Hard Drive Failure (the details) AKA BACK DAT SHIZ UP!
Ok so some of you may have read from Sarah Petty's thread about my hard drive failure, well here are the details. If this isnt enough to scare you into backing up your sh*t, especially those who are bringing in income and having people rely on your for their photos, then good luck.
Basically my old method for backing up was burning everything to a disc(s) and then on a single back-up drive. Over the past few months ive been terribly busy and purchased a brand new 500gb WD hard drive and had forgotten about burning anything.
So it was a couple weeks before leaving for vacation. I had previously shot an engagement, portrait, wedding and 2nd shot a wedding. I had yet to proof the 2 sessions, and edit to 2 weddings, told everyone to expect it all to happen after I return.
So I get home, turn on my PC, throw everything onto the hard drive, Computer crashes and had to reinstall windows. Cool, whatever. I decided to also format another back up that I had and start fresh. Windows finishes installing and WHAM! My brand new hard drive futzs. I am able to turn off and on the drive so I think everything is fine. Then it happens again.... and again.... and again. I freak out. I had nothing backed up. I tried everything I could (which could have made it worse) but could get anything to work. The data recovery software (3 brands) found the drive but would show errors and could yank anything off of it. I throw it in a zip lock and in the freezer for a couple hours.... still nothing. Im screwed...
I start looking into data recovery companies and found 2 that I was impressed with by the reviews. Aero Data Recovery ( www.aerodr.com ) and ESS ( www.essdatarecovery.com ). I saw that data recovery can cost a fortune, so when I found Aero I was happy, they can recover data for a flat rate of 279 and turn around of 5 days, and like all of the other companies I found if they do not recover they do not charge. I ship it to them first and they come back and tell me there was a major head crash and that there was nothing they could do about it but recommended ESS. So they ship it to them for me and was confident they could fix it there. So ESS calls me and tells me that all data has been loss and went into details about it.
They cannot determine how it happened but in the end the platters got off track and caused all of the magnetic bits to be erased. So there was literally no data on there at all. Nothing to recover = Im really screwed. Obviously I wasnt happy to hear that I lost all my data including the weddings and sessions but also my personal stuff. My kids photos, wife, family, portfolio...etc.... Pretty sure I developed multiple cancor sores from it all.
So what about the weddings and sessions?
Well the Engagement session I had posted most to flickr, and I also burned them a disc so im scot free on that one.
The portrait session, I refunded the money and offered a new one free with the same print credit
The wedding I 2nd shot? I didnt care too much, the guy was a douche, the wedding was a mess, his check he paid me with boucned and beated around the bush to pay me the money. No biggie, he had his own pics.
The 2nd wedding? welll suck,.... The bride emailed me in the middle of me shipping it off and I told her exactly what was going on. when i got word of what happened and that all data was loss I emailed her back immediately to inform her there would be a total refund, offered her some portrait sessions with the family (since the main thing they hired me for was for family portraits, just happened to be at a wedding) for free with the same print credit. I called last night and left a message since I hadnt heard anything. Waiting. I am going to try and recover something from the cards, but not sure what will happen.
With every person I informed, including future clients who knew what was going on, I told them that with future shoots I am doing EVERYTHING I can to prevent this from happening again and told them my plan.
I will have their photos in a minimum of 3 places, one of them is remote. I am getting my broken down HD replaced by western digital since its under warrenty, I will be purchasing another one to mirror it. I am burning everything to a disc before I do anything after dumping the photos. Burn them again after I edit. I also upload everything to some space I bought through www.hostmonster.com and may look into http://www.carbonite.com/ for space. Every night I have some software do an auto backup to the server. In the future I will look into a raid system.
Yea so learn from me, seriously. Ive paid out a lot of money in refunds lately, dont let it happen to you. Its the worst possible thing ever!
Here are some good resources for good, cheap back up solutions
http://www.carbonite.com/ - online server space
fantom 500gb external HD
these are cheap ways but your data is worth as much as any one client, let alone a 500gb HD full of their photos. Seriously GO NOW! Protect yo'self.
Basically my old method for backing up was burning everything to a disc(s) and then on a single back-up drive. Over the past few months ive been terribly busy and purchased a brand new 500gb WD hard drive and had forgotten about burning anything.
So it was a couple weeks before leaving for vacation. I had previously shot an engagement, portrait, wedding and 2nd shot a wedding. I had yet to proof the 2 sessions, and edit to 2 weddings, told everyone to expect it all to happen after I return.
So I get home, turn on my PC, throw everything onto the hard drive, Computer crashes and had to reinstall windows. Cool, whatever. I decided to also format another back up that I had and start fresh. Windows finishes installing and WHAM! My brand new hard drive futzs. I am able to turn off and on the drive so I think everything is fine. Then it happens again.... and again.... and again. I freak out. I had nothing backed up. I tried everything I could (which could have made it worse) but could get anything to work. The data recovery software (3 brands) found the drive but would show errors and could yank anything off of it. I throw it in a zip lock and in the freezer for a couple hours.... still nothing. Im screwed...
I start looking into data recovery companies and found 2 that I was impressed with by the reviews. Aero Data Recovery ( www.aerodr.com ) and ESS ( www.essdatarecovery.com ). I saw that data recovery can cost a fortune, so when I found Aero I was happy, they can recover data for a flat rate of 279 and turn around of 5 days, and like all of the other companies I found if they do not recover they do not charge. I ship it to them first and they come back and tell me there was a major head crash and that there was nothing they could do about it but recommended ESS. So they ship it to them for me and was confident they could fix it there. So ESS calls me and tells me that all data has been loss and went into details about it.
They cannot determine how it happened but in the end the platters got off track and caused all of the magnetic bits to be erased. So there was literally no data on there at all. Nothing to recover = Im really screwed. Obviously I wasnt happy to hear that I lost all my data including the weddings and sessions but also my personal stuff. My kids photos, wife, family, portfolio...etc.... Pretty sure I developed multiple cancor sores from it all.
So what about the weddings and sessions?
Well the Engagement session I had posted most to flickr, and I also burned them a disc so im scot free on that one.
The portrait session, I refunded the money and offered a new one free with the same print credit
The wedding I 2nd shot? I didnt care too much, the guy was a douche, the wedding was a mess, his check he paid me with boucned and beated around the bush to pay me the money. No biggie, he had his own pics.
The 2nd wedding? welll suck,.... The bride emailed me in the middle of me shipping it off and I told her exactly what was going on. when i got word of what happened and that all data was loss I emailed her back immediately to inform her there would be a total refund, offered her some portrait sessions with the family (since the main thing they hired me for was for family portraits, just happened to be at a wedding) for free with the same print credit. I called last night and left a message since I hadnt heard anything. Waiting. I am going to try and recover something from the cards, but not sure what will happen.
With every person I informed, including future clients who knew what was going on, I told them that with future shoots I am doing EVERYTHING I can to prevent this from happening again and told them my plan.
I will have their photos in a minimum of 3 places, one of them is remote. I am getting my broken down HD replaced by western digital since its under warrenty, I will be purchasing another one to mirror it. I am burning everything to a disc before I do anything after dumping the photos. Burn them again after I edit. I also upload everything to some space I bought through www.hostmonster.com and may look into http://www.carbonite.com/ for space. Every night I have some software do an auto backup to the server. In the future I will look into a raid system.
Yea so learn from me, seriously. Ive paid out a lot of money in refunds lately, dont let it happen to you. Its the worst possible thing ever!
Here are some good resources for good, cheap back up solutions
http://www.carbonite.com/ - online server space
fantom 500gb external HD
these are cheap ways but your data is worth as much as any one client, let alone a 500gb HD full of their photos. Seriously GO NOW! Protect yo'self.
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Ryan Armbrust on -
Yeah, I am pretty damn careful of my images. I have them all on the internal drive of my Mac also backed up on my 1tb Apple Timecapsule. I also do a weekly backup to my 1tb G-Tech G-Drive. AND THEN, all my originals are stored on the back end of my Smugmug account. They are awesome for this sort of thing. Really pleased with Smugmug.
Two things that bug me with your story Scotty, PC & WD!
-
Permalink Reply by Scotty Perry on -
ha! never had a problem with WD - will turn to mac but not switch, I just know PC too well. im that chubby guy in the tie
-
Permalink Reply by Charles Silver on -
DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN !
HORROR STORY !
-
Permalink Reply by Lizzie Morrison on -
Did you try to recover the deleted images from your memory card? I've had to do that before when I had a folder disappear from my desktop from Stock Yards Bank Client in Cincinnati. I was completely freaking out as the window to take the pictures was after the remodel and before they brought the money into the bank. So I had that one day to roam freely and take pictures and that was it.
I downloaded one of those free programs online to recover deleted images from my hard drive and I couldn't recover any of them, when I tried it randomly on my memory card I ended up recovering about 300 pictures,,
I feel for you on the hard drive crash. It happens to me every 3 years for some reason. The last time I lost 16,000 pictures that weren't backed up. I now back up like a crazy person.
-
Permalink Reply by Jamie on -
Man that sucks--sorry to hear about that. I'd smirk about my film living in the fire-resistant safe, except that I have a lot of huuuge, final, ready to print files squatting on my hard drive and waiting to be sent off to the gallery in Dallas. Think I'll go burn some discs...
-
Permalink Reply by Jacob Zimmer on -
I once plugged my laptop power supply into the external hard drive and fried it and I dropped a Coke can on my laptop and broke that too. I back up everything daily now. In fact, I am going to back up right now before going to bed.
I used to have a safe but the lock broke (as in broke in the locked position) and I had to use a hammer to get it open. I think I will be getting another fire proof safe soon, especially after discovering that my neighbor is a glass blower with propane tanks next door.
-
Permalink Reply by Scotty Perry on
-
i found this great free program thats pretty easy to set up called Syncback http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html you can have it auto back up to a hard drive, network drive, or FTP them to a remote server.
Its fairly simple to set up, you can have it just back up the data or sync two locations so that they are indentical.
-
Permalink Reply by Shane E. on -
The absolute best data recovery software I have used are TestDisk and PhotoRec. They are opensource and free and work better than any other program that I've tried. I've tried a lot of programs. TestDisk isn't quite so user friendly as some might like.
Recently we had an external drive become corrupt and unreadable. Windows kept asking to format it. Most of the programs that I tried couldn't even find the old file system, including the WD software that came with the drive. Most programs kept ending in errors and saying it was unreadable.
With TestDisk, i was able to rebuild and/or restore the drive and copy all of the files from the 1 TB drive to a fresh drive. After a quick check, it didn't seem any of the data was corrupt or lost. Even before I used TestDisk, PhotoRec was able to see the images stored on the drive.
PhotoRec is great for recovering images from a card or drive. It simply scans for known image files by data structure. It has recovered images from cards that other software couldn't find.
Can't beat the price. Free.
-
Permalink Reply by Wes Chamness on -
using smugmug, how do you use it as a back up solution?
just upload all your images to a private gallery that's password protected?
Ryan Armbrust said:Yeah, I am pretty damn careful of my images. I have them all on the internal drive of my Mac also backed up on my 1tb Apple Timecapsule. I also do a weekly backup to my 1tb G-Tech G-Drive. AND THEN, all my originals are stored on the back end of my Smugmug account. They are awesome for this sort of thing. Really pleased with Smugmug.
Two things that bug me with your story Scotty, PC & WD!
-
Permalink Reply by Shane E. on
-
Uploading to offsite storage probably works for some, but we can produce well over 100 GB of images in a week of weddings and portraits, since we store select RAW images as well as processed JPGs. We aren't alone. There are a lot of wedding photographers in the same situation. We rely on a small army of external drives.
I've considered burning everything to disc and leaving copies in the care of homeless people around town. Then when someone says "Hey, there's some dirty homeless guy leaning on my car" ... I can respond, "That's not just a dirty a homeless guy. That's my offsite storage."
Wes Chamness said:using smugmug, how do you use it as a back up solution?
just upload all your images to a private gallery that's password protected?
Ryan Armbrust said:Yeah, I am pretty damn careful of my images. I have them all on the internal drive of my Mac also backed up on my 1tb Apple Timecapsule. I also do a weekly backup to my 1tb G-Tech G-Drive. AND THEN, all my originals are stored on the back end of my Smugmug account. They are awesome for this sort of thing. Really pleased with Smugmug.
Two things that bug me with your story Scotty, PC & WD!
© 2012 Created by Ryan Armbrust.
