BudsOwl Loc: Upstate NY and New England

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Many potential causes here... bad cable or dead ports or...

The first thing I’d do is get the drives connected to a known-good MAC. If they read there, run Disk Utility —> Disk First Aid (from the Applications —> Utilities folder) and repair the drive catalog structures.

Next, run hardware diagnostics on your Mac. You may have a bad port. My son has a MacBook Pro with two dead USB Ports, and can’t see his drives or iPhone. It goes in the shop when school is out...

Find a good local Mac specialist who USED TO work for Apple... They won’t be as likely to ream your wallet.

f8lee Loc: New Mexico

Well, one mistake is having had only a single backup drive - computer pos know to cycle between two or more backup drives (I use 3 sets myself) because hardware fails. Hopefully this incident has to do with something less severe than the drives having been truly wiped.

As for the cloud-backup gang, that's not the be-all answer either - and 2TB of data to pull back will take days or longer to download. As well, we have seen on this forum people who discovered their cloud backup provider shut out the lights and their backups went away with the cloud business, so it's incorrect to make the analogy to the anti-vaxxers who apparently don't realize that the British doctor that claimed vaccines lead to autism himself has reneged his claim - but of course with medical laureates like Jenny McCarthy to lead the charge, those willfully ignorant enough to listen insist on staying the (stupid) course.

ecobin Loc: Paoli, PA

First reboot your computer. With the drive attached, open Finder and set to column view. Then under “Devices” click on the top choice which should be your computer. Now look in the second column to find your drive. If it shows then you can drag it to the first column. Hope this works.

chrish

I am also uncomfortable with the cloud. I know Google reads my emails and most browsers send me ads that relate to emails and searches I have done, I can't wrap my head around the "safety" of my photos in the cloud.....not that they would disappear, but who is going thru them....what algorithm is singling out photos for a human to check.....there is no privacy on the internet

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

If your son accessed the drive successfully on his PC, then the problem is with your MAC. Get it repaired or replace it.

olemikey Loc: 6 mile creek, Spacecoast Florida

Due to the low price of digital storage, I do the following, have done this ever since going digital;

I use each memory card till near full, but do it by removing those pics that are not worth keeping (bad shots, not quite ready for prime time, etc.) and prior to storing the card a full set is downloaded to my desktop PC and a laptop, and a SSD drive that sits by my desktop PC. This results in more memory card purchases than the average person probably buys, but for the first few years I shot JPEG, and did very little processing (sharpening/clarity, minor contrast and brightness, etc.) so the cost was not great, and I could do a lot with 2, 4, 8 & 16 GB cards.

When I switched to RAW and went much deeper into processing I went to larger cards and downloads to thumbdrives/flashdrives, major trusted brands bought on sale. I still do it this way.

I never used the cloud style memory as I never saw the need. It is another storage place, and is external to one's home, so there is merit to that. I may someday, but don't at this point. I did lose my old Toshiba laptop and all that is on it, but it had no impact on my photos, since they were in several other places.

So at minimum, my photos are on my desktop PC, a laptop, an external SSD, some thumbdrives and the original cards. Could I still lose my photos, yes (house fire, natural disaster, EMP blast, etc.) if the safe and it's contents do not survive. I may deposit another copy set at my daughters house, for an offsite storage, My daughters cloud, so to speak.

That's me, YMMV.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Sorry, what's a "pos" in "...computer pos know to..."?
I only know of one definition.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

👍👍 Been preaching this and fighting the “privacy paranoia” battle here for years, and during that time, there have been literally dozens of threads like this one. I’ll say it again:

1) cheap <$100 onsumer grade HDs will always fail - just a matter of when and the large mult-TB drives are even more dangerous because you lose more data.
2) double drive failures DO happen.
3) you need 3 copies of your data: working, backup and off-site DR (disaster recovery)
4) if you have decent internet access, you can’t possibly create DR storage as robust as a major cloud provider.
5) all your thousands of $ of camera equipment has one purpose - to produce data - it’s your most valuable commodity. Protect it as comprehensively and carefully as you choose your camera and lenses.

End of rant...

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

If you really believe that hackers are going through 10s of thousands of your photos looking for some nugget of useful information, then encrypt the data - simple.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Pretty sure he meant to type ‘pros’.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

1) would you rather take days to download the data (a background task) or lose the data entirely? Ask the OP if he would be willing to take days to get his 30,000 photos back or not have them at all. BTW, some services will send you a HD with the data.

2) Notice I said choose a major cloud provider, not a mom and pop operation with a single location. Please post the name of one major cloud provider that has gone “belly up”.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Ahh, yep, that fits!

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

It’s usually the failure of the cheapest part that causes an expensive repair or the worst of losses. A $2.00 tail light bulb can burn out and fry a $1200.00 control computer in a luxury car (1984 Jaguar). (My coworker was furious!)

Dikdik Loc: Winnipeg, Canada

As noted:

Do not write anything to your drives.

I assume you have powered down... carefully remove the drives from your computer.

If you or your son has access to a drive 'docking station' then check to see if you can read the drives on another computer. I don't know about Apple, but, the drives should be able to be read. A docking station is a device that allows you to plug in SATA 'internal' hard drives to an external device and can access the data. It does not write to the drives.

If the data is readable, then make a backup copy... no writing involved.

If the data is not readable, then try the same with a Linux based computer.

If the data is not readable, then seek professional help to see if the material can be recovered.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated; I may have overlooked something.

Do the same above with both harddisks.

Good luck on your recovery.

Dik