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A few from Japan

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blaketake

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Hi!

I recently had the privilege to do a homestay in Japan through an exchange program called the Experiment in International Living. For the first few days we toured Tokyo, and then I went to my host city in Kanazawa-- A city of about 500,000 on the Sea of Japan coast. At the end, we visited Kyoto for two days. I formed strong friendships with my fellow students from all over the United States. My wonderful host family treated me as a family member (they spoke mostly japanese, so I had to pick it up quickly.) It was a truly unique and unforgettable learning experience. I took tons of pictures, but unfortunately about half way through, my laptop hard drive died so I lost about 1000 shots! Lesson learned--always back up your shots. If anyone has any advice on recovering photos from a dead hd (it still spins though), please help. Here are some that were still on my camera or on the internet. All taken with the DS with the 16-45/4 or the M28/2.8 in jpeg.

Tokyo









Lunch from Tokyo to Kanazawa

Kanazawa (most are still trapped in the dead hd unfortunately)



japanese barbeques are the best.



my host mom was an excellent cook.



I had tons of fun playing video games with my host sisters and brother.



me and the other students at the language center.

Kyoto







Sure miss it.
 
I really like 2 and 3, plus the tree shot.
--
Russ

Pentax *ist DL w/18-55mm kit lens
Pentax FA 50mm F/1.4, Sigma DC 55-200mm, Tamron 28-300mm
Canon S1 IS with 1.7Tcon and 0.7Wcon
Kodak V530 (the wife's, but I 'borrow' it occasionally)
Even bad photography can be fun :)
 
I enjoyed your trip report very much.

Some of your shots are lovely and some are more snapshot like... but still so interesting for me as I've never been to japan.

Of course, where I am now it is late in the evening and I am hungry for a snack.... the pictures of lunch and then the scrumptious looking dinner have sent me over the top... and I am going to raid the fridge... but I know nothing in there looks as good as what was in those pics. :-(

thanks a lot....

re: the drive. There are tons of companies that special in data recovery. I have no idea what the costs are though.

Love to see more any time....

The sunlit tree was my favorite.

The one of the kids playing video games while the older girl texted on her cell phone was really good too..... a study of youth and adolescents all over the world it seems.
  • Mike
 
I think if software doesn't do the trick, there is always the expensive method of disassembling your hard drive and reading out the platters on a special drive. So if at first you don't succeed, don't throw away the drive! Keep it, the data will stay on there for years - maybe someday you will find a place that can recover your data for a price you can afford.

--
Take it easy,

-Matt
 
Really good shots, the landscapes are beautiful....I wish I had shot them!!

The Japanese are always eating something and it always looks delicious to me. I would gain a lot of weight over there in no time. Very nice work.
--
'This is more serious than I thought.....but it is still fun!'
 
Very nice Blake. Miss it? You can always go back ;).

Awesome series. The leaf pics are very sweet :). And I like the city shots... esp. the panning one.

First things first though... the harddrive, you're basically saying that it still spins? Do you hear any ticking noise coming from it? So what's happening is that it spins up, but your laptop won't detect it? Are you using an external harddrive here? And what operating system? And type of harddrive etc.

Will see if any help can be given for recovering the data. Just don't attempt doing anything to it right now... leave it turned off until we decide what to do with it :).
 
H!i, I hope to return some day. Perhaps in college.

When I attempt to boot my laptop, (an IBM X22 with a IBM Travelstar 20gb hard drive(07N7435)) it spins and there is no unusual ticking noise. Windows XP professional attempts to load as it would normalyl do, except instead it flashes an error message and begins the booting process all over again. When I boot my computer to display the message, I get "UNMONTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME" displayed on a blue screen.

Thanks for your input and help!
PhotoMoto said:
Very nice Blake. Miss it? You can always go back ;).

Awesome series. The leaf pics are very sweet :). And I like the
city shots... esp. the panning one.

First things first though... the harddrive, you're basically saying
that it still spins? Do you hear any ticking noise coming from it?
So what's happening is that it spins up, but your laptop won't
detect it? Are you using an external harddrive here? And what
operating system? And type of harddrive etc.

Will see if any help can be given for recovering the data. Just
don't attempt doing anything to it right now... leave it turned off
until we decide what to do with it :).
Click to expand...
--
http://pbase.com/blaketake
 
Glad you enjoyed!

The food in Japan was the best food of my life! In California, we can get some decent Japanese food, but nothing close to that of Japan's.

About girls and their cell phones--They incessantly text message their friends and browe the internet. They can check their email, and download music on to their phone. (though passe in America, the Backstreet Boys are immensely popular in Japan. One girl played "everybody" for me on her cell phone) . My host sister also had a 3 megapixel camera on her phone. The images were well-saturated and evenly exposed. It's amazing
savagemikel said:
I enjoyed your trip report very much.
Some of your shots are lovely and some are more snapshot like...
but still so interesting for me as I've never been to japan.
Of course, where I am now it is late in the evening and I am hungry
for a snack.... the pictures of lunch and then the scrumptious
looking dinner have sent me over the top... and I am going to raid
the fridge... but I know nothing in there looks as good as what was
in those pics. :-(

thanks a lot....

re: the drive. There are tons of companies that special in data
recovery. I have no idea what the costs are though.

Love to see more any time....

The sunlit tree was my favorite.
The one of the kids playing video games while the older girl texted
on her cell phone was really good too..... a study of youth and
adolescents all over the world it seems.
  • Mike
Click to expand...
--
http://pbase.com/blaketake
 
Thanks so much for posting those pictures. I liked them all. Sounds like you had a great and memorable trip. Good luck on the hard drive.
Frank
 
In this case, it might not be a HD problem but an OS problem - try one of the CD or USB bootable Linux Distros to make sure.

Let me know if you do not understand WTF I am talking about.

Si.
blaketake said:
Thanks for your input and help!
PhotoMoto said:
Very nice Blake. Miss it? You can always go back ;).

Awesome series. The leaf pics are very sweet :). And I like the
city shots... esp. the panning one.

First things first though... the harddrive, you're basically saying
that it still spins? Do you hear any ticking noise coming from it?
So what's happening is that it spins up, but your laptop won't
detect it? Are you using an external harddrive here? And what
operating system? And type of harddrive etc.

Will see if any help can be given for recovering the data. Just
don't attempt doing anything to it right now... leave it turned off
until we decide what to do with it :).
Click to expand...
--
http://pbase.com/blaketake
Click to expand...
 
That sounds like bad news. Unmountable Boot Volume means the OS is not able to recognize the boot table. The data is still there though I think. See if you can find someone with a 2.5" external hard drive, take the hard drive out and put yours in and see if it works. If it does not, then you still can recover data, but you have to spend some big bucks.

Nice pictures. I like the tree and forest shots, and the subway shots. Japanese, in my experience, offers the best hospitality to a stranger. I was there a couple of years ago eating at a noodle house. When I finished and walk out, it started to rain. The hostess actually came out and give me an umbrella. I am planning to go back within the next year or so.
--
http://www.photosherman.com
 
blaketake said:
H!i, I hope to return some day. Perhaps in college.
When I attempt to boot my laptop, (an IBM X22 with a IBM Travelstar
20gb hard drive(07N7435)) it spins and there is no unusual ticking
noise. Windows XP professional attempts to load as it would
normalyl do, except instead it flashes an error message and begins
the booting process all over again. When I boot my computer to
display the message, I get "UNMONTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME" displayed on a
blue screen.

Thanks for your input and help!
Click to expand...
Hope we can get this fixed :). One thing you definitely could do, as recommended by nzsshooter, is to boot up using a Linux bootup disk and then copying all the files over first, or uploading the material to some online storage space :)... even though 1000 pics will take quite a bit :D.

The error you're getting is fortunately not a hardware error (at least hopefully not... unless there's some serious sector issue but I doubt it). It's WindowsXP that has gone all haywire. I'm assuming that you've gotten this message alongside a bunch of 00000s and bbbbbs. You don't happen to have the WinXP installation CD with you there on your trip do you?

If you do, I can think of two things to try, where if the first doesn't do it, do the second:

1) Pop in the Windows CD and restart.
-> Press a key to boot from CD

-> Once booted, let all the stuff load until you get to a screen asking if you want to install or repair Windows
-> Press R to repair

-> It will attempt to load something called Recovery Console and might ask for your administration password. Windows at times might not want to recognize your administration password though, even if typed correctly. But in the case it does, move onto the next step. (If you don't have one, just leave it blank and press enter)
-> Once loaded, it will display something like C:\WINDOWS\system32> I think
-> Here, simply type: chkdsk r c:

This will basically exectute a repair scan on the disk, in attempt to find any errors and fix them accordingly. After this is complete (might take some time), restart and it should boot :-).

In the BAD case where the above doesn't do the trick, do the same as the first few steps, but instead of repair, press "I" to install Windows. Then tell it to look for already installed Windows Partitions. After it has done this, press "R" to repair EXISTING WINDOWS and not INSTALL NEW. Be careful when you reach there and read the instructions carefully.

This will check through your Windows and install a lot of the default stuff again, with the addition of most of your existing settings. Basically some things you might have uninstalled previously, might be installed again :-P. But it's not too bad, as it's easily fixed :)... simply uninstall :).

This should do the job, but I don't think you'll need to run this. Leave this as your last and final attempt.

In the case where you have access to a friend's computer or so, and may have a USB casing, you could take out the harddrive first and backup all your important files, before running any of the above. But as long as you do'nt format the drive and overwrite the stuff, you won't have anything to worry about. The pictures will be fully recoverable.

Let me know if the instructions aren't clear and if you don't have a WinXP CD, we definitely need to think about getting a Linux Bootdisk of some kind. But in either case, nothing to worry about here :).
 
Hi photomoto,

I tried booting from the XP disk, and running a repair, but before I got the opportunity to press "R," the computer freezes at the "Examining Startup Environment" page. But no matter. I don't care about the hard drive. It will not be expensive to replace; I am only concerned about the photos.

You said I could remove the hard drive and access it from another desktop computer? I can remove the hard drive from the laptop, but I don't know where to put it in the other computer.

your time and help is greatly appreciated!

--
http://pbase.com/blaketake
 
blaketake said:
Hi photomoto,
I tried booting from the XP disk, and running a repair, but before
I got the opportunity to press "R," the computer freezes at the
"Examining Startup Environment" page. But no matter. I don't care
about the hard drive. It will not be expensive to replace; I am
only concerned about the photos.
Click to expand...
Sorry for the late reply :). The harddrive shouldn't be busted anyhow and why I was "concerned" about the harddrive was also because of th epictures :). Hehe.

At Examining Startup Environment, it might take some time. Do you still hear the CD spinning or anything happening? Try to leave it running for some time and walk away to do whatever you need to do and some back to it again.
blaketake said:
You said I could remove the hard drive and access it from another
desktop computer? I can remove the hard drive from the laptop, but
I don't know where to put it in the other computer.

your time and help is greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...
Anything to help :).

Yeah you definitely can. There are two main ways of doing it. One way is to pop it into a USB or Firewire harddisk case and the other is by finding a 2.5" to 3.5" IDE converter, which you can then use to stick into the desktop itself or into a USB harddisk case that supports the desktop harddrives. A third way is to find a 2.5" (basically laptop harddisk) adapter which will allow you to hook it up to a USB slot.

Maybe one of your friends has such a case. You can actually find ANY (mostly) external USB harddrive (mostly known as the pocketable ones), take out that harddrive, replace it with yours and browse it that way.

It will probably be easiest to get such a USB harddisk case (2.5"), as they are also the cheapest ones of them all.

It basically looks something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145329
or this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145752

Some require one to pop in an extra input into the laptop for extra power, whilst others don't. But it doesn't really make any difference, as far as I've seen, except taking an extra slot up :).

But hopefully you can try the R again and if that doesn't work, try to get a hold of a harddrive enclosure.

Hopefully this will work and we'll soon be able to enjoy more shots:).
blaketake said:
--
http://pbase.com/blaketake
Click to expand...
 
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