Am I F****D?

Call me old fashioned but:

Being low tech has advantages. All the many, many files I have ordered from researchers over the last 12 years have come on disc. I have resisted attempts to get me to accept them via clever systems. I have all the discs neatly filed in an old fashioned disc storage rack. Only the ones I am using at the moment are in my hard drive. Old fashioned maybe but simple and safe.

Mike

 

Sounds better than sons WD...generated its own password...cant break into it now...PC fixers aint interested...say its a known problem..Plenty of folk offering expensive solutions that don't work...All his music and radio work at uni..stuck on it...

Drew...dont go back to using WD what ever you do..

 

Adam,

Thanks for your reassuring thoughts. At least I won't lose them all in one fell swoop. Unless there's a fire. Perhaps I need fireproof storage.

I would like to know if Andy drove to the technicians with his lights flashing and two tone going.

Mike

 

I had similar issues with optical media. I lost a lot of data within five years due to CDs and DVDs oxidising. Multiple copies in multiple locations for precious data is the way to go.

 

PM'd you mate.

 

Well done Lee

just dont let him teach you how to mount and dismount a motorbike

 

One other consideration for all of you. Are any of you storing irreplaceable media either off-site or in a burn-resistant box? A fire at your home could destroy storage media even if the fire never actually reaches it. Heat alone could render the optical discs or harddrives unreadable.

My photos, videos and other personal data are in a firesafe in my house. My photos are also on my parent's and sister's PCs and I reconcile those photos several times a year when I visit them. My friend uses a safe-deposit box at a bank to store his photo files. Regardless, multiple copies at other locations is a strong consideration if your data is highly important to you.

 

I haven't said yes yet Clive
Getting the images in sequential order is straightforward but I’m wracking my brains for an efficient way of organising them back into files other than manually shifting the images around.

 

Lee, I may be happy with just that and manually work through them myself (Andrea) if push comes to shove, so don't go to uber amounts of trouble trying to sort them. I'm a bit conscious that I need to do my last two day visit first as some forum members are waiting for files so would do the most recent ones first.

 

Let's see what you get back. It could be that the images have been recovered in the same order as they were written to the disk originally. I wouldn't fully trust that even if it looks like most are in the correct order but it should help with the recent jobs done.

 

This one is particulary bad as it is based on silver (the process first used at the Philips video disc plant), but any dics could get this eventually. May be worth googling for whatever diseases DVDs get. Some are more reliable than others.

Incidentally, the top surface is more at risc from scratches than the bottom playable part, the data layer on top is only protected by a thin film a few microns.

 

+10 for cobian - free, does full, incremental, and differential backups, will also compress and encrypt if you so desire. Excellent forum support for a free product - if your having a problem and can't find the answer on the forum you likely aren't really having the problem

Andy, life sucks and then you remember you forgot to backup. Formatting a drive in the way you did usually only resets the hard drives "catalogue". Think of walking into a library, go to the catalogue, find the book, go to the properly labelled shelf and get it. Now remove the catalogue from the library - all the books are still there but will take someone who knows the underlying organization of the library to find the book you want. That someone will be a disk recovery program that can attempt to piece the catalogue back together for you.

Backup solutions:
- Burn your stuff to DVD - Quick and easy, but DVD's don't last forever either - especially once you have kids
- 2nd external hard drive to back up to
- something like this (sorry this is the geek in me speaking - might seem an extreme solution but it will give you great data protection):
http://www.amazon.co.uk/QNAP-TS-412-Digital-Diskless-Multimedia/dp/B004LOCFUY/ref=sr_1_1/278-2478030-9752719?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1378515477&sr=1-1

£270 plus you need to buy the hard drives - 2TB hard drives will cost you about £100 each.
You will need to plug it into your router/firewall or network switch.
- buy at least 3 drives and set it up as RAID5 (if a drive dies your data is still intact but you need to replace it asap, if you lose 2 drives you're toast) or buy 4 drives and go RAID10 for best data protection from drive failure (not much helps with data corruption but a 4 drive RAID 10 allows 2 drives to fail without losing data). If you set up a mirror (only 2 drives) you aren't as well protected which is why a 2 drive unit is cheaper.
- with 3 drives using RAID5 you get storage space = to 2 drives, with RAID10 and 4 drives you get storage space = to 2 drives (a little more costly, but safer)
- I can get this unit with 4 2TB hard drives for about $900CDN including shipping to you (save you a couple £100) and I'll configure it for you for free before I ship it (put in the drives, config the RAID etc), and I'll help you get it working when it gets to you via remote.

Info on RAID levels http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/08/raid-levels-tutorial/

Wayne

 

Thank you to everyone who has put forward suggestions regarding software which can perform plain file back-ups. I`m currently studying these to see what each offers.

Regards,

John

 

Hi Drew
I have only just seen this post. I have some revovery software that can recover hdd as yours if you pm me with you e-mail address i could try to e-mail it to you it's only 4.5mb zip file.
I have used it to recover a corrupt hdd with 100% success.

Smudgger

 

Thanks for the offer but the hard drive is with a IT firm and I should get it back this week.

 

Andy,

I am truly sorry that you have had so much stress with the Hard drive and hope that all works out well.

However, you have created an excellent thread, which is full of Information and help which I and no doubt many other members have found both fascinating and helpful.

Perhaps Administration may make this thread available permanently.

Regards
Tom

 

Perfect title Adam (and sub-title).