LR, damaged tiffs from PS, external HD

[picnic]

I just wasn't sure where to ask this.  I'm a long time LR user (if there is such a thing LOL--but since the first beta).  I use external drives for all my files--by year, since 2000.  When I import, I back up the current RAWs on a dedicated internal drive for the year--and then reset at the end of year--or 12 mos.  I backup my externals to a larger drive kept offsite--but only do this about once a month.

My problem--I've had several HD failures--or at least problems--in the last year.  I have a variety of mfg. over the years--and all but one of these were old drives.  Since I was backed up, I was able to just buy a new drive and copy for day to day use with catalog, etc.--and wasn't that upset about 2 old drives having hiccups.

Just recently, in a new drive (one my computer guys did for me--new drive, think Western Digital, but don't remember in an enclosure) I've had problems for the last week.  First I noticed tiffs showing as damaged or missing in LR.  I checked the files--and they are damaged.  I do my normal round trip to PS--open with LR adjustments but use CR3--(didn't upgrade to 4 since I do so much in LR now and 3 works fine for me --long time user of PS since maybe PS3). flatten, save as and it stacks in LR.  They don't show 'damaged' immediately but showed up several days later with that info--and not all of them.  

Then--usually I don't turn the external on until I'm ready to work in LR--but this time, turned it on before booting up and I got ckdisk--and I let it check Q (current drive) and it changed folder names--added the tilda to a partial folder name.  It also completely changed 2 folders to files and deleted contents.  I can rename the folders to match LR but I'm bumfuzzled about the damaged tiffs (which, if I've done more in PS, I print from in LR).  The RAWs seem to be fine in the same folders.

I took the drive to my computer guys (they build my computers and always have solved my problems) and they couldn't find anything wrong with the drive.  They suspected a bad drive or enclosure and planned to replace it under warranty but they took it out of enclosure for diagnosis and it immediately went to ckdisk and then they couldn't replicate any problem after that in enclosure or not.  

So--after long story--my question is---could there be any issue in the round trip from LR to PS that could cause the damaged tiff?  Could anything I would do in PS before saving cause an issue?  I have to admit in years of using PS, I've never had a damaged file before--and don't even know if this is possible, but I'm trying to cover all eventualities.  I'm contemplating just copying folder by folder over to a new drive and getting rid of this one, but if there's another cause--I don't want to just have it happen all over again.  BTW--all my other USB drives seem to work with no issues--at least I haven't found any.  And, oh yes,  I'm on a PC LOL.  And--I may start saving both to LR and to my dedicated internal drive in same folder--just in case, but that slows me down.

Just an additional sort of related question.  Is there any way, on import, when you backup the files to a different drive, to have LR back them up exactly as entered.  An example--when I choose the folder (photos 2009/July/folder date-name) it creates that folder but puts the backed up files in a subfolder named--'imported on July 18, 2009'--and I would like it to just put the files in the folder exactly the same as the one named in LR--MUCH easier to have to deal with later.

Diane

[Nat Coalson]

Hi Diane -
Just a thought - are the TIFFs compressed? If so, with what method?

And one more thought - on the affected drvies, have you used any kind of disk utility or defragmenting software?

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

Sorry to hear about your problems. I have no advise, but a simple reflection. I got the impression that you are using Windows and have some kind of FAT formatting on your harddrive. It may be better to use NTFS, but I may be wrong about this.
Also I would say that hard disks are either OK or they are gone, they seldom deteriorate. The problem could be somewhere else, like USB-cable broken or bad power supply to your enclosure. The things you write certainly point in the direction of file system damage and that is normally caused by disconnecting a disk without the operating system flushing out buffers to the disk. USB-problems like I mentioned would cause this kind of behaviour.

NTFS is more stable in this regard, because it uses "journalling" a way of safeguarding the information structure of the disk.

Best regards
Erik

I just wasn't sure where to ask this.  I'm a long time LR user (if there is such a thing LOL--but since the first beta).  I use external drives for all my files--by year, since 2000.  When I import, I back up the current RAWs on a dedicated internal drive for the year--and then reset at the end of year--or 12 mos.  I backup my externals to a larger drive kept offsite--but only do this about once a month.

My problem--I've had several HD failures--or at least problems--in the last year.  I have a variety of mfg. over the years--and all but one of these were old drives.  Since I was backed up, I was able to just buy a new drive and copy for day to day use with catalog, etc.--and wasn't that upset about 2 old drives having hiccups.

Just recently, in a new drive (one my computer guys did for me--new drive, think Western Digital, but don't remember in an enclosure) I've had problems for the last week.  First I noticed tiffs showing as damaged or missing in LR.  I checked the files--and they are damaged.  I do my normal round trip to PS--open with LR adjustments but use CR3--(didn't upgrade to 4 since I do so much in LR now and 3 works fine for me --long time user of PS since maybe PS3). flatten, save as and it stacks in LR.  They don't show 'damaged' immediately but showed up several days later with that info--and not all of them.  

Then--usually I don't turn the external on until I'm ready to work in LR--but this time, turned it on before booting up and I got ckdisk--and I let it check Q (current drive) and it changed folder names--added the tilda to a partial folder name.  It also completely changed 2 folders to files and deleted contents.  I can rename the folders to match LR but I'm bumfuzzled about the damaged tiffs (which, if I've done more in PS, I print from in LR).  The RAWs seem to be fine in the same folders.

I took the drive to my computer guys (they build my computers and always have solved my problems) and they couldn't find anything wrong with the drive.  They suspected a bad drive or enclosure and planned to replace it under warranty but they took it out of enclosure for diagnosis and it immediately went to ckdisk and then they couldn't replicate any problem after that in enclosure or not.  

So--after long story--my question is---could there be any issue in the round trip from LR to PS that could cause the damaged tiff?  Could anything I would do in PS before saving cause an issue?  I have to admit in years of using PS, I've never had a damaged file before--and don't even know if this is possible, but I'm trying to cover all eventualities.  I'm contemplating just copying folder by folder over to a new drive and getting rid of this one, but if there's another cause--I don't want to just have it happen all over again.  BTW--all my other USB drives seem to work with no issues--at least I haven't found any.  And, oh yes,  I'm on a PC LOL.  And--I may start saving both to LR and to my dedicated internal drive in same folder--just in case, but that slows me down.

Just an additional sort of related question.  Is there any way, on import, when you backup the files to a different drive, to have LR back them up exactly as entered.  An example--when I choose the folder (photos 2009/July/folder date-name) it creates that folder but puts the backed up files in a subfolder named--'imported on July 18, 2009'--and I would like it to just put the files in the folder exactly the same as the one named in LR--MUCH easier to have to deal with later.

Diane

[picnic]

Thanks both.  I picked up my drive yesterday.  All diagnosis shows its fine.  Its been formatted correctly originally--nothing done since using it (this one is only 3 mos old--others were quite old and had bad sectors--I just migrated those years to a new drive from my big backup).  Its rather a mystery but I've corrected all the folder names, deleted the folders that were totally corrupted where  all data had been deleted-- (they just showed a partial name of folder--which was now a file--with a tilda and 0kb of data) and replaced from my backup.  All folders went from ? to correct in LR as I did this.

There is some thinking that it might have been a power surge or at least power related.  I always use the 'safely remove hardware' utility before shutting them down but there is a possibility that I missed the correct drive when choosing and shut it down incorrectly.  I'll go with this--work as usual, but as I'm always backed up, have less to worry about.

The question about the tiffs--I didn't use to compress, but after reading (here I thought) about using zip to compress, have been doing that.   I think I'll just save them as non compressed tiffs--have plenty of room and memory is pretty cheap these days.  

Just a note to how I use these drives.  I've considered other methods but this works okay for me.  I have all drives connected via USB and powered but not turned on except for the current one in use.  When I use keywords or metadata browse to find an older image I want to work with, print, etc. I simply power that drive up.  I have all my drives named (up to R now--this was a great suggestion by someone on this forum and means LR never has a problem with the various drives) and marked with that name plus the year(s).  My organization one each drive is Photos 2009/July 09/72109 Highway 70 project 3.

Thanks again for reading and for suggestions.  I'm watching both what I'm doing, backup up as usual and being VERY careful with my 'safely remove hardware' usitlity or waiting until I close down before shutting off drive(s).

Diane