surface. A chckdisk /r can fix this sometimes if you are able to get to safe mode or the recovery console, but you did the right thing and recovered your files.
I would still recommend Testdisk if anybody else has issues, it can do recovery beyond most proprietary software, but it would have given you the same results in this case Oscar.
Nice one!
Glad you've recovered most of your shots.... It's an awful feeling when you realise that you might have lost irreplaceable things!
It rather sounds like you've just a single disk in your computer and that means you'll be storing your important files on the same disk as the operating system (windows) and that's not always wise - if the OS crashes (very likely with windows