Am I F****D?

Good luck Andy.

In the worst case scenario I am sure your friends and clients will let you have copies of anything you obtained for them. I will.

By one of those coincidences that seem fairly common I was going to ask you if you were free this month to copy material for 102 Beach Sub Area as you did last year for 101 Beach Sub Area. Should pay for a pram (not that I know what they cost).

More later.

Mike..

 

In relation to research matters, just try and sort out your own problems for the moment. No need to be concerned about anything for other forum members in the middle of the present major difficulty. I am fairly sure everyone will be patient and understanding/

Good luck with everything, including the family!

 

Did not know you need to or could do that!!!

 

A few years ago my Grandfather reformatted his computer he said it was an accident but still doesn't know how he did it he didn't have a reformat disc but anyway it happened! He took it to some `expert` who told him his files were probably gone for ever but for a huge fee they could attempt a recovery but their advice was that his computer was fine the hard drive was clean and virtually he had a brand new computer. He used it for a couple of days but then mentioned it to a teacher I had back then who told him his files would be still there and could be recovered with `Recover my files` My Grandfather said he had nothing to lose and gave it a go he recovered 80% of them the only ones he lost were those which had been re-written following the computers return from the `expert`. The only drawback was the original file names were gone so it took some time to re-arrange them.

Best

Kyle

 

Even with one image being added, chances are you won't have lost anything. I'm pretty sure you'll end up with every file that was there originally. Glad to hear it wasn't an actual HDD failure - they really do s**k!!!

 

Good luck - fingers crossed you'll get most of it back - a lot of this stuff is deemed 'unrecoverable' by computer manufacturers as they don't want to encourage people to delve and mess about. There's no such thing as a foolproof back up but I do it three times - I've had a few moments and managed to get most stuff back, if sometimes a bit of a mess. BBC and other broadcasters had all sorts of problems when they switched to card only recording on cameras - plenty of footage lost when they reformatted the card without copying it to a hard drive properly. Let us know how it works out, we could always have a whip round for a pram.....

 

Bit harsh on the muppets.

All the best

Andreas

 

That would make Andy....

Beeker!



Fits.

All the best

Andreas

 

Been following this since the start and very glad to hear Andy should be able to recover most if not all his data.

I also have a great deal of data stored from LCT research at TNA and many other sources. Apart from the PC hard drive I have stored it on CD/DVD and also on several USB sticks (4 and 8 GB).

When my mate Mike B comes over from Oz (we do joint research) he is always amazed at much much we pay for eg external hard drives (and electronics generally) in this country. We looked at the price of solid state HDDs in a few shops here only last month and Mike B said (words to the effect of) 'Sod paying that, I will wait 'til I get home!'

Why do we always seem to pay through the nose in this country when the Septics, Japs and Aussies (to name but a few) can buy state of the art electronics so much cheaper?
Are we an easy target?

 

Not wishing to hijack this thread, but on a somewhat related matter, can anyone recommend a good back up programme that can do "plain file" back-ups, NOT encrypted back-ups.

I use to use an Iomega programme on Windows XP Pro and this was very good. It could do plain file back up, encremental back-ups and so on. However it doesn`t work on Windows 7 Pro and I`ve been struggling to find something which is easy to use and doesn`t encrypt my files when backing up. So far I`ve tried several programmes and non seem satisfactory so I`d welcome any input.

BTW Drew; As long as the HDD disc platters are not damaged it should be possible for a recovery specialist to get the data back offf your drive. Unfortunately, even though I maintain multiple back ups of data, loosing a HDD is still not a pleasant experience. You really have to be making sure that your are constantly backing up as its so easy to get lazy and not do it on a regular basis. I use a variety of LaCie drives including RAID drives, as Idler suggested. You can read all sorts of opinions on-line about external HDD and in truth somewhere along the line, there`s always somebody who`ll say WD are useless, Segate are useless, LaCie are useless etc. That`s the downside of the internet; too many opinions. At the end of the day any back up system is better than non.

 

Cheers Adam...I wondered when someone would take the pee, I'm surprised it took so long Lesson has truly been learnt and I paid £200 yesterday for two more hard drives - Everything is getting backed up at least twice !

Andreas - I love Beeker, he's the dogs b*****cks

Andrea got an update on the hard drive:

So far they have got 900,000 images (I didn't realise I had taken that many pictures ). No definite out come yet as the software is still saying 18 hours to go. Due to the large amount of data I know have to wait until the weekend or Monday to see what has been saved. There is still the question if I will get the contents of the hard drive in their original form, in files or thousands of images not in the files (War Diary names) I placed them.

The wait continues....Albeit with a slightly slower heart beat.

 

I think I remember these from the Windows 95 days. Were they tapes or a high density diskette? And there was a major problem with them at one time, if I remember correctly. Problem with prorietary backup systems is they are not future proof, as you have found. Probably you need to re-do your backups as each new technology is introduced. One possibility is to simply clone the data onto one or more discs, and make a steaming pot of tea while it copies. But can you be sure USB-2 drives will still connect up in 10 years time? There's a lot to be said for 5 hole paper tape.


EDIT: Found this reference on wiki:

In September 1998, a class action suit was brought against Iomega over a type of Zip drive failure dubbed the "Click of Death".

 

Great stuff, you are unf****d.

 

There are a few out there, some even supplied with the HDD you purchase, but be aware that some of these are downright *useless* (WD I'm looking at you!!)

I use a Mac, and unfortunately the BU program I use, doesn't have a PC version, although a quick search did locate a few that may be suitable:

http://clonezilla.org/
http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/free-backup-software.htm
http://alternativeto.net/software/carbon-copy-cloner/

The last link is a listing of PC alternatives to CCC (OSX only), which is what I use. My advice is to have a look at what the features are and see if there are any reviews by actual users. (Not mag reviews, as sometimes these can be skewed or, as they don't actually use for long periods, they can't give you real-time user feedback.) Try 1 or 2 out and see which you feel comfortable with and is easiest for you to use; I'd also look at one that you can customise as well.

I have 2 external HDDs as (heavy duty) backups - my 2TB backs up every 2 hours to save any changes to "selected" folders as I work (HDD crashes can happen at *any* time) and a 1TB that gets backed up every Sunday - that is the entire computer which I can boot from if anything goes awry. (To give you an idea - my 1TB HDD took approx. 5hrs to completely back up this past Sunday.)

As others have said, backups are vital in this day and age - some photographers I know, actually keep a second (and third) off site just in case of theft or fire. As Andy's example shows, accidents can (and will happen), knowing you have a double back-up will give you a lot of peace of mind.

 

Im glad all seems to be working out for you. Hopfully all the data can be found again.

Maybe I can add something to some of the comments about going to the right people for help.
A while back we had some problems with our laptop. Took it back to the shop where we got it from, he tested it, and told us it was a virus or something like that. It had really affected how Windows was working. He told us that the best way was to do a re-install of Windows. I dont remember his exact words, but he was saying he would make the laptop the same as when we purchased it.
Well he did, because he formatted the whole thing, every piece of data, photos, etc included. He had never asked about what we had saved, and never mentioned that everything would be gone.
After I had restrained myself from jumping over the counter and hitting him, he said he would try to recover what he could using his 'special software'. When I went to pick it up, he said he was sorry, but he couldnt find anything. I said surely there was a way, but he insisted that the Police come to him and ask him to recover data, so if he could not find it, then it was gone.

I went home, looked on the internet for a few minutes, downloaded a free programme (think it was called Rcover), and found 90% of our photos!

So make sure you get someone who knows what they are doing (and make lots of backups)

 

I remember back in the 1990's the broadcasting industry was looking for a way to future proof back up of video tape. One idea given serious consideration was to photograph the wave form from an oscilloscope onto 35mm black and white film stock. Film having a lifespan of 100+ years.

Could do something similar with digital data, although I couldn't guess how many kilometres of film would be needed to back up a 1TB hard drive!

 

Have you tried Cobian?

I've been using it for several years with no problem at all.

http://download.cnet.com/Cobian-Backup/3000-2242_4-10071828.html?tag=mncol;1