Hard drive failure - Help appreciated

No clue which forum this would belong in, so mod, feel free to move if this aint it.

I have a LaCie external drive that today started sounding very weird. Hums for a second and then resets, like the heads are looking for something but cannot find it. Thinking maybe it was a power issue, I opened the LaCie casing and removed the Seagate drive that was in it. I opened up a tower and plugged the IDE cable and power cable in. I made the drive a slave and booted up the PC. Went into the BIOS and tried to do the auto-detect of the drive, but nothing. Just that same humming whining noise.

So now I'm thinking that the drive is pretty fried since I cannot see it through the BIOS nor Device Manager nor Disk Management in XP.

I ran a backup of the drive right before New Years, so all that I don't have is around 1000 raw files that I hadn't backed up since the beginning of the year. I called a couple data recovery services, and their prices are INSANE! $2,000 to recover 1000 files is crazy, but hey, it's a business

So now the actual questions:

a) Anyone have any ideas about the drive? recommendations would be appreciated.

b) I backed up my Lightroom catalog yesterday. I have the previews of the images that are lost on the drive. Anyone know if I can get these into actual files out of Lightroom? Version is 1.1.

Ouch Sadly it sounds like its cooked

And if you cant get the computer to detect it, theres not mcuh you'll be able to do I dont think...it sounds like something in there is very seriously broken right now

And as for backing up those actual files, go and select all the images in your library, File, Export as Catalog

That should do it, if you can still access and edit the previews of the images in your catalog, you can export them as a JPG as well I think..

Kenji,

The catalog is backed up. I see the previews that are part of the Catalog already. When I click on one of the previews though, I can't export it to jpg or anything because it says that the original CR2 file is missing. I'm just wondering if I can save that low quality preview as a jpg or something. It will be better than nothing.

I moved this to accessories & storage. You may get more responses here.

TaDa wrote in post #7313183
Kenji,

The catalog is backed up. I see the previews that are part of the Catalog already. When I click on one of the previews though, I can't export it to jpg or anything because it says that the original CR2 file is missing. I'm just wondering if I can save that low quality preview as a jpg or something. It will be better than nothing.

Ohhh....

I'm not sure on that friend I think the previews themselves are in the Catalog file sadly

And now someone moved it to the RAW & Post forum. I'm getting dizzy with all the moves

It's all trying to be helpful. If this isn't the right one, we'll change again.

I'm not complaining, just kidding around. This looks like the right home. Thanks for the help

Computers is a better forum, only weirdos read the accessories forum

Your choices are pay the recovery company, or lose the images. That's it. You learned the hard way.

I have a reminder in my calendar to run my offsite backups every week, and I do it every week. It's no bother.

tim wrote in post #7313277
Computers is a better forum, only weirdos read the accessories forum

Your choices are pay the recovery company, or lose the images. That's it. You learned the hard way.

I have a reminder in my calendar to run my offsite backups every week, and I do it every week. It's no bother.

My Lightroom is backed up in several ways, I run a catalog backup after any "major" shooting session I go out and do onto an external, and then I have all my exported 100 quality jpgs on my main drive [And sometimes in multiple places] in case of anything -too- bad happening

In fact the only pictures I lost access to are all my old slide scans, D70 shots and VERY early 30D shots because they were all done in Aperture, but I still have the Vault from it on a disc somewhere

There is always print screen and save out the images as jpgs one by one

At a minimum back up your original files, and if you shoot RAW then back up any metadata with them. Since I use bridge this is xmp files in the same directory as the images, so they're backed up automatically. With other software you can probably export the central settings database.

I do backup my raws on a monthly basis, but since I was running out of HD space, I just got a 1.5TB drive and hadn't re-started the backup schedule.

I know that this is my fault, but at least the CTRL-Print Screen option is working fairly well.

this is going to sound completely insane..but put it in the freezer. I work for the largest data storage company in the world, and this is one of those trade secrets we use.

just make sure you put it in a plastic bag..

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Once you've got your previews off, read through this (the site also has some good links)

http://www.myharddrive​died.com/presentations​_whitepaper.html

and if that fails there is always

http://flickr.com …7156089@N00/set​s/1201999/