Basil Loc: New Mexico

I keep all my photos and my Lightroom Catalog on an External portable hard drive. That way I can easily work on my pictures either on my iMac desktop or my MacBook Pro while I'm sitting watching TV or when I'm on the road.

This morning I was sitting in the living room with my MacBook on my lap and the portable drive plugged in processing some new pics. Suddenly my wife called me, "come quick you gotta see this!" (It was a neighborhood cat stretching to drink from the bird bath). I quickly moved my MBP to the table in front of me without thinking and, you guessed it, the portable drive hit the hardwood floor!

Luckily, the drive can still be read (I can still see and move/copy files) but when I plug it in now, I get an error that the drive is damaged and OS X can't repair it. The warning says to do a full backup of the drive and re-format, which I'm in the process of doing now. In other words, I can see files and move them to another drive, but I can't write to the drive.

Thankfully, I do monthly backups of this drive and also I don't delete pictures from my CF and SD cards until I really need to, but always make sure I'm fully backed up to the "MyCloud Mirror" before I delete files from the cards. This way, if I do damage my portable hard drive to the point that I could not recover anything, I'd not lose any pictures, and in the worst case I might not have the latest LR catalog and may have to re-import from the cards and do some processing on a month's worth of pictures.

I'm currently doing a backup of the damaged drive to my "MyCloud Mirror" (RAID) drive and will re-format the portable drive, then re-copy everything. What a pain, but hopefully noting will have been lost.

bdk Loc: Sanibel Fl.

Thank you! Last week I did a shoot at the state Dept in DC. I got home and was about to back up the pics. My wife called, I got side tracked and didnt do it.
Then I did some editing and it didnt occur to me that I didnt do the backup. So now thanks to you its currently backing up to my externals.

I hope it all works out for you.

Basil Loc: New Mexico

Even though I am backing up now, I still get nervous when I have to reformat a drive because them you have to hope and pray that everything on the backup is in order and nothing is corrupted. Usually what I'll do before I format the portable working drive, is I'll open the LR catalog on the backup and make sure it isn't corrupt.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I see a recurring theme here. "Wives cause destruction." :)

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Yes, backups are great. I don't recall ever needing backups because of a drive failure, but I have multiple copies of important files. You don't have your pictures on your computer drive?

Eagle65

I use Acronis to backup my computers and at the same time all of my pictures. I use the clone function to create an exact copy of the computer disk drive. This clone copy is bootable and requires no additional recovery in case of a disk failure. All you need is the software, an empty disk drive, and a USB cable. I make a clone copy before traveling with my computer. If something happens I have the best backup available anywhere waiting at home. I also keep memory cards from the camera until all of the images have been backed up on a clone disk drive. If your computer runs out of disk space, use Acronis to clone to a larger disk drive! Instant free space and a backup!

Basil Loc: New Mexico

No, I only have junk pictures that I download from the internet on my computer drive. For my pictures I car about, my working drive is a 4TB portable external drive which I periodically back up to a Dual-Drive (RAID) 8TB MyCloud Mirror (Western Digital). In addition, about once a month I also back up al my photos to an iOSafe fireproof external drive.

Jack 13088 Loc: Central NY

Computer users fall into two categories:
Those that have had disk crashes, and
Those that are going to have a disk crash.

On the other hand this is the first literal dish crash I have heard of. Good luck.

Basil Loc: New Mexico

Luckily it wasn't a total crash. I could still read from the drive, I just could not write to it. I was able to backup the drive, then repair/format and re-install everything. All is good now.

Jack 13088 Loc: Central NY

Perfect! You can resume breathing now.

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

Right now I have about 5TB of data, mostly images. I've had 4 hard drive failures in the last 17 years. I maintain 3 backups. The only data I've lost is some family photos which I stupidly didn't take the time to backup in the early days. Once it really happens to you, you have a lesson learned.

Eagle65

Cloning you disk drive is the best backup ever. The clone is a mirror image of your disk drive and is bootable. When you have a crash or a virus you can't get rid of, take the disk drive out of the computer and put the clone drive in. Turn the computer on and you get everything you had before and ZERO recovery!

pmackd Loc: Alameda CA

With Acronis you do not necessarily need a bootable clone. You can also make an Acronis Boot Disk that can later be loaded from your DVD drive and used to rebuild your system from whatever drive you put your system restore file (made by Acronis) on.

photoman022 Loc: Manchester CT USA

as a note: use MULTIPLE external hard drives; I use three. Over the past 12 years I've had two external hard drives fail on me; if I didn't "back up the back up" I'd be SOL.

pmackd Loc: Alameda CA

With Acronis you do not necessarily need a bootable clone. You can also make an Acronis Boot Disk that can later be loaded from your DVD drive and used to rebuild your system from whatever drive you put your system restore file (made by Acronis) on.