Lost everything

[devane68]

I have lost everything.  Over 14,000 images, over 3 years of work since the move to digital.  Backup?  Please don't ask.  "Oh, it'll never happen to me, my drive is only a year old,"  What arrogance.  Well, lesson learned.  I now have an internal 500GB (that's empty) which will backup to an external 500 and another external 500.  As soon as Blu-Ray burners come down in price then I'll backup to that.  My question is, I have my Lightroom database backed up (about 6 GB in size).  So I can look at previews of all the images that I lost.  Does anyone know of a way to pull jpg's from the previews or am I just wishing upon a star?  
     I tried Drive Savers.  I was ready to pay $2000 for the data... nothing.  They called me up and in a very somber voice said, "I'm sorry sir, there seems to have been a catastrophic failure of the read/write heads.  There is nothing left of the platter surfaces,"  I dropped the phone and fell to my knees.  Then I started to cry.  
     This forum provides a tremendous amount of help and this post has been very cathartic for me.  Here's to hoping someone knows a trick...

            Ethan

[The View]

I'm sorry to hear about that bad luck you had.

Depending on your operating system you might try special computer forums.

Companies invest a lot of money into destruction of data when they throw their hard drives into the trash. There are sophisticated applications to do that, as even five or six times overwritten data can still be recovered by the right person.

So, if it is so hard to destroy data, there may be the slight chance that not everything is lost.

I don't want to give you hopes, as I am not a computer specialist.

Just go out there, and try to get all the info, and you can at least say to yourself, that you did everything you could.

Regarding the back-up to disc: digital movies, for long term storage, are not being backed up to a burned disc, as those discs can sometimes detiorate in less than ten years. Become unreadable. So they back up digital movies... in analog film, storing the digital info on analog film.

So don't depend on discs alone. I'd rather say, get both back-up hard drives and discs.

I wish you good luck.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi!

Check this:

http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/hard-drive-recovery/

There are two possible situations:

1) Your directory structure is lost, in which case it should be possible to retrieve the pictures.

2) Extensive surface damage, in which case you should not try to do anything yourself, but a company like 'on track" may help.

Please realize that if you have a surface damage it will certainly only get worse if you use the disk at all.


Best regards

Erik

I'm sorry to hear about that bad luck you had.

Depending on your operating system you might try special computer forums.

Companies invest a lot of money into destruction of data when they throw their hard drives into the trash. There are sophisticated applications to do that, as even five or six times overwritten data can still be recovered by the right person.

So, if it is so hard to destroy data, there may be the slight chance that not everything is lost.

I don't want to give you hopes, as I am not a computer specialist.

Just go out there, and try to get all the info, and you can at least say to yourself, that you did everything you could.

Regarding the back-up to disc: digital movies, for long term storage, are not being backed up to a burned disc, as those discs can sometimes detiorate in less than ten years. Become unreadable. So they back up digital movies... in analog film, storing the digital info on analog film.

So don't depend on discs alone. I'd rather say, get both back-up hard drives and discs.

I wish you good luck.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=132074\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

[francois]

...
Does anyone know of a way to pull jpg's from the previews or am I just wishing upon a star?...

You might want to post your request on the Adobe forum (here) or contact Adobe directly. You need somebody who knows the ".lrdata" structure well enough to pull individual previews.
You could also try, as Erik mentionned above, OnTrack Data Recovery although Drive Savers is a very reputable company and probably has issued a definitive diagnostic.

Good luck!

[Ian Lyons]

My question is, I have my Lightroom database backed up (about 6 GB in size).  So I can look at previews of all the images that I lost.  Does anyone know of a way to pull jpg's from the previews or am I just wishing upon a star?   

[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=132052\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

You could try exporting them as Web Galleries. If the previews are at Standard-size you should get something reasonable as a record.

[sgs8r]

I have lost everything.  Over 14,000 images, over 3 years of work since the move to digital.  Backup?  Please don't ask.  "Oh, it'll never happen to me, my drive is only a year old,"  What arrogance.  Well, lesson learned.  I now have an internal 500GB (that's empty) which will backup to an external 500 and another external 500.  As soon as Blu-Ray burners come down in price then I'll backup to that.  My question is, I have my Lightroom database backed up (about 6 GB in size).  So I can look at previews of all the images that I lost.  Does anyone know of a way to pull jpg's from the previews or am I just wishing upon a star?   
     I tried Drive Savers.  I was ready to pay $2000 for the data... nothing.  They called me up and in a very somber voice said, "I'm sorry sir, there seems to have been a catastrophic failure of the read/write heads.  There is nothing left of the platter surfaces,"  I dropped the phone and fell to my knees.  Then I started to cry. 
     This forum provides a tremendous amount of help and this post has been very cathartic for me.  Here's to hoping someone knows a trick...

            Ethan
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=132052\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Did the drive just become unreadable? One method that has helped me save several failing drives is to open the case, or otherwise expose the physical drive (while leaving it connected) and set up a small fan to blow directly on the drive, cooling it to room temperature. This can revive the drive so it becomes readable and allow you to pull the data off.  Worth a try. Heat is the enemy of drives and the factory cooling is inadequate in many cases. If the drive surface is actually scored ( as you seem to imply), then things may truly be hopeless.

After having several problems with drives, I finally got one of the new 1 TB drives (with dual 500 GB drives) and configured it as RAID 1 (mirrored). Hopefully this will serve until external raid arrays become more available/affordable and I can set up a more efficient 4 drive RAID 5 array (4 striped with parity). I often generate 8 GB+ of images shooting sporting events and DVD backup has become impractical. I'm waiting for writable Blu-Ray prices to get more affordable (and their reliability to get better established). Until then, hard drive backup is the only practical solution. And hopefully my house won't burn down in the meantime!

-Steve

[Nill Toulme]

Steve, please take note that RAID in any flavor is NOT a substitute for a good backup strategy.  If you accidentally delete and write over a file, it's gone on the mirror too.  If a virus eats your data, it eats it on the mirror too.  If a fire burns down the house, it eats the whole RAID.

RAID is good, but it is NOT a backup.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

[Duke]

Try with Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Software It is powered by ‘Raw File Recovery’ feature that recognizes & recovers more than 300 file types including documents, spreadsheets, web content & images.

Download the demo to try the software http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm

If you have any good luck then this demo version will show the preview of your data.
If after scanning with demo if it does show your data then rejoice, you have your data back.

Hope it does provide some help to you.

[CatOne]

C'mon everyone... read the original post.  The OP says he already tried Drive Savers and they told him "no luck... the platters are totally gone."  If Drive Savers can't save it, pretty much nobody can, because they're the best (and amongst the most expensive) in the business.

[theophilus]

There are a couple of people on here who learned some things about the database structure.  Try posting a new topic about the database structure.  You will need the name of the table and the field name (column) where the previews are and you can pull out what is there.  Also try asking on arstechnica.com forums, it is a computer site but a lot of people in there shooting RAW with lightroom and PS.

I don't know about exporting a web gallery, it's probably worth a shot.  Whatever you do make multiple backups of this database because the previews are in there.