Need Some Profesional Help

[djscottwalls]

I just did my seventh wedding and everything went good. Until the other
day. I lost my hard drive with all there pictures on it, before I had time to back it up.

Now I was able to give them a DVD of the reception pictures but
the Portraiture pictures and Family Pictures were the ones that were
lost. I have 2in x 3in proofs on my web site but they are asking for some
8 x 10in pictures. I was thinking of purchasing Genuine Fractals from onOne to see if that could do a good job enlarging them.

This was a nice young couple and really want to give them something to remember.

Should I refund there money. What do I do in this situation. I checked with a data recovery and it looks like I cant do it because my hard drive is really bad.

I don't know what to do and I am stressing so much I cant sleep.

Thanks
Scott

[phamster]

your data CF cards are all formatted over?

or can you extract any data from the Compact flash cards?

[djscottwalls]

they have all been formatted for sometime. :(

[harroz]

and reused? if not thats your ticket!

[sapearl]

Really sorry to hear that Scott - lousy luck.

Just how bad is the hard drive? Cooked? Total DOA? Not rotating? There are ways to bring some of those back to life. Was this your internal HD or an external? If you can't resurrect it, then you certainly owe them a refund - that would be the right thing to do. After all, as unplanned as this was, they trusted their wedding pictures to you.

Back in 1985 I had to be rushed to the hospital 2 hours into a wedding shoot I was doing. I ended up doing their whole album with the few pictures I'd done, PLUS those of family members, for no charge at all. They were very understanding, sympathetic..... and no lawsuit.

Seriously though, I wouldn't give up on that HD yet. There are ways......

Some people pop them into the freezer for a while, then reconnect and power them up - there have been resurrections.

[phamster]

yes.. some times you can take the n/g hard drive, and connect it as a slave on another OS system, and then can pull data from it slowly.. i have done that to mine own before..

[sapearl]

Excellent suggestion - or even pop it into an external case and connect it as USB or Firewire (non-boot) drive.

yes.. some times you can take the n/g hard drive, and connect it as a slave on another OS system, and then can pull data from it slowly.. i have done that to mine own before..

[howaboutnow]

Good luck on the recovery!!! Don't you just hate hard drives... I know I do too.

[equinox]

Formating a flash drive doesn't mean losing all of your data. It just clear the list of the files from the root and you wouldn't be able to list them from your Windows explorer.
There are few computer software that can help you to get those files back, e.g. GetDataBack or EasyRecovery. Bring your flash and hard drive to a data recovery expert and see if any luck.

[*Mike*]

Are you a member of the PPA? They will pay for the vast majority of your data recovery costs - from the drive or CF cards. Send the drive off to a serious lab... ESS Data Recovery is great.

Also, if you're a member, call and get legal advice. They'll walk you through the process, and help you CYA. I'd be more worried about a serious lawsuit than anything else...

Now, assuming you're not a PPA member. First, if you shoot weddings, sign up tonight. Then, I'd plan on refunding them the contract amount and start honing my diplomacy skills. With a bit of luck and finesse you'll be okay.

[razyl]

Ouch! I pray to the god I don't believe in that this never happens to me. But then again, I do have several backups of wedding photos.

[sacral]

Formating a flash drive doesn't mean losing all of your data. It just clear the list of the files from the root and you wouldn't be able to list them from your Windows explorer.
There are few computer software that can help you to get those files back, e.g. GetDataBack or EasyRecovery. Bring your flash and hard drive to a data recovery expert and see if any luck.

Sorry about the bad luck... :(

+1 on GetDataBack. I've had hard drives that i thought were FRIED, and that program was able to pull ALL the data i wanted. Also agree on bringing your HDD to a data recovery expert...there's stuff available to them hardware wise that is not avialable to lowly consumers like ourselves...

[interlock]

Depends on how much you are willing to pay. Or how much diy you are willing to do.

First off, I would check out data recovery software for the cards. You can go back several writes to the card. Basically a format just lets the software know that that data cells can be written to again. To do a secure delete, there are programs that write 0's and 1's seven times to the data cell.

There is an alternative, I have used this technique before when the data recovery guys costs were through he roof. It was for 15k peoples pension information.

You need to be a bit proficient with a small screwdriver/torx but this has worked for me in the past. The platters the hard drive stores the data on can be moved to a new hard drive, I am talking the same make and model number, bought of ebay or a local comp store. It is generally the electronics or the mechanics that go. The only time this may not work is if the heads have scratched the platters as the drive fails, however most drives have built in protection for this now. The drive is usually good to get the data off but the opening in a dust environment quickly leads to problems.

Oh and go out and get a NAS box that duplicates the data on both drives.

[tim]

Let us know how you get on... and hopefully other people will learn from your mistake.

I sometimes have weddings two days in a row, so I have to clear my cards and there's not a lot of options for offsite backup. I copy all the raw data to a portable hard drive and keep that in my car. It's not ideal but I doubt my house will burn down at the same time my car's stolen. I format all my cards but I try to use different cards if I can, I probably have enough for two days shooting without reuse if i'm lucky.

[danir.photography]

I am not a photographer. I am an old-time I.S. pro attempting to reinvent himself, and this IS my area of expertise.
Look for a data recovery service. Do not screw with the drive or attempt to replace the platters or do ANYTHING else.
Use software to attempt to recover what you can from the CF cards.
NAS is a TLA for Network Attached Storage. You don't need it. You do need to have a decent desktop with hot swap drives. The chipset needs to support RAID 0 or RAID 1.

[interlock]

Danir,

I have also been in IT for 16 years, the majority as a hardware engineer and continue to do so. My advice on the drives was a last resort, but I should have stated that. As I said it had worked for me when the pro's were wanting 30k. My NAS network attached storage box
came in at ~$350 for 1 terabyte of RAID 0 storage. Not much different from trying to do it internally.

For some, the option of internal raid drives is not possible, especially in the mac world with closed systems.

[howzitboy]

way we do our wedding back-up is:

copy to laptop (whole cards) at location if u have time.
copy to desktop (from laptop) then copy to second folder on diff drive (dont touch originals) then do your culling and photoshopping.
leave on laptop till u need the space then delete.
copy cards to another computer then finally format cards.
burn all data to dvds as final backup and delete off this computer when u run out of room.

whew but doing it this way, never lost anything and we have redundant copies!! id rather go thru the problems of makin multi copies then have a poor couples wedding ruined..

[djscottwalls]

ok well after fooling around with the hard drive it defiantly was not retrievable.

so I emailed the client. She took it pretty well.... I have have to give her back some of the money. and she said she would be fine with that. I have defiantly learned my lesson. BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP

[sapearl]

Sorry to hear it didn't work out Scott - did you have a pro service try to retrieve any of the files?

[djscottwalls]

yea but no luck :(

[howzitboy]

try offer the customers a reshoot at some nice location. maybe they own the dress/tux so they can redo some shots. id try anything to make it up to them.

[Bobster]

what recovery software have you tried Scott?