PLEASE HELP very much needed

Dear co - photographers this might me a wrong forum but please help me....

My new hard drive died, it does not even spin and recognized by my bios. It looks like it was shorted and I have 3 wedding there. What can I do? What are my options?
Thanks in advance,

There are a number of companies around that specialize in data recovery. Here's one:

http://datarecovery.ca/

It sounds as if the controller board under the drive has gone bad. If you feel adventurous and have an identical or like drive you can remove the controller board off the good drive and replace the board on the bad drive.

Then put the drive back into your PC and fire her up. If you have access, copy all the files off the drive. Once done swap the boards back. Get rid of that bad drive.

Of course no guaranty comes with any advice you receive in this forum. The best thing may be to send the drive to a recovery company. If you choose to do that be prepared to spend boo coo bucks.

That said, be prepared to field the "Restore from backup" post. There's NO WAY you should have 3 weddings on a single hard drive w/o backups. But I think you know that now.

--



Rob Kircher
My Stuff: http://www.rrkphotos.com
http://www.pbase.com/rkircher

phoman said:

Dear co - photographers this might me a wrong forum but please help
me....
My new hard drive died, it does not even spin and recognized by my
bios. It looks like it was shorted and I have 3 wedding there. What
can I do? What are my options?
Thanks in advance,

Click to expand...

Sorry to hear the bad news.

The good news is it sounds like electrical damage, as you pointed out rather than physical damage which might be harder, costlier to recover.

Since it mostly involves swapping your current disk plates to a healthy new enclosure, it is unfortunately not ssomething you can do yourself. As suggested, there are many recovering services you can contact. Check them in details, since many offer guaranty: "No recovery, no fee".

Sorry I have no idea about cost, never using them. I think it is immensely worth it though, since you have 3 weedings riding on it.

Good luck

I have used ontrack.com before to restore data files and they have been great each time. Cost could be easily 2k + depending on the size and the number of files but it is obviously worth it. Good Luck.
--



-T h a n k s C C M

I had something similar but was able to recover the data.

First: Can you put the drive into another PC? That will isolate whether the problem is in the drive itself or in your computer system. I recommend that you install the suspect drive as a "slave" (second) drive, and NOT a boot drive. See if it is recognized, and if you can access your data (photos).

If it turns out that the drive is OK, you next need to isolate whether your PC has a bad controller. When my drive "failed", it turned out to be the controller chip on the motherboard. Unfortunately, it wiped out the "boot" sector on the drive. I could recover the data on the drive, but not the "system" or any of the applications. I ended up buying a new motherboard and a new hard drive, re-installed Windows and my applications (programs), and installed the old drive as a back-up data drive. It cost me some $$$ and a day's work, but I lost no data. Some motherboards will let you turn off an on-board chip in the BIOS, and install a separate controler card. This costs about $25. You'll need to match the controller card to the bus on the motherboard and to the drive type (PATA, SATA).

If the drive itself is bad and cannot be recognized on another PC, it will cost quite a bit to have a reputable service recover your data. Don't panic, though - take it step by step.

...important stuff on the HD.
--
Damned amateur fotografer trying to get a little more serious again.
http://community.webshots.com/user/jeffreybehr

I've only shot one wedding (by request, a friend's daughter), but the FIRST thing I did after the ceremony was copy the shoot to my laptop, then to a "thumb drive," and then to a CD-ROM.

NEVER trust a single hard drive with anything unreplaceable... All hard drives die, and most are expected to die in about two years from purchase date. And massive external hard drives are dirt cheap.

Wayndom said:

I've only shot one wedding (by request, a friend's daughter), but the
FIRST thing I did after the ceremony was copy the shoot to my laptop,
then to a "thumb drive," and then to a CD-ROM.

NEVER trust a single hard drive with anything unreplaceable... All
hard drives die, and most are expected to die in about two years from
purchase date. And massive external hard drives are dirt cheap.

Click to expand...

Where did you get this 2 years from? That means every harddrive I own should have died years ago.

What happens if you buy one, but don't use it? will it still die 2 years after purchase date?

--

Replace the failed drive and copy your lost data from your backup onto the new drive. Check the power and data cable connections to both the failed drive and the motherboard for improper connection or damage. What could have caused the failed drive to be damaged? When was it installed?

If there was in-progress data that cannot be conveniently-restored from an older backup set, I recommend that you send your replaced drive to eProvided and let them try to recover your data.

http://www.eprovided.com/data-recovery-service/data-recovery.html

--
http://www.pbase.com/arshutterbug/

If you cant afford to loose the stuff, don't do anything DIY-style.

FedEx it to a data recovery company of your choice after calling their hotline. Most do an analysis for a fixed fee, which will later be substracted from the bill if you use their service. Usually you get a file list with recoverable data, and a integritiy factor for each file. You then name the directories you want to get salvaged, then pay per MB of recovered data. At least that how it went in our case at work. And yes, they were able to recover 100% of the relevant data.

Any tampering you do at home most likely will only worsen the situation.

I feel for you, good luck
Ray

You can try the fridge method. Might not get you much more than hope. Usually it helps make a drive spin properly again if it was malfunctionning. But yours doesn't even spin up anymore.

Best bet (for you!) is that the PCB has fried. You should try to get a drive of the same serie as yours, I mean EXACTLY the same serie (usually identified by a reference on the shell). Then you can do a PCB swap, it's very easy, you just need a torx screwdriver and it only takes 3 minutes. But you should only do this if you're 100% sure that both drives are identical (actually it has to be the same serie, and the PCB has to carry the same digits which define the firmware version).

If it doesn't revive the disk, you're ready for a recovery company, and it will cost you lots of money (like 1000 to 2000 euros) and you might not even get everything back.

But you'll get some, if not most (if not all) of the data back, and that is invaluable.

Then for the rest of your life, you'll do backups regularly. Same disk size as the working drive, copy EVERYTHING every week, and of course, don't store your backup in the same place as the computer. If someone breaks in the house or if there's a fire, everything will be lost.

My best advice, with cheap hard drives as we have now, is to have 2 backups : one at home, always ready to get you out of trouble, and another one at a friend's or in a safe at the bank. Then if something occurs at home, you're not toast.

If it does turn out to be the hard drive, there's also Drivesavers (drivesavers.com). They, too, are expensive but it sounds like you've far more at stake here than a thousand or two. Good luck.
--
Scott
------------------------------------
Please see profile for my equipment.

OK - so the situation is pretty dire, and you have got some advice.

As a wedding photrographer, I backup, backup & backup.

Sometimes I backup onto laptop at end of the wedding, sometimes I go home & do it. By the end of the evening I have 2 verified backups of the wedding. one on pc,one still one the CF cards. One is held in the office, one in the house.

Then I burn all files to DVD and make 2 backups on 2 seperate hard drives for working on. DVD files are all held in a seperate location. All worked on files are backed up onto another HD.

In my opinion if you do any less than this you are putting your clients pictures at risk, and are asking for trouble relying on 1 single hard drive. You could also be deemed incomptent by the clients, for not making backups.

I regard hard drives as voilitile unsafe & disposible media, after this you will too......

You might also consider employing an assistant because at least then you can also get important shots double backed up at the time.

This all sounds very time intensive, and it is, but now how much tme & money will you have to expend now to remedy not doing the above ?

I hope it works out for you & you have some insurance if you need it ?

phoman said:

Dear co - photographers this might me a wrong forum but please help
me....
My new hard drive died, it does not even spin and recognized by my
bios. It looks like it was shorted and I have 3 wedding there. What
can I do? What are my options?
Thanks in advance,

Click to expand...

When I don't take pictures I pay for my gear with HDD data recovery.

If your hard drive's controller board went up in smoke, literally, that is a relatively easy fix. If it is the internal components, that is quite painful. Some specific models of Seagate drives I will simply not even touch due to lack of tools.

What is the exact model number of the drive, what is the firmware code, and basically everything else that is on top of that drive? Snap a picture.

Take a high resolution picture of the circuitboard. I need to at least be able to read the microchips. There are some tricks that I know of to make drives work again, depending on that board's damage.

If this is a Hitachi drive, be careful. Hitachi drives require moving microchips for the controller board swap trick to work. Some other drives do so as well.

If your firmware is damaged as well, you will need a special tool to recover it. There is no way to know if it's damaged until the drive starts to attempt to spin again.

Did you ever have those pictures on another hard drive? If yes, it may be easier to recover them from that drive.

If you don't want to mess with this, my website is http://www.harddiskcrashed.com and fees are reasonable.

DO NOT TRY THE FRIDGE METHOD (I happen to know exactly when it works and when it will do harm, and in this case it will not help)

It is a Seegate 7200.11 1000Gb