It finally happened to me

Well, it finally happened to me......a catistrophic HD crash. I've been living the dilusion that it would never happen to me and have been very lazy about back-ups. To make matters worse, I've also discovered that my Maxtor external HD that I used fo backups has many unreadable files.

Bottom line: I've probably lost about six months worth of work. Not so much underwater but lots of topside stuff. Many mornings getting up at 3am to be on-site before dawn.

Lessons learned:

Always, always, always make a backup CD/DVD of my original files.

When it comes to storage devices don't make cost the most important criterion

Excuse me now while I shoot myself.....

Larry,

I'm really sorry to hear that.

James

Are there any off-site backup options that anyone has tried?

M.

i have smugmug.

this company allows me to store my pixs there (supposedly at the resolution and size that i uploaded to it).

but it only takes jpg, not the thousands of raw pixs that i have.

there is a current wetpixel group buy for a RAID system.

let me know if you are interested and i will get you in contact with the person. I am getting one myself.

the RAID is made by Infrant.

http://www.infrant.com/products_ReadyNAS_NV.htm

Are there any off-site backup options that anyone has tried? 

 

M.

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My father-in-law and some of his friends have set up a private torrent to back up to each others' machines. They are using low-spec Linux servers for this.

Out here in Finland, an insurance company ("if", if you must know) offers unlimited disk space for photo backup. As does Gmail...

timo

"My father-in-law and some of his friends have set up a private torrent to back up to each others' machines. They are using low-spec Linux servers for this."

 

I use mirrored drives on my server and desktop, which will, and have, protect me from drive failures but not office or home disaster (fire, flood, etc.). For those exposures I resort to old-fashioned manual methods: I backup to removable terabyte drives using a system of dated swaps and maintain full copies at two locations. It is much easier than it sounds.

 

There does seem to be a substantial argument for the ease of RAID, but for the moment I fail to see (possibly due to my own lack of understanding) why it should supercede my current practices.

 

Depending upon the depth of your file system for archiving images, namimg protocols can become problematic when backing up to CD/DVD, so I never use them for true backups.

Well, it finally happened to me......a catistrophic HD crash. I've been living the dilusion that it would never happen to me and have been very lazy about back-ups. To make matters worse, I've also discovered that my Maxtor external HD that I used fo backups has many unreadable files. 

 

Bottom line: I've probably lost about six months worth of work. Not so much underwater but lots of topside stuff. Many mornings getting up at 3am to be on-site before dawn.    

 

Lessons learned:

 

Always, always, always make a backup CD/DVD of my original files.

 

When it comes to storage devices don't make cost the most important criterion

 

Excuse me now while I shoot myself.....

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before you pull the trigger and before you use the "dead" drive again for whatever purpose, have you tried recoveyr software and or companies. unless you drive is physically broken there are fighting chances that you can recover some if not most of the data.

i don't know of any specifically but a quick google showed a number of them such as this

http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm?source=google1

the one important thing that i know about recovering is that you should NOT tohave your disk run for any reason until you are ready to launch the recovery software.

also knowing your directory structure and files names is usuall a good help and input to the reocvery app.

hth

chin up

Very sorry to hear about your disaster Larry.

A timely reminder for me at least...

Regarding on-line backup: one client I know uses US Data Trust. Incredibally reliable, file-level recovery, Grandfather/Father/Son. About $200/month, which is average for good-quality services (you get what you pay for). Also, the first backup takes foooorrrrrreeeevveeeerrrr, and you really, really need broadband.

The same client has used Drivesavers Data Recovery (which lead to using the above). Great service, very professional, was able to salvage data off of a broken (RAID card failure) mirror. I believe it cost about $3,000 for roughly 4 GB of recovered data. Usually, the faster you need it, the more expensive. The $3,000 was the 1-week rate.

I use MS Backup as Grandfather/Father/Son, alternating between two external attached drives. System files on a RAID-1 200 GB array, storage on RAID-5 1/2 TB array.

All the best, James

Thanks everybody for the advice and sympathy. I did get some good news today that most of the data on my external drive will be recoverable. The HD on my PC is toast but at least it isn't the total lose that it seemed like yesterday. I've learned a very costly but valuable lesson. Backup, backup, backup

Larry,

That's a tough lesson, I'm glad you were able to recover them. I've purchased a couple of 360G drives with external housings for about $150 apiece. They're USB so you can have pretty much an unlimited number of them. While I auto back up everything else, my picture files I manually drag and drop. Minor stuff. What I found equally amazing was how fast 12MB files fill up my hard disk

Another thought that always crosses my mind as I'm leaving a great dive site is what would I do if the computer(laptop) is somehow stolen or dies toward the end of vacation. The computer would be easy to replace but the 10G of underwater images would be lost forever. I know some of the pros on here like Stephen Frink have use models which cover this but since I don't get out that often they're not viable options. Later,

Gary

Thanks everybody for the advice and sympathy. I did get some good news today that most of the data on my external drive will be recoverable. The HD on my PC is toast but at least it isn't the total lose that it seemed like yesterday. I've learned a very costly but valuable lesson. Backup, backup, backup

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I hope you can recover your work. What caused both the PC and external disk to fail at the same time?

I back up to USB disks. I don't trust DVD's and CD's don't have enough capacity.

Herb,

I've heard a number of people say they don't trust CD's and DVD's. Can you explain to me why? I typically back up my hard disks with a slew of CD's (excruciating pain...click drag...watch a movie..click drag...<doo your favorite activity here>). I thought moving to DVD's would be perfect. Not so?

Gary

I hope you can recover your work. What caused both the PC and external disk to fail at the same time?

 

I back up to USB disks. I don't trust DVD's and CD's don't have enough capacity.

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I think my external drive has probably been going bad for a while. I only use the external drive for backup storage. Any recent stuff that I'm actively working on I have on my PC.

Herb,

          I've heard a number of people say they don't trust CD's and DVD's. Can you explain to me why? I typically back up my hard disks with a slew of CD's (excruciating pain...click drag...watch a movie..click drag...<doo your favorite activity here>). I thought moving to DVD's would be perfect. Not so?

 

Gary

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Recordable CD's and DVD's use ink to record the data. We all know what can happen to ink over time...it fades, and can cause data dropouts. There are many documented studies of this, and it has in fact happened to me.

This is not the case with CD-RW and DVD-RW (re-writable), there is no indication that they experience the same issues as recordable. Of course they are a bit more expensive and a PITA to format.

All the best, James

Larry,

Unles there's been a complete mechanical failure, there may be hope yet for your internal drive too. I've used a trick successfully in the past, and managed to recover all my pictures from a dead drive. It goes like this.

1. Get a IDE to 44-pin notebook drive (forgot the exact name) adaptor from your local electronic store (something similar to the image below). It should cost a few bucks only.

2. Use that adaptor to connect your internal drive to an external hard drive enclosure or equivalent. I personally used my regular travel storage device.

3. Connect this to your computer and use your favourite recovery software to recover your files. I've used the free software that comes with Lexar pro CF cards very successfully in the past.

Good luck,

Mat

For my trips i back up from my laptop to 2 80gb external usb powered drives, and to my ipod photo. and then split the drives and Ipod between my bags. However i am currently looking into buying some big storage for back home as i dont trust DVDs either (Definitely do not write on them, most inks contain a mild acid which eats the layers away over time). Im thinking of networking an old pc tower with 2x 300gb drives inside and hiding it somewhere where thieves won't find it. Now i need a fire solution......

Im sure i saw a related thread somewhere here on wetpixel

the RAID is made by Infrant.

http://www.infrant.com/products_ReadyNAS_NV.htm

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Yes, I have one. The main reason I got it was because over the course of 5 months, I had 3 external drives crash on me. They were all differenet housings and drives but I came to the conculsion that they were not the right solution.

The NAS is very very nice, it takes about 5 mins to setup and you are good to go.

For my trips i back up from my laptop to 2 80gb external usb powered drives, and to my ipod photo.  and then split the drives and Ipod between my bags.  However i am currently looking into buying some big storage for back home as i dont trust DVDs either (Definitely do not write on them, most inks contain a mild acid which eats the layers away over time).  Im thinking of networking an old pc tower with 2x 300gb drives inside and hiding it somewhere where thieves won't find it.  Now i need a fire solution......

 

Im sure i saw a related thread somewhere here on wetpixel

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I keep my files on a 400GB drive and backup to a USB drive that I keep at my office. I take that home to update the backup once every couple of weeks or when ever I got lots of new stuff.