MeganW Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 I was in denial yesterday. I really thought I would wake up this morning and the harddrive with all my pictures would somehow have magically revived. Thousands of pictures, neatly organized & titled with child's name, date, and event. And not backed up in the past few years. I am trying not to panic. Any suggestions for data recovery? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lailasmum Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 (edited) It depends a bit, if the hard drive itself has failed then you may not have any options or only expensive ones, I am not sure on that though. If its the rest of the computer that has died you can easily remove the hard drive and put it in an external case and connect it to another computer as an external drive. Edited May 9, 2012 by lailasmum Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
praisefor3 Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 I hesitate to say this as I'm not trying to make you feel worse...but in case you get them back...let me tell you that every year when I renew my Carbonite subscription for fifty or so bucks I remember those panic feelings I used to have about losing all my pictures and I remind myself how it is so worth it. I used to convince myself that we would back up faithfully...and now I just faithfully pay Carbonite so I don't have to worry about it any more. I sooo hope you get them back. At this point I would take my whole computer and pay a tech to attempt recovery. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nova147 Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 The external case you will need is sometimes called a clamshell. But, as pp mentioned, this will only help if the hard drive is not corrupted. Usually, what happens is the hard drive fails to boot, which makes means the data (in this case photos) is still there, so you just need to hook it up to another computer similar to the way you would a flash drive. I would suggest the geek squad. Unless you know someone with experience taking computers apart, that is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sbgrace Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 We had this happen this year. I lost pictures, though "only" about 1.5 years, and all my self created lesson plans. In our case it was an actual hard drive failure. The quotes we got were extremely expensive (1000's) to attempt to recover the material so we couldn't. It's high because they have to do it in a safe/clean room I guess. Anyway, it still makes me sad and was a hard lesson. If you can cover the cost my understanding is usually they can get the stuff. :grouphug: If it's an external drive that won't spin up there is some freezer trick that sometimes works to be able to retrieve things before it thaws. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Renee in NC Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 Putting it in the freezer helps. I was able to get a TON of data off of a hard drive that had failed by doing this and then attaching it to a working computer. You have to get the info off FAST! If you don't get it all the first time, put it back in the freezer and keep trying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TexasRachel Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 :iagree: I've heard the freezer thing works well. And you may be able to hook it up to another computer. We paid $100 this year to do this to DH's old computer. I knew it wasn't the hard drive, but I couldn't hook it up myself because the hard drive was too old. It was DH's bday present. He wanted those pics off. I used to use mozy, but now use Crashplan and smugmug. I've heard Good things about carbonite. I use smugmug just for pics and crashplan for school and scrap booking stuff. It's money we'll spent. When DS took my external and decided to see if it would bounce off the tile floor, I spent $100 replacing the hard drive, and a few days downloading, but I didn't loose the years worth of stuff I have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mudboots Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 Loss of photos is a big deal. I'm really sorry. If it happens to be a head crash (mine was), running the drive may scrape all the data off. As others have said, a recovery specialist like DriveSavers can open the drive in a safe room, but they're over $1000. They may not charge for checking if they're not able to recover anything. If you freeze the drive, look up instructions to avoid condensation. If the drive ends up not being recoverable, photo recovery software ($40) may be able to retrieve quite a bit off the camera/card. I used it to recover photos I had deleted four months prior, even though I had taken plenty of photos since then, and my card was fairly full. I could have recovered more if I had used it as soon as I realized I had lost the photos, instead of continuing to use that card. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k2bdeutmeyer Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 It's not cheap, but I cannot say enough good things about Drive Savers!! They saved me when I had a HD crash with client photos on it. They were seriously amazing!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.