Help with my Seagate NIGHTMARE

[ScottishRite]

I transfered all of my images from my compmuter to a 300gb External HD (seagate).
They were all Raw files dating 4 years back. When I went to retrieve them off of the HD they had been converted into thumbnail size photos.

Any ideas?

Honestly anything is welcome!?
:(

[Jon]

How'd you transfer them, and how are you viewing them? Do you still have the original disk they came from?

[Box Brownie]

OK silly question time.

What has changed? By that I mean when OS was being used on the computer originally held the images? And as such what OS is on the computer you are currently try to view them on?

Also, using Windows Explorer what doe sit tell you about the capacity of the drive?

So, to summarise WinXP for example is not RAW savvy if you are trying 'see' the files presence. Threfore 'explore' the drive using the Canon software perhaps PS.

In other words unless you did something very odd the images should still be there it is just the way you are trying 'view' them.

HTH maybe :)

[CyberDyneSystems]

Seagate?
Did you use the Seagate back up software, or drag and drop/cut and paste with the OS?

Look deeper in the folder structure.
The built in software that comes with many Seagate drives for some reason makes a hugely complex and DEEP folder structure that you need to dig through to actually get to the data.
You may be looking at thumbs that merely reference the actual data whioch you have not yet found.

Check the drive space used via My Computer and see if the amount of used space is close to what 4 years of RAW files looks like, or if it looks like 4 years of thumbs.. it would be a huge difference.

[ScottishRite]

I am using Mac OSX 10.4.9
Two days ago I dragged all photo files from my computer's HD to the External. I then copied them to another folder on the External HD in sort of a double backup (dumb I know)
I then deleted photos off of my computers HD since I drastically needed HD space.

Come today I drag all photo files from External to MacHD and once large RAW photos are now (at max) 300x300pixel photos.

[CyberDyneSystems]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does drag & drop on a Mac not just create a bunch 0f shortcuts as opposed to actually moving or copying the files?

If you copied and pasted as well, then you should at least have copies on the external....

[ScottishRite]

I have moved flies (video and music files) back and forth plenty without actually copying them. Would it be different with photos for some reason?

[Box Brownie]

I know nothing of Mac (wish did) but as asked by me and others & now added question - did yuo check the capacity used compared to the capacity gained on the internal drive?

And on that note and know you said you have regularly shifted files but has that been to external drives ~ do other rules apply when using ext drives with Mac OS's ~ do you ever check that they have been trasnfered correctly.

Lastly, if all else fails is there a Mac equivalent of a data recovery program to find any of the deleted files on the internal HD?

Best of luck & I hope you can recover them, or at least most of them?

[ScottishRite]

I have been checking for a system restore for deleted files but I think that it only resides on IBM based PC's (considering restoring deleted files is a new feature on MACs upcoming OS I am guessing it is not on my version)

As for the size of the copied files. The only barometer I have is that it took 15 minutes to copy to the external and 1 minute to copy back.

[ScottishRite]

Thanks for all your help so far everyone.

[Box Brownie]

Ref Mac recovery - did a Google and wonder if this search criteria would be results that could help???

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=active&q=lost+files+on+a+mac&meta=

[Wilt]

So, to summarise WinXP for example is not RAW savvy if you are trying 'see' the files presence.

It *is* possible to download a utility from the Microsoft web site, which permits RAW files to be viewable as thumbnails in the folder, rather than simply as file names. I have it on my PC at work and at home, on XP Home and on XP Professional, respectively, and view my 20D RAW files as thumnails with no other viewing software at all.

[ghostman]

I believe the utility Wilt is referring to for viewing RAW thumbnails is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D48E808E-B10D-4CE4-A141-5866FD4A3286&displaylang=en

I have limited experience on Macs, so I can't give any real feedback. Based on a quick google search, there appear to be tools such as Norton Utilities, TechTools Pro, Snax, Tinktool, VirtualLab, Data Rescue and FileSalvage. Not sure if any of these will help, but they might be something you should look into. If you have installed apps or created new files to a large degree after the RAWs were deleted, then your chances of recovery are very minimal. I'm pretty certain every OS just tags a file as "deleted", then overwrites the area when necessary. If there has been several new files, the old "deleted" files would have been overwritten.

Just to note, this is highly unlikely to be a Seagate problem. It most certainly has something to do with how Macs treats drag/drops as someone already mentioned. I know the old MacOS would just shortcut/alias the files and not actually perform a copy. I don't know if that's the case with the new MacOS though.

As a precaution to all users dealing with Macs or PCs, when moving files to another media, perform a true COPY/PASTE and not a MOVE (drag/drop). It's always possible the data gets corrupted in-transit to the other media and your original data is lost. In addition, back-ups are worthless if you do not ensure you can successfully RESTORE from the back-up. There are countless examples in the IT world where this has happened. And if the data is important, make a secondary back-up (from the original!). It's not a matter of IF your media will die (regardless of CD, DVD, tape or HD), it's a matter of WHEN.

[MDJAK]

I drag and drop from my desktop on my mac to my external hard drives all the time without problem.

sounds to me as if it worked fine, but you're just not viewing them correctly.
me

[ScottishRite]

I am so confused at this point after spending a good DAY trying to figure out what happened that it seems that it will become one of the worlds great mysteries.

[toyguru]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does drag & drop on a Mac not just create a bunch 0f shortcuts as opposed to actually moving or copying the files?

If you copied and pasted as well, then you should at least have copies on the external....

Drag and drop on a Mac will make copies of the files if the hard drive is and external hard drive. It will make shortcuts if you select the files as "Make Alias".

Scottish what you might want to do is to check your external hard drive, if you still kept the copies on it, and see if you have the full file for your RAW images. I think you might have copied your "duplicate backup" onto your Mac. I have made the mistake of thinking that I copied a folder as a backup and all I did was make a whole lot of shortcuts.

If you have your external backup from the PC and compare both folders that you created (original back up and backup of back up) they should be the same size. If they are not then you created a backup and short cuts. If you do not have the backup on the external hard drive there are ways to retrieve the images even though you might have erased them (as long as you have not written the drive to "zeros"), but sometimes the files are damaged and you might only be able to retrieve parts of the files.

[ScottishRite]

Holy Christ.....I found them.....I dont know how it happened, all I know is that after going through every file I found some random file named ".." which has all of my photos.

Wierd things my friends wierd things.

Thats it I am now purchasing 2 1TB storage devices.