Ralloh Loc: Ohio

The main problem I can see is that you were only saving them to your external. I save to my internal drive and back up to an external. That is fine for mechanical failures, but, to really be sure you might consider on line storage, like Carbonite. That way if your house burns down you still have everything safely stored off site. Alternately, take your external with you when you leave.

Aaron Braganza Loc: Sydney, Australia

Completely agree. I have 3 backup systems rotated over every weekend. I have been bitten by the same problem before. Any hard drive has a certain life (often unknown)

You have our sympathies.

JonF Loc: Sheffield, UK

Sorry to hear of your problems. I had a situation a few years ago there I needed to get hold of some files from a crashed disk. The software I ended up with is called 'Recover My Files'. Not an imaginative name, but it really does what it says on the box. I have since used it successfully to recover files from friends disks. Having said this success will depend on how damaged your disk is - some sorts of damage need specialist equipment. Recover My Files can be found at http://www.recovermyfiles.com - It is not the only product out there, others may know of something better.
I save all my photos to an external hard drive these days and use DVD for archiving older files. For backup I am using a variety of free and paid-for cloud services.
Hope this helps.

kathylee Loc: Cleveland, Ohio and Clearwater, Florida

Well, that is a good question!! I just thought they were shot, do not know if I finalized or what I did as started them way back in 2000 when I first went digital and I was very dumb then about what I was doing!!! Probably still am, maybe a drop smarter by reading UH!!!
I do store them properly according to your reply, thanks.

Bridges Loc: Memphis, Charleston SC, now Nazareth PA

Two years ago I thought I had lost about 40,000 shots. I had purchased a new computer and the drive was telling me it needed to be re-formatted before it could be used. I wasn't about to format off 40,000 shots so I set the drive aside to see what could be done. I got all the multi-hundred dollar answers but did not want to pay so much. Finally I hooked the drive up to an older computer and bingo, my shots were back. The drive simply was not compatible with the 64 platform. I transferred the ones I wanted to keep via 16gb flash drive to the new computer. It scared me enough to sign up for Carbonite but didn't care for that. Now I back everything up on multiple hard drives. I have been thinking of doing one other step though. Back in film days one saved shot would cost about twenty-five cents. 7.00 for a roll of 36 exp quality film and 2.00 to have it processed. Today a 36 gb card can be purchased for 30.00 (Staples has it on sell for 24.95 this week). At 400 shots on a card at 30.00, it works out to cost 3/4'ths of a cent per shot -- less than a penny per photo! Why always erase cards just because they can be? Why not just erase the throw away shots and add to the card until you have around 400 good shots and then retire the card? They are small and you could put each card in it's own envelope and record on the envelope the date and all the sequences recorded on it. You may end up with three or four different events on the card but so what? If that was a problem due to different types of events on the card, you could add a master list by category. If you did this, and still have it downloaded on your computer and backed up on an external hard drive, you will be fairly secure. You could save older cards in a bank box to be extra secure. Another thing you could do is purchase one of those foamy like fire boxes. They are good for about 30 min. and would offer some additional protection in case of a fire. Downloading to DVD' will accomplish about the same thing, however it will take several DVD's to hold 36 gb. of photos and take up more room than the SD card.

wuzfuzzab Loc: Red Deer, Alberta

Gospel!!!!!!!

kimball

thar is free data recovery software on google

Crwiwy Loc: Devon UK

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

Ambrose Loc: North America

Ditto - had this very problem with all my pics on a laptop a few years ago. Took it to a local computer store and they retrieved and moved everything to my new backup drive for $30.

Lucian Loc: From Wales, living in Ohio

Your may or may not be able to be recovered cheaply. It depends on what went wrong. I ran out of space on my laptop and changed the 320 for a 750GB. I had also purchased three months prior, two external hard drives, one 1TB and one 3TB, all three were Seagate.

My 1TB began to act up about 2 months after purchase. It showed up on the desk top but when clicked on it was blank in the window. However when right clicked it showed 780 of the 1TB used so you know there was data on it.

I had everything transferred from my original Laptop HD to the new 750GB Seagate internal laptop HD. I took the last holiday with my wife as a couple prior to the birth of our daughter, to Boston and Cape Cod etc. Shot some great photos about 43GB worth but could not back them up on the 1TB due to it acting up. I was going to contact Seagate tech support to see what was up when the laptop HD, not more than 28 days old, failed totally.

We tried everything such as going to shops, big box stores, individuals who were supposed experts etc. Nothing worked. We even changed out the circuit board with another Seagate but that did not work. The freezer thing only sometimes works IF... it has failed due to an overheating circuit board on the HD itself.

Yes recovery places, there are three in the USA can recover almost all your data but due to it having to be opened in a clean room it will cost anywhere from $750 to $3,000+ and I can't afford anywhere close to the minimum charge.

There used to be any makers of HD units but that huge conglomerate Foxnet.com (it is Fox something) which is the company that makes everything for Apple from iphone to ipads etc., bought most others out so they now make the same drive and just put a different name on. Only Hitachi and Toshiba make their own drives, from my research. Seagate and Western Digital and most of the others are all made by Fox"whatever".com so don't think that your WD HD is any better nowadays than his Seagate because it is the same thing.

Seagate are only responsible for replacing the drive, they are NOT responsible for recovering anyone's data, not our few photos, not a major corporations entire database. Therefore if your problem is not a simple one, then we are both up the creek with out a paddle. No one can recover your images or data if the HD itself has failed, mine even tries to spool up, so it is spinning, but that is all.

If yours shows up on the screen as no HD detected then I am afraid you are out of luck, no external case or fitting into another computer will work. I hope you have better luck than my failures.

Festina Lente Loc: Florida & Missouri

Lucian, I'm not sure where you got your information (the Internet?) but I believe you may be somewhat misinformed based on your statements below.

"There used to be any makers of HD units but that huge conglomerate Foxnet.com (it is Fox something) which is the company that makes everything for Apple from iphone to ipads etc., bought most others out so they now make the same drive and just put a different name on. Only Hitachi and Toshiba make their own drives, from my research. Seagate and Western Digital and most of the others are all made by Fox"whatever".com so don't think that your WD HD is any better nowadays than his Seagate because it is the same thing."
This is simply not true. These are competitors and they take their technological and quality differences very seriously. Their HDDs are not made in the same place by the same company.
While they may share occasional bits and sub-assemblies that are made my other manufacturers, their design and final assembly is uniquely WD, Seagate, Hitachi, etc.

"... No one can recover your images or data if the HD itself has failed, mine even tries to spool up, so it is spinning, but that is all.
If yours shows up on the screen as no HD detected then I am afraid you are out of luck, no external case or fitting into another computer will work. ...."
Most data can be recovered from a failed hard drive. The cost of data recovery depends on the nature of the failure.
It is important to get a qualified shop to perform this for you as some rumored "home remedies" executed wantonly without experience and diagnostic knowledge can make eventual data recovery more expensive.
If the data is important to you, then the cost of recovery is secondary.

A well informed and faithfully executed back-up strategy is the best solution as HDDs will all fail eventually. No exceptions.

Bridges Loc: Memphis, Charleston SC, now Nazareth PA

No one called me out on my math, so I will do it myself! I divided 400 into 30, not 30.00 and therefore messed up on the placement of the decimal point. At 400 shots they would cost about 7.5 cents per shots -- still a fraction of what a saved negative would cost. But then the 400 figure is very low. Anyone shooting anything below 24 mpxls will get 1200 to 1500 shots or more on a single 32 gb. card. This will reduce the cost to a couple of cents per shot.

CARABUCO Loc: L.A., CALIFORNIA

Rocket; more than 40 years ago, I started making my first "serious" $$. I bought a VM bug, then a `61 Chevy Impala. later, a `65 Mustang Pony and Nikon F film camera. In moving around all the cars went dataway, but the Nikon is still here, its "my dog". At some point I will have to become proficient with DSLR. I have a wide learning curve, but I am very blessed that I have The Forum and you guys out there keeping my back. Thanks.

CARABUCO Loc: L.A., CALIFORNIA

Rocket; I posted some for you and I don`t know how it ended up on a different page. ??beats me.

Vickie Aller Loc: Ohio and Florida

I lost a Western Digital external hard drive in October. I was just sick. Found a place in California called $300 data recovery. Check out on line. If they can not recover, no charge. They were able to recover 99% of what I had on mine. Wonderful people.
Back up, back up, back up. Never have your pics in just one place. I learned the hard way.