Photos stored on external drive for editing - external drive not recognised

Hi,

I have a friend who lives in Fiji and runs a semi professional photography business for weddings etc - she uses her Laptop for photo editing and stores the photos on an external drive prior to editing.

She has sent me a frantic text today because he Laptop no longer recognises the external drive. I did some research for her online (not a fast service in Fiji!) and discovered this is a common problem. She is off the the computer tech to get this sorted now (assuming the problem is with recognition and not with having lost all her data) but the question remains how do others overcome this type of issue? As she rightly pointed out she could be sued by the couple whose photos she is currently working on.

I am guessing there must be at least one person out there who has done this type of thing if only for friends and perhaps had that terrible experience of images being corrupted or a hard drive losing all the data etc? Remember that she has limited access to the web, limited access to technology etc. Is there a simple and cheap way she can back up the back up of her files?
Regards
Sarah

Sarah Lloyd said:

Hi,

I have a friend who lives in Fiji and runs a semi professional photography business for weddings etc - she uses her Laptop for photo editing and stores the photos on an external drive prior to editing.

She has sent me a frantic text today because he Laptop no longer recognises the external drive. I did some research for her online (not a fast service in Fiji!) and discovered this is a common problem. She is off the the computer tech to get this sorted now (assuming the problem is with recognition and not with having lost all her data) but the question remains how do others overcome this type of issue? As she rightly pointed out she could be sued by the couple whose photos she is currently working on.

I am guessing there must be at least one person out there who has done this type of thing if only for friends and perhaps had that terrible experience of images being corrupted or a hard drive losing all the data etc? Remember that she has limited access to the web, limited access to technology etc. Is there a simple and cheap way she can back up the back up of her files?

Click to expand...

The usual reason this happens is that the drive has gone bad. This is a big problem unless there is a backup somewhere. Let me point out the obvious fact that you have to do the backup before the drive fails.

There are services that attempt to extract data from failed hard drives. They are expensive and I don't know their batting averages. I doubt that there are any in Fiji; there are several in California (Drivesavers is an established one).

Too late as a recommendation for your friend, but I have two backup discs, one in my house and one in my office; this is a minimum if you are dependent on the data stored on your hard disc.

Unless your friend has overwritten the cameras' memory cards, the images may still be there. That might be the best place to look.

--
Leonard Migliore

It's really all a matter of procedure.

1. Copy before you delete, and only delete when you know the copy is kosher.

2. Have mutiple destinations.

My working files are backed up daily to a flash drive and that is copied to a partition on the internal hard drive. When the flash is full it is copied to two opticals, and only then cut to an offboard drive. The nett result is four archives, two optical and two magnetic. The archive on the internal partition is the only one of which is actually used. The rest is just peace of mind. The offboard drive normally lives in the car.

Something along these lines is valid no matter what the work files actually are, no special access to technology is required, and any professional would do something like this. There is no such thing as semi-professional.

It is pretty rare for a hard drive to lose all data. I have never had one actually die, even when I thought I had. Drives are usually replaced only because they are too small or too slow. Her data may be recoverable by the simple expedient of installing the drive in another computer, and that is the first thing I would try.

I recently had an offboard enclosure fail, which was a bit heart-stopping, but the drive inside turned out to be fine.

The computer may not recognise the offboard drive simply becauyse of a fauilure at the USB port. I live by the sea but have only heard of it rather than actually experienced it. Fiji has the sort of climate where this is probably more likely to happen.

Try another port....

Thanks for the assitance - I'll pass it along to her when she is in a receptive frame of mind.

Seems the drive was dropped some time ago and the tech said this may be part of the problem so she is off to see a specialist. My thoughts are that if she was working on it last night and it is still functioning (which it was - just not being recognised) the data should be able to be recovered. Or maybe I am the erternal optomist!

I read a fair bit today about drives failing to be recognised so it seems to be a rather common problem. I'm hoping in her panic to retrieve her files she doesn't allow someone to "mislead" her to an expensive solution when it could have been an easy fix. Either way I am sure she will take on board your suggestions.

BTW - she has already formatted the cards....Have to say that I would have waited until I had completed everything prior to doing that but I don't know what type of restictions she works under - lives in a village situation with very small income.

Sarah Lloyd said:

Seems the drive was dropped some time ago and the tech said this may be part of the problem so she is off to see a specialist. My thoughts are that if she was working on it last night and it is still functioning (which it was - just not being recognised) the data should be able to be recovered. Or maybe I am the erternal optomist!

Click to expand...

Dropped? Oh boy, that's bad. Since it worked immediately after, the first thing I would have done would have been to copy everything off the drive (just in case), and then retire the drive.

Ok, why is the drive not being recognized? Windows has a very bad habit of doing this. First try using a different USB port. If that doesn't work, try a different computer, maybe even two or three computers.

If you cannot get anything to recognize it, then it's off to the data recovery specialists.

One other thing. Does the drive make any unusual noises or sounds? If it does STOP . Do not power it up. Send it immediately to a drive recovery specialist.

--

The greatest of mankind's criminals are those who delude themselves into thinking they have done 'the right thing.'

• Rayna Butler

Extracting data from a failed hard drive is a specialist field. It doesn't matter whether it is internal to the computer or external. Fiji is not far from Australia and there is a company called CSC Australia. My organisation uses them to maintain our computer and IT services. They have done this for us when we've had someone lose a hard drive (usually on a laptop) - it is expensive - I think it was around $2,000AUD. It may be your friends only salvation. There may be other smaller service companies on the east coast that provide a similar service at a lower cost.

I just found this crowd in the 'net' http://www.datadetect.com.au/

Its all well offering advice after the event, but most professionals (and sub-professionals) use three levels of redundancy (backup) on seperate devices or media. This can be 2 hard drives + DVD OR 3 hard drives.

I have 4 hard drives on my PC - one system & software drive, two data drives (primary & secondary), and a third backup (archive) for backing up all the post processed image files. Files are automatically saved on the primary and secondary drives when I download the images from the camera or card.

Sarah Lloyd said:

if she was working on it last night and it is still functioning (which it was - just not being recognised) the data should be able to be recovered. Or maybe I am the erternal optomist!

Click to expand...

No, that is a pretty reasonable view. Yes, the time for backing up the drive was immediately after it happened, or preferably immediately before, but if it worked some time until last night, it probably survived the fall.

Sarah Lloyd said:

I'm hoping in her panic to retrieve her files she doesn't allow someone to "mislead" her to an expensive solution when it could have been an easy fix.

Click to expand...

Indeed, do it simple first. There is quite an industry of tech heads preying on the vulnerable. One only has to hark back to the Y2K scam to be aware of that, and hard disks have a unique cachet of impending doom.

Hopefully, this will all turn out to be much ado about not very much, but a cautionary tale nonetheless.....

GodSpeaks said:

Sarah Lloyd said:

Seems the drive was dropped some time ago and the tech said this may be part of the problem so she is off to see a specialist. My thoughts are that if she was working on it last night and it is still functioning (which it was - just not being recognised) the data should be able to be recovered. Or maybe I am the erternal optomist!

Click to expand...

Dropped? Oh boy, that's bad. Since it worked immediately after, the first thing I would have done would have been to copy everything off the drive (just in case), and then retire the drive.

Ok, why is the drive not being recognized? Windows has a very bad habit of doing this. First try using a different USB port. If that doesn't work, try a different computer, maybe even two or three computers.

Click to expand...

This would be my first advice as well. All the previous answers have banged on about backing up which is not much help after the event.

GodSpeaks said:

If you cannot get anything to recognize it, then it's off to the data recovery specialists.

One other thing. Does the drive make any unusual noises or sounds? If it does STOP . Do not power it up. Send it immediately to a drive recovery specialist.

--

The greatest of mankind's criminals are those who delude themselves into thinking they have done 'the right thing.'

• Rayna Butler

Click to expand...

--
Julesarnia on twitter
Vibeke Dahl on Twitter is..
https://twitter.com/DahlPhotography

Sarah Lloyd said:

BTW - she has already formatted the cards....Have to say that I would have waited until I had completed everything prior to doing that but I don't know what type of restictions she works under - lives in a village situation with very small income.

Click to expand...

If she has not yet over-written the memory cards, most of the data should still be there. 'Format' just marks the space as available, and clears the first character of the file name. There are utilities which will restore the original files, provided you don't add new files and over-write the original data.

I don't have a personal recommendation, but here is a suggestion:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1018&message=38250281
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

Hope this helps
--
Alan Robinson

We had a HD failure and sent it to a credited and recommended company. It cost us over £200 and they failed to retrieve the data.
Jules

thomo said:

Extracting data from a failed hard drive is a specialist field. It doesn't matter whether it is internal to the computer or external. Fiji is not far from Australia and there is a company called CSC Australia. My organisation uses them to maintain our computer and IT services. They have done this for us when we've had someone lose a hard drive (usually on a laptop) - it is expensive - I think it was around $2,000AUD. It may be your friends only salvation. There may be other smaller service companies on the east coast that provide a similar service at a lower cost.

I just found this crowd in the 'net' http://www.datadetect.com.au/

Its all well offering advice after the event, but most professionals (and sub-professionals) use three levels of redundancy (backup) on seperate devices or media. This can be 2 hard drives + DVD OR 3 hard drives.

I have 4 hard drives on my PC - one system & software drive, two data drives (primary & secondary), and a third backup (archive) for backing up all the post processed image files. Files are automatically saved on the primary and secondary drives when I download the images from the camera or card.

Click to expand...

--
Julesarnia on twitter
Vibeke Dahl on Twitter is..
https://twitter.com/DahlPhotography

Assuming that the drive spins up:

1. Try the external drive on a different computer.

2. Remove the drive from the external enclosure and connect it directly to the motherboard of a desktop or tower computer.

3. Send drive to a data recovery service.

4. Get an identical, known working hard drive and swap the printed circuit board.

5. Remove drive from external enclosure, freeze drive in a ziplock bag, thaw and continue per step 2.

6. If the drive does not spin up, try steps 4 and 5. If still no spin up, remove the drive from the enclosure and rap it against a table top. This can sometimes free sticking heads from the disc platter and allow the disc to spin up. A last resort step.

She learned the value of backing up the hard way. Wish her the best of luck in retrieving her data,

Sky