5 Years Of Work, Gone

that's why i store it all on optical media. so far it's good. it wouldn't survive a fire, but neither would a hard drive.

right now i think i have 5 copies of current works on different drives. one drive is off. i update the drive to larger ones every now and then. the mbtf on drives is usually 10,000 hours. longer if they stay off in the mean while. while optical isn't the best, if it's covered and not scratched up it will last a long time.

it depends how a drive died though. if the bearing went bad then it's toast. if the logic board went bad, i heard you can install another board from another drive that's the same - like a used drive. and you can get stuff off that way.


---Mike Savad

Louise, I back up everything--more than 10,000 scanned or digital images--on three different external hard drives. Electronics fail, and hard drives will fail sooner or later....all of them. You can get top notch EHDs with one or two TBs of space for less than $100 dollars at places like Costco.

Yup you should have at least 2 backups. At least have one or two portable hard drive back ups. The other I would recommend buying cloud storage in case all your backup hard drives crap out. Windows 8 has skydrive which gives you 10 gb storage for free which isn't alot, but I think you can purchase more storage space. There are others cloud storage companies as well. I lost a bunch of stuff a while ago by not backing up. Unfortunately we sometimes have to learn the hard way, but do learn from it and hopefully you can prevent it in the future from happening again.

I have three external drives plus CDs and DVDs. That, and http://www.backblaze.com/

It will take you 2-3 months to back everything up to the cloud, but then automatic daily incremental backups will keep you up to date and ready for just about anything.

Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

2 backups. One it's always off site to a friend's place.

Lousie;

I feel your pain. I learned my lesson the hard way in 2004 or 2005. Most of my photos before then are dust to the wind. The hardest thing to let go off (well, emotionally, since it was, in fact, gone) were the two novel length manuscripts I had written and had just completed. I've been trying to rewrite them ever since.

I'm not sure what went on it, we have to assume the board did. The drive runs, but doesn't communicate with any computers. The techies did what they called a "Level 2 diagnostic", which might mean they tried another board, but couldn't get any data. It was explained to me that the "lab" they send it to would have taken the entire drive apart to get to its core storage and then attempt a retrieval.

I suppose if I start out with one new HD, transfer the raw images to it then just re-do it to another HD, that wouldn't be too much trouble and I could still store away the cards from the past.- giving me 3 backups to my older stuff. Ugh...

The worst part is all my edited TIFFs with their layers and in various stages of finishing from 2008 to 2012 are lost, plus the work I had done and took from the studio when I left 2 years ago.

I was in the process of transferring stuff to my Passport for use on my new laptop when this happened. I didn't get very far beforehand and now it's gone.
Curse my procrastination.

What Buddy said. 3 different drives, in other words, 3 copies of all your files. If at all possible rotate one offsite to a safe deposit box or trusted friend's house. I use the hard drive in my laptop as the main "live" storage and rotate 2 offline USB drives for backups. You could even share out a folder of WIP to Box.com or another cloud service just so your working copy backups are always up to date.

Personally I would not use flash media as a backup solution if only because it's a management headache to keep track of all those little cards and know what's on them. Not to mention having to mount one every time you need something. Personally I've run into data corruption with optical media. I lost a few RAW files that way. They are fine for burning music on to play in the car. They are horrible for data backups.

Use a program like Adobe Lightroom or ACDSee Pro to catalog your files. They will even catalog offline files. then its very fast to find what you need.

You are going though a lot of drives. I've been supporting computers for many years. Hard drives just don't die after two years. Most last 8-10 years. Heat is the mortal enemy of hard drives. I'm thinking your drives are always running and perhaps aren't getting cooled properly. You said you purchased a new case? What kind of case? Was it aluminum? Was it vented? When it was on was it very hot to the touch?

I've been buying Western Digital Green drives. They are not suitable for running an operating system from but they are great for backup drives. They run slower, but also cooler than standard drives.

I had a hard drive crash and lost everything about 10 yrs. ago. Since then I've learned, but not well enough. Your experience is a great reminder. Sorry for you though.

@Dan-5$ a month is pretty cheap-have you ever had to retrieve anything from BackBlaze cloud? I wonder how hard that is and have you been with them long?

I have two 1.5TB hard drives for back up and back up one daily and the other weekly (takes overnight).

My FAA images are also burned to DVD and kept in a fire proof safe (no guarantees, of course, but at least better than nothing).

I feel your pain, this happened to me a few months ago. All I can say now is there are a couple handful of works that people have bought and now that the files no longer exist those works now have the scarcity issue attached them. Luckly I do have a second generation of most of my work because FAA was able to send me the Hi Res JPGs.

Anyway, I've gone to the 2 backup system, one hard drive and now the cloud which I'm still uploading to Cloud storage. As Dan said it is a very slow process to catch up. But once its all done, saving on a regular basis will be very easy. I don't use CD's any more as they have always crapped out on me whenever I got a new computer.

Chuck: The case, which I only purchased this week, is plastic. It's for externals that crap out; it has an IDE board. You take the existing HD apart and drop the drive into the case in the hopes it'll get the drive to work. I also have an IDE/SATA connection kit that I am assuming they used at the repair center to try and get the data, but to no avail. That has connections that plug directly into the drive's board that you can then, via USB, connect to a computer for retrieval.

I don't keep my drives connected continuously, but they haven't lasted more than 2-3 years each. One Maxtor only lasted about 6 months, so I'm done with that brand. Even though it was under warranty, Seagate's retrieval division wanted over $1200 to get the data. I got a program called Recovery Genius for $40 and got that data back and put it on the Verbatim.

Nothing seems to last very long. Remember Zip drives? I have quite a few Zip disks that are basically worthless now and they had all my school work on them from 2003-2005. Still of the opinion that they were the best for storage, though. At least if the drive failed, another one could be had to read the disks. And since the data on the disks was internal, things that could go wrong with CDs or DVDs wasn't an issue.

Fran, I've been with BackBlaze since last September. Had been using Carbonite, but BB is faster and easier to understand. Retrievals are FAST. I've just downloaded single files now and then to check that everything is working. Very smooth. So I am at least under the impression that it's working. So far no problems.

Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

I've used BackBlaze for a couple of years. I had to retrieve some files once and it was super easy. I recommend them.

Really sorry to hear this happened to you, Louise.

Man that hurts...been there.

'Tis why I now have two - 2TB's, three 4-TB's, and one 5 TB's drive backing up on the hour-every hour. I swap out/rotate one of the 4-TB's and store it off site outside the house weekly. Costs a few pennies to setup, but then again, whats the cost of losing everything? Am also exploring online/cloud b.u.'s....


~Michel Soucy

With the prices of online backups, I figure why not?

I have a storage server at the house that is a RAID and should allow enough redundancy for a HDD failure, but I also have offsite backups just in case.

Sorry to hear that. I hope that the tech people can help you get back what you have perhaps lost.

I have my images backed up on three drives here in the house and offsite at a secure hard drive I can upload to at a friends home, far away from here. My hope being odds are better that we would not both get hit my the same tornado etc. Still, I worry sometimes.

Louise,

Don't know if this helps,but I had a Maxtor and it died, 500gbs. I took it to CompUSA and they said they could send it off for $$$ and no guarantees. Disheartened to say the least. I then did a Internet search and found the main issue with dead HD's was the power/USB connectors on the case itself. The HD ran, just like yours but no data showed. I brought it back to CompUSA and told the techie and he said, oh yeah, you need a new cable assembly, but we can't do that, with charging you. BUT I asked if he could show me and I removed the case myself,which he did and I even used some of his tools. Then,when I had just the HD case,which looks like the same inside the Desktop, he showed what cable to buy, $19 or so and there were a few choices,since this happens all the time with HD's, bought the new cable, hooked it up,gave it to the techie and he hooked it up on his test bed computer and there were my files!!!

Check this out before you go and spend $$$$,

Rich

Louise,

Oh, yeah have a few externals, all the time. Cheap now and just back them up and then put them on the shelf by the door and if anything happens, you can just grab that bag o' HDs and be on your way. Really important stuff, leave with family and friends...........

Rich

Specifically because we have had two fires in my building in the past three years, I use Carbonite. It's $59 a year and stores everything you want to put on it 'in the cloud'. It saved my bacon the last time I had a computer die on me very unexpectedly. Previously I had an HP laptop die on me and the only fix was to give me a new hard drive. They put in a new hard drive and gave me the old one. But yes, about $1000 to retrieve files off the old hard drive. That was about 3 years ago. Now I have peace of mind with Carbonite. It backs up AS YOU CREATE files...not at the end of the day. So it's always updating. I feel it's great for $59, and I can access my files from anywhere.

Rich, that's what the new case was for. I'm 99% sure it is the USB port but that can't be removed, so a new case, the techies thought, would be the way to go. My final try will be an IDE to IDE connection and/or the SATA/IDE to USB kit. When the case didn't work, that's when I brought it in for a "diagnostic check" but sometimes I fare better than the educated guys, so I'll give it a go.

I'm looking at reviews for cloud storage now.

I have crash plan. I think it cost me something like 120 bucks for three years. I keep putting off getting another external drive which i think I will do this weekend because my old one filled up a year ago...

Good luck Louise.

I just bought a 1.5 TB external hard drive and have it now running continuously.
there are just too many horror stories out there...sigh

Louise,

If "I" can fix something like this,it's got to be simple! Taking it out of it's case was simple and then the new power/USB cable was simple. The USB that's attached/built into the case is probably the problem and like I just said, it's so common, they make cable assemblies for this very issue,

Rich

I'm really sorry Louise! I think I would have a heart attack if I opened my art folder and it was empty! I have everything backed up on an external hard drive and a couple of dumb drives. worth the investment.

I simply can not imagine not having multiple backups. Why did you not have backups?

Whenever I download my files I automatically get Lightroom to create a copy of the raw file on another HD. I then automatically backup my main HD with time machine.

I lost about 6 mo worth of stuff a number of yrs ago should when my laptop hd died. This included grades for the class I was teaching at the time.

Hi Louise, I'm no techy, not help here, just want to say I'm sorry, its a huge loss!

Carbonite

I don't use LR. Tried it as a beta many years ago and didn't care for it. Picked up a 1TB Passport to put the older raw files on and from there probably find a storage site. My new laptop has Skydrive, which did not get top ratings, but it's a start. Since I no longer use compact flash cards, I'm probably not going to reformat those so I'll have my raw files in two places. Then it's just a matter of a second back up drive for finished/edited work.
Not like I had anything better to do....

I picked up a Hard Drive dock,....((KingWin EZ-Dock 2 ) which holds two 3.5" hard drives of high GB storage,......
I copy from my computer to #1 single 3GB hard drive that's in the dock,...
Then I copy again to #2 3GB hard drive (also inserted into the same dock,.....
In this mannor I'm always creating backups as part of my work flow.

I save 4 versions of every image I've worked on,..
My RAW that's obvious
then
1st-My spot and artifacts removed .psd file ( this file came straight out of Adobe Camera Raw as my 1st .psd file).

2nd-My finished layered file with ALL my work on it as a .psd file
3rd-My high quality jpg file made from a flattened copy of my finished layered file,..(This is my upload file to FAA. up to 24MB)
4th-My lower quality jpg up to 1.5MB used for random use as I may require.

These 4 files go into a folder named same as each photo I upload.

These 4 files are always at least double backed up.

These 4 files are now readily available and ready to submit or re-purpose as I may need in the future just by making copies of them.

That's my technique,.....it is a natural progression that I automatically do in my post processing.

Whatever works for each of us is right.

We all do the same thing,....different,....my fav statement.

Am sorry you had that problem Louise,...I didn't realize that recovering files is still that much $$$$.
I wish you luck and hope some of the suggestions here sound interesting to you.

I did lose a Nikon D300 and a 500mm Nikkor off a ledge into the rocks and ocean last March though,....but that's another story.

Marty

Wow, Marty, that's really sad!
I still have a lot of my finished jpegs because I hadn't transferred them to the (now dead) Verbatim.
As I said, I keep the original raw files on the cards. I do preliminary editing in the converter, save in monthly named folders as TIFFs, then rename them as I work.
All the current year's folders are on my desktop (although I have been putting them on a Passport because I now have a good laptop to work on).
I had been clearing out my desktop at year's end to a hard drive, never thinking that should be done twice. And probably done at least weekly in case the PC craps out.
I've been doing it for so long, changing my workflow is going to be discombobulating, but I have lost work before due to either crashes or reformatting before double-checking (got it back, though).

Always wear your camera!

I have 3 external drives plus the internal one on my mac. I keep the externals turned off except when I do backups. I also have some older stuff on CD's and DVD although its a bit cumbersome and I've been lazy lately and haven't backed up on DVD in quite a while.

If you let it get ahead of you,...which Iv'e done,...It's a bear to play catch up.

Devise a logical method that simplifies your workflow ,...because,...you have to maintain it,.....if it's too complicated it can be a big time sink.

Recoup whatever you haven't lost,...start there anyway. Do a little at a time systematically and it will come together.
As everything gets organized,....delete the excess clutter to reclaim hard drive space.

I only file by Year,...Month,..and day,.......I don't break it down any finer.
Less is more for me that way.
But if I'm looking for something quickly,.....I'm sunk in the water if I cannot nail the date down.

Because it is a pleasurable passtime for me and not a business,...it works fine.

Once you have a system working keep duplicate backups (as req'd) on the safest medium that works for you.

There's Cloud storage out there today,...but I'm not comfortable relinquishing my files to cyber space,....I'd rather be responsible for me,....If something fails it will be my fault,...I trust me.

Nice meeting you here Louise...
Best of luck, lots of great advice here on FAA.

Marty

I break it down that way too, keeping the current year, by month, on my PC's desktop. Once in a while, if I've been to an event, that might get its own folder within the month, but that's as far as it goes. Whether I'm using Photomatix or DAP or just doing some enhancements in PS, it all goes back into whatever folder it came from, with maybe a letter after its file number and always saved as TIFF. After all that, then it goes into a separate FAA folder as jpegs. I have a few redundant folders for my website, lab, Facebook, etc that aren't important should I have issues, but that FAA folder should definitely be backed up.

The next week or more will be a lot of going through the compact cards, making corresponding folders on the Passport and transferring. A separate Passport will be my current backup to this year's work (it already has all of 2013, which is also still on my desktop).

Once I get this all figured out and I'm comfortable with it, I'll get a Mybook or anything NOT Seagate and keep that as an archive.

I know how you feel about the Cloud. My husband used to put all his photos into Webshots. So much for that...

I have 2 1-terabyte external drives, plus a 100gb account with Google Drive. Google Drive is very cheap -- $1.99 per month for 100GB, and $10 per month for 1 Terabyte. I back up all my original images, my psd files, and the jpg files that upload to various sites.

+1 for Backblaze. Hands down the best out there for cloud backups. The interface is easy to work with and very efficient too, especially if you are using a Mac. Sign up for their free trial and see what you think.

As far as retrieving the data from the hard disk platters itself, give Drive Savers a call, if you haven't already. They are the best in the business!

Cheers!

Three online back-ups (run daily), plus one offline which I run each week. The offline is on a small, portable drive which I can just run out of the house with in the event of a fire. It's all automated apart from the offline because I need to physically plug that drive in to do the back-up. I also have a spare portable just in case the offline drive fails.

Never use Cloud services as I like to hold my own data and I'm not the trusting type.

Anything with moving parts will fail eventually. It really does pay to prepare for the worst when it comes to hard drives.

What is the difference between "online back-ups" and "offline" if you don't use Cloud services?

I'm devoting a 1TB Passport to my raw files ( I have about 23 various types of media to wade through! From compact flash cards to old smart media).

Edit: Oops. forgot about another container, so maybe about 40 media cards.

Online = physically connected drive
Offline = disconnected drive
All owned and controlled by me, not some magical internet pixies i.e. Google

So sad Louise - hope it works out for you in the end.

I have several (many) flash drives that my work is on - as well as a nearly full 1.5 tb seagate EHD. I just bought a new EHD 3tb. The photo's don't really concern me - the digital art does - those are the "original" files - if they go kabloohy - they'll be gone for good - except for the uploaded copies to FAA. I am also using MyPC backup - I do have to manually back up my external hard drive - but it has no limit. I was using Carbonite - but found them difficult to retrieve files (that's just me - you may be finding it no problem at all).

Yea, my personal jury is still out on Cloud usage. Just to let you know my own personal experience-Seagate HD's suck. One lasted maybe a year (but I was able to finally get the data out of it) and another, my second one, lasted 6 months. When I went to send that back under warranty, I got the worst customer service of anyplace. First, their "warranty" had nothing to do with data retrieval-for that they wanted $1200 a DAY (yes, a day). I told them do not touch it, send it back to me. I had sent it to them in its original packing and box-they sent it back to me not only in a generic box, but poorly wrapped in just bubble wrap. When I inspected it, it rattled and there was a pry mark on the top. Called them about all this and I got a snide reply of "We can't keep all the boxes those come in, we toss them. Don't know why it's rattling, not our fault."

Photo Recovery Genius, $39.99 and I got data from both broken Seagates (Maxtor line).

One good thing about this fiasco-I am finally getting all my originals organized by year and month as well as finding stuff I forgot I had!