Absolute Crisis -- 3 years of photos Gone. (Please, please...someone help me)

SimplyShane wrote in post #12577753
Also, would loading software through a USB drive actually cause any more damage to my system? I don't see how it would, but maybe I am wrong.

Take it out of the computer and put it in an external drive and hook it up to another one to do your file recovery.

kjonnnn wrote in post #12576719
What about system restore to yesterday

1) Stay away from system restore. It is a way to step the system back in time (as in installed drivers etc), but not a way to recover erased data files. And it represents disk writes - and every disk write can kill one more photo.

2) Memory card "formatting" are normally not a sector-by-sector format. It is just the recreation of a number of data structures. The actual data is still there, but the data structures says that all regions of the memory card or disk is empty. A program that scans the surface for signatures can still pick up the photos and restore them. They don't get lost until that memory card or disk suffers addition of new material - such as taking it out and shoot new pictures.

3) Any manual fooling around with the disk will cost images. I repeat: Any manual fooling around with the disk will cost images. Should I write it again? Any manual fooling around with the disk will cost images.

A professional company would do only a read-only scan of the disk when looking for data to recover. If needed (such as when there is a pending hw failure), they would first have done a raw surface copy of the disk data to another media, to let the original disk not have to suffer the wear and tear of the scanning process.

Every single time you boot your computer - even if you do nothing but boot it up and log in - will make disk writes. Where are these writes done? Lots of them on surface area marked as free. Your photos were erased, so they are now on surface are marked as free. Do you really want to have more disk writes on this "free" area?

SimplyShane wrote in post #12577737
http://www.krollontrac​k.com …covery/recovery​-software/

I've been researching more options and it seems like Kroll gets even better ratings than Drive Savers. Also, this page seems to suggest that these SOFTWARE based options are just as effective as other options out there considering the circumstances. (My hardware is perfectly fine and is NOT damaged.)

This makes sense to me. Does anyone out there have any thoughts on this? Should I try these guys out first?

Yes, they are industry experts. I've used them and thier software when money is on the line.

If I get an enclosure and plug it in via USB on *another* computer and run the data recovery software that way, would this have the potential to do damage? I can't see how it would be writing anything at that rate...

But maybe I'm wrong. Please let me know.

pwm2 wrote in post #12578794
1) Stay away from system restore. It is a way to step the system back in time (as in installed drivers etc), but not a way to recover erased data files. And it represents disk writes - and every disk write can kill one more photo.

2) Memory card "formatting" are normally not a sector-by-sector format. It is just the recreation of a number of data structures. The actual data is still there, but the data structures says that all regions of the memory card or disk is empty. A program that scans the surface for signatures can still pick up the photos and restore them. They don't get lost until that memory card or disk suffers addition of new material - such as taking it out and shoot new pictures.

3) Any manual fooling around with the disk will cost images. I repeat: Any manual fooling around with the disk will cost images. Should I write it again? Any manual fooling around with the disk will cost images.

A professional company would do only a read-only scan of the disk when looking for data to recover. If needed (such as when there is a pending hw failure), they would first have done a raw surface copy of the disk data to another media, to let the original disk not have to suffer the wear and tear of the scanning process.

Every single time you boot your computer - even if you do nothing but boot it up and log in - will make disk writes. Where are these writes done? Lots of them on surface area marked as free. Your photos were erased, so they are now on surface are marked as free. Do you really want to have more disk writes on this "free" area?

pcunite wrote in post #12582210
Yes, they are industry experts. I've used them and thier software when money is on the line.

I've discovered that their software is quite terrible. A free variant was able to find more photos on one of my old SD cards.

Like I said, give it a try. Free trial will let you know if your pics can be recovered.

I was able to recover about 1TB of photos from an external drive using R-Studio, It recovered all the images in tact in the folders and all the Lightroom 3 Catalogs, everything was intact and all the images kept their names, type and size. It took about 10-15minutes to scan the drive and 8-12hrs to recover, but worth every minute. Might want to look into the software.

Sevan

**Massive Update**

I ran both R-Studio and GetBackData in Safe mode with the hard drive plugged in via USB. I made sure that its security settings were set to "Read-only."

In the end, both found similar things. Yes, I do have SOME pictures back, but a great deal are gone or corrupted.
I'd say I have MAYBE 30% back, and the rest are now permanently erased forever.

To put it very bluntly, I am sad and depressed. I lost some wonderful shots that will be impossible to duplicate and it makes picking up a camera again almost impossible. I still haven't been to my Flickr page because I'm afraid I might break down.

At this rate, should I even send it in to a professional? DriveSavers does offer free analysis on all drives, but there really isn't anything you can do about corrupted files.

*sigh* I've learned a BRUTAL lesson here. Let this be a warning to everyone else. Back-up your data now and do it often.

Maybe you should ask the dufus that caused this mess how deep his pockets are?

It's hard to tell what the cause is for the corrupted files. If they have part of them overwritten, or if it's just a question of a fragmented disk where the repair program don't know where the file continues.

In some situations, the data recovery company may be able to retrieve partial file chains and merge them together - this depends a bit on how well they understand the file format for doing the pattern matching.

MT Stringer wrote in post #12589304
Maybe you should ask the dufus that caused this mess how deep his pockets are?

What help would that be? This is not a one-man error. It was wrong to ass-u-me that the photos had already been copied to another disk. But the main problem here was the lack of backup.

All we can hope, is that lots of people do read this thread and take note of it and go out and buy the required media to backup their files.
- A backup is not a copy to one other media. The files should be copied to at least two other media, so if the main media or one of the backup medias fails, the data is still stored on at least two media.
- A backup is not a write and forget - the backup media must be regularly tested to verify that the contents can be read back correctly.
- A backup is not a single-site storage. Fire or burglary requires that backups are stored at at least two separate addresses.
- A backup is not unordered copying. Backup volumes can quickly become so large that the cost of sorting through the backups can be unmanageable. There must be some acceptable form of indexing of the backup contents to allow specific content to be easily located.

SimplyShane wrote in post #12589267
**Massive Update**

*sigh* I've learned a BRUTAL lesson here. Let this be a warning to everyone else. Back-up your data now and do it often.

After I recovered my Data, I immediately bought an external back up drive, I now have three external back up drives. You can't afford to loose that much data.

S.E.V. wrote in post #12589814
After I recovered my Data, I immediately bought an external back up drive, I now have three external back up drives. You can't afford to loose that much data.

But do you store the data on multiple of these? And are any of the drives stored off-site, such as at work, at parents home or similar?

SimplyShane wrote in post #12589267
*sigh* I've learned a BRUTAL lesson here. Let this be a warning to everyone else. Back-up your data now and do it often.

‘Brutal’ is seeing your buddy get his leg blown off by a roadside bomb and not having anyone to get back at.

This is a sentimental loss and a good learning experience. I personally save everything to the cloud as well storing things locally in multiple locations. Mass storage is REALLY cheap, loosing your data isn’t.

BaghdadFred wrote in post #12590214
‘Brutal’ is seeing your buddy get his leg blown off by a roadside bomb and not having anyone to get back at.

Well, that certainly puts things in perspective...

pwm2 wrote in post #12589731
It's hard to tell what the cause is for the corrupted files. If they have part of them overwritten, or if it's just a question of a fragmented disk where the repair program don't know where the file continues.

In some situations, the data recovery company may be able to retrieve partial file chains and merge them together - this depends a bit on how well they understand the file format for doing the pattern matching.


What help would that be? This is not a one-man error. It was wrong to ass-u-me that the photos had already been copied to another disk. But the main problem here was the lack of backup.

All we can hope, is that lots of people do read this thread and take note of it and go out and buy the required media to backup their files.
- A backup is not a copy to one other media. The files should be copied to at least two other media, so if the main media or one of the backup medias fails, the data is still stored on at least two media.
- A backup is not a write and forget - the backup media must be regularly tested to verify that the contents can be read back correctly.
- A backup is not a single-site storage. Fire or burglary requires that backups are stored at at least two separate addresses.
- A backup is not unordered copying. Backup volumes can quickly become so large that the cost of sorting through the backups can be unmanageable. There must be some acceptable form of indexing of the backup contents to allow specific content to be easily located.

Which Data Company would you suggest? If it is even remotely possible to "stitch back" some photos, I'll be willing to explore that route.

Also, I should clarify that both GetBack and R-Studio **did find** most of my photos. There are a few missing, but most WERE found. The problem is that they are corrupted.

If there was some way to fix the corruption, I'd have 90% of my photos back and I'd be satisfied. However, it doesn't seem to me like that is possible. What are your thoughts on this? What would be your next step in this situation?