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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Help with Image Recovery
Kent Nishimura, Student/Intern
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Honolulu | HI | USA | Posted: 1:03 PM on 08.11.09 |
->> Sorry...I sent an Equipment Q&A thing too but i really need some help and Im totally wigging out here...
Both my Hard Drive containing my archive and back up hard drive of the archive have crashed. everything i have shot from when i started until now (2007-PResent) is...not WAS on there. i was in the process of burning to DVD when both HDDs crashed. What can i do to recover my files?! Please help!!!! |
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Clark Brooks, Photo Editor, Photographer
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Urbana | IL | USA | Posted: 1:12 PM on 08.11.09 |
->> You have two drives crash??? Interesting.
Is your main HDD and archive in the same box? What set up do you have. Desktop + external drive, laptop + external, two internal drives??? What OS and platform are you using - MAC or PC?
It would help if you provide more details about the kind of crash your are experiencing. Assuming you powered off all the units waited sixty seconds and tried to reboot....
Do the drives spin up?
Are they making a clicking sound when you turn them on?
Did you check the connections between drives and the motherboard?
Does the Bios recognized the drives?
Is either drive the boot drive? Does it boot? |
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Eric Canha, Photographer
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Brockton | MA | United States | Posted: 1:16 PM on 08.11.09 |
->> You need to define "crashed" and it would also help to know what platform and version you are on.
Bottom line is that if you are facing losing everything I wouldn't be monkeying around with DIY attempts and would be getting one of those drives to Drive Savers or some similar company.
Are you a member of one of the professional groups like PPA NPPA or ASMP? They may have a discount that you can take advantage of or you may have recovery coverage as part of your business insurance. |
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Kent Nishimura, Student/Intern
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Honolulu | HI | USA | Posted: 1:17 PM on 08.11.09 |
->> Sorry...forgot to include that vital information.
Mac OS X 10.5
MacBook Pro 15" Unibody
2x 1TB Western Digital. Separate enclosures. Both Drives spin and pull up in disk utility...but no mountable images are visible. |
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Kent Nishimura, Student/Intern
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Honolulu | HI | USA | Posted: 1:24 PM on 08.11.09 |
->> Eric. Thanks. Drives won't mount.
I'll have a look at Drive Savers. |
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Steve Violette, Photographer
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Gulf Breeze | FL | USA | Posted: 1:47 PM on 08.11.09 |
| ->> I have had the same problem with the WD units. I unplugged and let them cool down - actually put a fan on them. A couple of hours later, I rebooted MacPro and plugged in the drives and powered them up - it took several minuted for them to mount - then I cloned the drives to a new drive....no more WD for me |
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Eric Canha, Photographer
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Brockton | MA | United States | Posted: 2:16 PM on 08.11.09 |
->> Kent look at the plug that goes into the drive's enclosure. Does it have 4 or 5 little pins or is it a single coaxial plug? If it is the type of power supply that has a connector with 5 pins you MAY be able to try a new PS. On some externals like the LaCie drives they use the multi pin PS that supplies 5 and 12 volt inputs separately. What may happen in the case of dives using those supplies is that either the 12 or 5 volt side can fail and the drive is fine.
If the 12 volt side fries the logic is still live and the drive may be 'seen' by the computer but because the platters wont spin up the drive can't be accessed. Likewise if the 5 volt side dies you will hear the drive spin up but because the logic isn't powered nothing happens on the computer side. (nothing is a relative term here) Externals that have a single coaxial plug have a switching PS inside the case.
The one thing that you have to consider is that you are facing the loss of all of your work from 2007-now. If it were me, once the Haldol had kicked in and my wife took the handcuffs off me, I would maybe try putting ONE of the drives in a new enclosure and try to mount it. You can get a generic enclosure at Walmart or a local electronics shop. just don't play with BOTH drives. Every time you power up the drive you run the risk of REALLY cooking the data.
The fact that both drive died at once is interesting. Were they daisy chained? Is the USB or FW port on the computer working? To have two drives fail at once is a statistical long shot. There has to be a common thread or failure point.
Remember if the drives are identical you can play with one and leave the other alone so that D.S. can have a fighting chance for you. |
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Clark Brooks, Photo Editor, Photographer
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Urbana | IL | USA | Posted: 3:54 PM on 08.11.09 |
->> "To have two drives fail at once is a statistical long shot. There has to be a common thread or failure point."
I agree. Kinda weird unless he experienced a brown out while the drives were writing and it corrupted the files system.
Kent: Hook the drives up to another laptop or computer and see if the data can be accessed. If so, the USB or FW drivers in the MAC OS are corrupt or the port failed. If not, likely the file system in the drives are corrupt but can be recovered.
Try this -- turn off the computer so you have to reboot and unplug the drives from power and the FW/USB ports for one minute. Plug one of the drives on and let the spin for one minute before connecting it back to the MacBook. Then turn the MacBook back on.
HTH |
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Joseph Molieri, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Ardmore | PA | US | Posted: 10:20 PM on 08.16.09 |
| ->> If the hard drives are not physically damaged a good recovery software can get you up and running no problem. I'm not sure how tech savvy you are but I'd take the HDDs out of the cases and hook them up to a computer and run diagnostic/recovery software. I personally use ZAR zero-assumption-recovery. I have a good amount of experience with this but am by no means a professional. With that said I disagree with Eric that there is any real risk of DIY attempts provided you've taken the drives out of the enclosure (incase it's an electrical issue) The cost of recovery would probably be around $1k which is what has always driven me to do my own recovery. The only drives that I was not able to do myself was a Raid 0 array where one of the disks had physically failed (click of death) In that case I tried the freezer trick to no avail. Other than that I've had 100% success with inaccessible drives that still functioned. |
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Mitchell Clinton, Photographer
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Carlsbad | CA | USA | Posted: 11:26 PM on 08.16.09 |
->> Don't panic!
I had something like that happen (with one disk not 2). I think it was just some kind of hiccup. Anyway I got Disk Warrior (http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html), it cost a little money, $100, but within 30 min my drive was fixed. Money well spent! If the disk is formatted for Mac and you can see it in Disk utility, I bet this will fix it. |
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Eric Canha, Photographer
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Brockton | MA | United States | Posted: 1:09 PM on 08.17.09 |
->> Joseph I know NOTHING.......N-O-T-H-I-N-G about the Mac OS or Apple platforms. Not one thing. However in the Windows, Unix, DOS, Novell and a few other OSes I would be considered anything from Advanced tech to an outright expert and even have the old faded certificates that went with the knowledge and training.
In SOME systems when a disk is mounted or is being accessed by the OS a table, or temp file (pagefile in the Win world) is created. So the act of mounting a disk that is damaged and then miraculously comes back to life makes it possible that areas that once held recoverable data COULD be over written by said files. My advice was based on a few of those factors and still holds true. I'll say it again, keep one dive out of the DIY arena if and until the drive you are DIY'ing is repaired and backed up to a known good drive.
First there was no mention of the OS and frankly even if there had been my advice would have been the same barring someone with Apple experience knowing that there is no danger that the OS will cause greater harm.
Second Kent is facing the elimination of ALL (***ALL***) his work for a 2 year span. My advice of holding back ONE drive gives him an out should his DIY experience not equal what you have experienced.
Finally, yes data recover is expensive, but if you are facing the loss of images that may be worth thousands or TENS of thousands of dollars over a lifetime is a DIY solution the best bet? For that matter the cost of professional recovery is covered (minus deductibles) by many professional insurance policies or memberships. Overall is could be the cheapest solution to the problem if the drive can't be recovered DIY and they have to apply stronger methods to recover the data.
I don't begrudge or belittle anyone who suggests that Kent give it a go repairing the problem himself I just think that holding back one of the drives is a prudent move.
Kent an update would be great! |
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Kent Nishimura, Student/Intern
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Honolulu | HI | USA | Posted: 11:44 PM on 08.17.09 |
->> hey all. sorry for the hiatus. been getting ready to go back to school for another semester, as well as starting to freelance more on my own. been busy busy busy!
i was able to recover alot of the images via Photo Rescue. luckily for me, i remembered that backed up my portfolio and keeper images on Photoshelter. But for the most part Photo Rescue did the job for me.
probably wasnt the smartest move on my part, but i was panicking and totally wigging out.
i seemed to come out of the experience okay though. |
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