fjdarling Loc: Mesa, Arizona, USA

Bob - I'm glad you found your images. It always panics me when I can't find files, so I know what you went through. As a former computer support tech for about 300 corporate users, I can tell you that it is common for files or folders to be accidentally moved, deleted or hidden. Sometimes it happens due to the user performing mouse operations too quickly, but sometimes it's due to the mouse getting old and slow. I suggest you simply be more deliberate in your mouse operation for a while and try to determine if your mouse seems to be lagging. Or, you could switch to another mouse (if you have a spare one) and see if it seems to be noticeably faster than your current mouse. In any case, good luck!

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

My first employer had a scheme - our computer had two drives {in 1978 they were the size of a washing machine} - so before we arrived, the "Chief Systems Programmer" would dismount #2, replace it with backup #1, and make a copy; then he would dismount both drives, remount #2 and mount #2 backup, and copy. We actually had two backups of #1 and #2, so this method resulted in backup of #1 and #2 from 'yesterday', backup of #1 and #2 from 'today', and the working #1 and #2. One day we arrived to be told that there was a problem with the copying program, both backups were bad and and the working copy had also been "creamed" - we had no good copy of all our programs. So, we spent the day going through our files and trash to recreate the source code for our system. We did get the job done eventually. My reason for recounting this is to say that even professionals have problems.

After this experience, we did redesign how we did backups, and for the first time actually kept a good copy at an offside vault {which was checked for readability before it was moved there.}

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Not really trusting the Cloud I might consider it as a backup to the backup of the backup. But I would only do it once a week or so because of time, and then only because the house and all my backups might burn or get sunk in an earthquake.

A long time ago I read an article by a Nat Geo photographer who was on assignment in the far west of China with a nomadic tribe. Every few weeks he came east to a major city for supplies etc and would load 100's or 1000's of edited pictures to the cloud. Then on his last trip before finishing the assignment one day after he went back west, this time for almost 6 weeks, his e-mail account got a notice the cloud storage company was going broke, was bought out and the new company was giving people one month to download or sign up for their service, after that their files would be deleted. All of his images were gone when he came back to the city 6 weeks later. Fortunately he had saved his best for the assignment on his laptop and was able to do the pictures for the article. But he had lost a lot of stuff to be reviewed and used by Nat Geo or Smithsonian and others that he also wrote for on occasion.

At the time I was considering using the Cloud for storage - that was the end of that idea as far as I was concerned.

cameraf4 Loc: Delaware

A cautionary tale. Glad everything worked out for you. You can't be TOO careful.

robertcbyrd Loc: 28754

I think most of us know how you feel one way or another.

I lost all of my archived photos when my external hard drive failed and my backup also failed. It had several years of highly valued (to me and others) shots of community music events. I paid a company to recover them and I got back about 80% of them, but they no longer had the file names I had given them and they were not organized. I was able to look at the exif data and get the dates they were taken and recover them manually that way.

I am so glad you found yours!

obsidian

I will definitely have a breakdown like you but thank God you found it. I wonder, you must have spent endless hours and took a handful of Tylenols to locate for them.
There are cloud subscriptions where you can store your precious hoards. Adobe for one is the safest bet. Dropbox can also store up to a point. It costs monthly fee but if you value your health and believe me, as a photographer you are worth more than $10M, the fee is just a tiny dent in your monthly budget or equivalent to your tip if you and your current wife goes to a dinner in a fancy restaurant.

I do use G-Force hard drive and Western Digital. I am so obsessed to make sure I have multiple copies so I have 4 hard drives in different locations - at home, in my office, in my briefcase, in the basement. My philosophy is that, if Tornado strikes, the basement is still intact and if the entire house burns, I still have copy in my office.

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

Back them up, RIGHT NOW. You can even use a thumb drive. I would make two back ups. Then go some where and take it easy for a while.

Gatorcoach Loc: New Jersey

I use a free program called SyncToy to copy pix from my hard drive to an external hard drive. It works fast so I can use it every day if I choose to. There are options for you to choose how to sync your pix. I'm not enthusiastic about using the cloud for storage yet. Yeah, I'm a dinosaur!

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

ALWAYS have two backups and keep one off site.

AnthonyBiss Loc: Toronto, Ontario

No sure what OS you are using, you did not mentioned it. However there is computer utilities in the market that will read your external hard drive to find the folders/files. Do check this out
I have had the same problem more than once.

crazycarol

SO glad you found your photos!! Been there, it is heart-wrenching to lose precious photos.HAPPY MAY DAY!!

Nikon1201

I have Backblaze and back up to 2 1tb external drives. If I lost mine you might as well shoot me.

ecobin Loc: Paoli, PA

My wife is always having computer issues - no way I would ever share a computer with anyone.

yssirk123 Loc: New Jersey

I use Acronis to separately back up my images weekly to 2-8TB USB external hard drives, and Backblaze for Cloud backup.

gener202002

I feel for you. I just lost my computer, had to buy a new one, and found out that only some of my files had been backed up, not the pictures. I was able to gain them back though, for the most part because lightroom, not classic, sent them to the cloud. I don't know why it did that, I always insisted they stay on my hard drive. Lightroom classic did not send them to the cloud so they are not there. But I can at least get them from the cloud in lightroom and send them over to photoshop. I have good reason to believe my computer was hacked, even though I had strong passwords. But that is life in the 21st century.

Did you have any backup to external files? If not, you may have been hacked too. We live in dangerous times. They say street crime has gone down. That is because they have all transferred to white collar crime, hacking computers. And some people are very, very good at it.