M!@#$% F*&^%$

The hard drive of my 2-year old laptop died yesterday, taking with it ALL my underwater images that I've shot in the last 8 months, as well as the results of 2 other shoots (including an underwater modeling shoot I had done just yesterday).

What makes it so galling is that I *have* 2 bloody exteran drivers and a CD burner for backing images up, but never got around to it b/c my workflow is to first catalog my images before archiving them - and due to lack of time, I hadnt gotten around to cataloging these images.

One of my best wildlife shoots is also potentially gone - including my favorite tiger photo.

I am desperately hoping that data recovery specialists can do something, cos otherwise, I am going to beat my head against a wall in frustration.

Vandit

The hard drive of my 2-year old laptop died yesterday, taking with it ALL my underwater images that I've shot in the last 8 months, as well as the results of 2 other shoots (including an underwater modeling shoot I had done just yesterday).

 

What makes it so galling is that I *have* 2 bloody exteran drivers and a CD burner for backing images up, but never got around to it b/c my workflow is to first catalog my images before archiving them - and due to lack of time, I hadnt gotten around to cataloging these images.

 

One of my best wildlife shoots is also potentially gone - including my favorite tiger photo.

 

I am desperately hoping that data recovery specialists can do something, cos otherwise, I am going to beat my head against a wall in frustration.

 

Vandit

dont't despair just yet data recovery is pretty good these. one thing though is to stop fiddling around with the briken drive asap, ie no trying to read or boot on the disk leave it off and let the specialists take care of it.

though expensive i have seem many drives being recovered quite fully.

was it the boot drive or a secondary drive?

/paul

Paul, that's about the only thing that's keeping me calm - the hope that I can get the blasted thing to work. I tried a few times to boot from a CD, and then stopped (was getting a different message each time).

It is the main drive on my laptop - I had partitioned it, but as I got one message saying that the file "partition.sys" was causing problems, I hope that it may just be the partition. But then, the disc was not recognized another time, so who knows.

Money is not an issue anymore - I have some irreplaceable images on that drive! Here's hoping. I am back from the road at the end of this week. Am heading to a recovery specialist straight from the airport.

Vandit

Paul, that's about the only thing that's keeping me calm - the hope that I can get the blasted thing to work. I tried a few times to boot from a CD, and then stopped (was getting a different message each time).

 

It is the main drive on my laptop - I had partitioned it, but as I got one message saying that the file "partition.sys" was causing problems, I hope that it may just be the partition. But then, the disc was not recognized another time, so who knows.

 

Money is not an issue anymore - I have some irreplaceable images on that drive! Here's hoping. I am back from the road at the end of this week. Am heading to a recovery specialist straight from the airport.

 

Vandit

sounds like if you're MBR is hosed, if your images are on another partition there's a lot of hope. if you have an xp recovery cd you could boot from it (you may need to modify the bios settings to boot from cd) and then go and find your other partition. if not if you can you could put that hard drive in an external enclosure and and then look at it from another PC. fingers crossed i have seen this a couple of times recently and each time most data was recovered especially if your data is on another partition.

but i'd really stop using the pc and let a specialist go at it. the're good at what they do.

hope the best happens :)/paul

www.diskdoctors.com they'll give you a free evaluation to let you know if the data is recoverable and won't charge you if its not. There are also utilities, freeware, that you can download if the computer still recognizes that you have a drive attached. Just went through this myself. I did manage to backup my files but I lost 2 drives in 2 months. I never completely restored after the first failure and lost data. I still have the drive but its going to cost upwards of $1800 to get it recovered. I guess I'll hang onto it until I can find a clean room!

I feel for you

It might be worth it to pay a few hundred to a pro recovery shop.

I had a crash a couple of weeks ago and went into panic mode. But alas, I recalled doing a back up on my Maxtor drives and now I do a back up every time I do anything to anything. Good luck, but I would easily pay $1800 to get images and footage that meant that much to me.

Joe

I'm sorry to hear that. That actually sounds worse than my camera flood. I hope you will be able to recover your files.

BTW I did not get a chance to say good bye in person. Ania and me enjoyed Andamans a lot! Thanks.