GrandmaG Loc: Flat Rock, MI

I like that idea too but haven't invested in it yet. After hearing the OP's sad story, I think it's time. I also have a WD external drive and the Time Capsule. The difference for me is that I upload my pics to the hard drive, & backup to the external drive. So in addition I am trying out Carbonite for cloud storage of my pictures. Hope this helps. For really important pictures, I keep them on the card.

John_F Loc: Minneapolis, MN

All mechanical devices are subject to wearing out and hard drives are especially susceptible. The read/write head must move across the spinning disk at a very small clearance. Sometimes the arm 'hangs up' at one end or the other, or fails to dock at home, or plows a furrow in the platter. In all but the last, the data can be recovered but that takes a professional with all the right tools. I knew a guy who once whacked a drive with a ball peen hammer (and just dented the case) - not recommended.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

That's a technique I do use occasionally. Just prior to sending dead drives to the recycling center! It works a treat on Seagates. Haven't had a WD drive fail on me in recent memory.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Your computer guru may be able to recover the material. It worked for me three times out of four. Then I decided to change my methodology.

Good luck.

GrandmaG Loc: Flat Rock, MI

Same here. When my hard drive crashed, my PC Guru recovered everything; but I also had the important stuff on 2 external drives. However, when lightning struck our power line, the whole computer was toast

revhen Loc: By the beautiful Hudson

We only learn the hard way. I believe in the belt-and-suspenders method: Onsite and cloud backup. For the latter I use Carbonite.

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

THE best NAS device, imho, is a Symbology unit. Check them out at B&H. Pricey, but the best. Best of luck.

authorizeduser Loc: Monroe, Michigan

I have a my computer and monitor connected to a UPS which is suppose to give its life to save my system, hopefully I will never have find out if it works!

My internet is wireless so the lightning is not going to get into my computer that way.

Always remember, if it can fail it will, usually at the most inconvenient time and/or place. Plus if there is a possibility of several things failing, the failure will be, the one which will cause the most damage and cost the most money to fix - Murphy's Law

Mormorazzi Loc: Temple, Texas

Thanks to everyone for your input. I thought I'd made a smart, informed decision when I bought the My Book Studio to complement my iMac and Time Machine. I've learned a lot from all of you.

What I can't figure out now is why most of my .dng files are in Time Machine, but a handful aren't. I'm thinking it's something I did wrong while importing through Lightroom. It's like there was a space in time, about two months ago, where 286 photos were only saved to the external My Book and Time Machine didn't see them. My brain is spent trying to figure out what I did differently.

Any thoughts? Should I start a new post?

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

It is a good question, and clearly likely to be either a separate or additional issue. A separate thread might be good to focus on the software/backup setup rather than a hardware failure.

wmontgomery Loc: Louisiana

I have used SpinRite by GRC.com for years. If the drive will still spin, it can probably recover it. Buy it, try it, if not satisfied they will refund no questions asked. Will need a windows or linux machine to run it.

10MPlayer Loc: California

I used Secure Data Recovery. They did the job but it was pricey.

Good luck.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

First, are you sure the drive is bad rather than the power supply in the enclosure (assuming it's not powered from the computer port)? Have you swapped the cables and if USB connected, have you tried a different port? Is the drive spinning? (You can both hear and feel it). If it is spinning, can you see the drive in Explorer (or the Mac equivalent)? If it's visible in explorer, what error do you get if you try to read files or click on "properties". If the drive is spinning, have you tried to run scandisk on it?

If the drive is not spinning, try to power the drive from an alternate power source (a cable directly from the computer power supply). If still not spinning, try a firm slap on the face of the drive and turn the drive 90 degrees to vertical while rebooting multiple times. One of the downsides of running external drives unpowered for long periods of time is that they may not restart when powered up - this is the reason that during Y2K (for those that can remember that), the major storage manufacturers warned customers not to take their storage down. There are multiple causes including bearing "sticksion" and heads getting parked in the debris on the platter, but the net-net is the drive doesn't start. Regarding the "refrigerator" fix (which has been discussed on this forum before), it may or may not work, but is risky in terms of ever recovering the data on the disk due to the inevitable condensation forming on the platter (you can Google pictures of moisture on the platters of disassembled drives that have been subjected to this treatment) since the head normally rides above the platter on a "cushion" of air, not water. BTW, this issue is why storage that has been transported is allowed to "acclimate" to the temperture and humidity in a data center before being powered up unless they were transported in an air conditioned truck

In short, make sure the drive is truly bad before giving up and going to a drive recovery service which is VERY expensive. Hopefully if it's truly bad, you have a backup of some sort (or implement one going forward) including mirrored drives/RAID, optical media, the cloud, or keeping a copy of the data in a different physical location (or all of the above). Good luck!

JCam Loc: MD Eastern Shore

Some years ago I subscribed to Carbonite for my computer; it took about three days to back up the system. I'm retired so time isn't a major factor, and not a professional so loss of my photo files is not a disaster, but it would be an aggravation of the First Magnitude!

A year or so after subscribing some virus or other malware infected my computer; I took the computer to a local, trusted IT shop to be cleaned up and they did an excellent job and installed Win7 Pro instead and deleted the Win 8 & 8.1 "upgrade" which I hated. Then I went to Carbonite to download all the files they had been backing up for a couple of years "just in case". Unfortunately, during the download Carbonite's system stopped or crashed about 1/3 of the way through the download. When I contacted them they apologized profusely and told me to restart the download. I did and it worked this time except that the oldest third of the photos & miscellaneous were missing, never to be seen again!

I now use on site backups to the hard drive--copy and paste to the external drive. I'm just too old to trust this cloud stuff; fortunately the stuff lost wasn't critical.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

BackBlaze is better than Carbonite