External hard drives?

TiltShift · May 24, 2012

I've had a 500GB WD for some time now (about 3/4 years), and it still works perfectly! Used it loads.. I do have all my info backed up on another HD as well and all my most important on yet another!.

If it's not saved in at least 3 places it doesn't exist

DanPower · May 24, 2012

I formatted the wrong drive by mistake. The wd drives came with formatting software on them. When I tried to format the new one the old was selected by mistake. So far the.web says that I can get them so as long as i dont write data on it.

This is correct. Formatting a drive does not delete the actual data, it resets the indexes which tell the computer where to find the data. Your photos are still there, but the computer is now seeing empty space. Unless you ran a multi-pass secure format (which actually replaces the physical data with zeros) your data should be intact, just don't write new data to the formatted space.

I suspect the data IS recoverable, but it will require you to spend some green making it so. Whoever said that the best things in life are free, didn't have photography as a hobby.

The data is almost definitely recoverable, but there are thousands of open source software solutions for this problem that won't cost a thing. If you have issues with the physical drive platters then you start spending money (hardcore data recovery on a 1tb drive can be upwards of $1000) but it sounds like the OP has just clicked the wrong button.

OP - good luck with it mate, all is not lost.... and hopefully you've learnt the lesson to run two synchronised external drives (or a redundant RAID setup) so you always have the data in multiple places

DanPower · May 24, 2012

Free Data Recovery, File and Partition Recovery, Undelete and Unformat Utilities (thefreecountry.com) this page has an extensive list of open source software solutions for your problem.

Patriot · May 24, 2012

I did learn my lesson for sure. My pictures are in the process of being pulled back now. thank you everyone with the help

Rosy · May 24, 2012

Patriot said:
Which external hard drives do you use to store your pictures? My WD passport just dies on me so I lost all of my pictures. The drive is running but it isnt sending a signal to the computer. I would like to get something more trust worthy.

i actually have 2 at home and one at work...you can never be tooo sure

sorry for your loss - but hey you still got your camera, go out and shoot!

vcustoms · May 25, 2012

Samerr9 said:
Anyone thinking of using RAID?

I am thinking of investing in one.. I have two offers now:

1- i-omega 4TB (two drives of 2tb) for about $600
2- Seagate 4TB (two drives of 2tb) for about $800 with cloud access

Any ideas?

Yea. I have one. It's USB 3.0 and made by cineraid. I got the setup with a 2tb WD drive for $250. Another drive is around $120-140 for a 2tb WD.

The problems I have with buying a raided system like the one you speak about is that if a drive fails your SOL and their expensive.

I'm looking to invest in another one that I can place in a fireproof safe, a bank box or a storage unit. Incase of a fire or something crazy that destroys my computer and raid backup at home.

vcustoms · May 25, 2012

Patriot said:
I just got a new hard drive but when I tried formating the new drive the old one was formatted. I now just lost every picture I've taken. Is there anyway to recover them?

There are programs like data rescue but I would recommend a company like drive savers or some place that does high end data recovery

480sparky · May 25, 2012

vcustoms said:
.................

I'm looking to invest in another one that I can place in a fireproof safe, a bank box or a storage unit. Incase of a fire or something crazy that destroys my computer and raid backup at home.

A fireproof safe is just that.......... FIREproof.

If your house burns to the ground, your hard drives won't burn. They'll just melt into a puddle of goo with miscellaneous electronic parts imbedded in it.

"Fireproof' means it prevents combustion, not the transfer of heat to the interior.

Patriot · May 25, 2012

So I'm guessing when choosing a hard drive that it's best to get one with higher rpm and usb 3.0?

480sparky · May 25, 2012

Patriot said:
So I'm guessing when choosing a hard drive that it's best to get one with higher rpm and usb 3.0?

My understanding is lower speed means higher write accuracy.

DanPower · May 25, 2012

480sparky said:
vcustoms said:

.................

I'm looking to invest in another one that I can place in a fireproof safe, a bank box or a storage unit. Incase of a fire or something crazy that destroys my computer and raid backup at home.

Click to expand...

A fireproof safe is just that.......... FIREproof.

If your house burns to the ground, your hard drives won't burn. They'll just melt into a puddle of goo with miscellaneous electronic parts imbedded in it.

"Fireproof' means it prevents combustion, not the transfer of heat to the interior.

And now we get into the argument of cloud storage.............. at the end of the day, you data is and never will be 100% safe. 50 years ago if your house burnt down you lost your slides/negs, now you lose your hard drive. Technology is great but it hasn't helped us in these sorts of situations.

For the record, here's my setup: photos are stored on my laptop (no desktop, I travel 10 months of the year so it's not practical) and backed up to two separate external drives, plus about once a month (uploads cost money for me most of the time) I upload everything to my web server which then syncs to a cloud server. So in theory I have my images in 5 different places. But if armageddon hits I could still lose all five of those and lose my ****....

This isn't a new problem, it's been around since the dawn of photography...

480sparky · May 25, 2012

DanPower said:
And now we get into the argument of cloud storage.............. at the end of the day, you data is and never will be 100% safe. 50 years ago if your house burnt down you lost your slides/negs, now you lose your hard drive. Technology is great but it hasn't helped us in these sorts of situations.

For the record, here's my setup: photos are stored on my laptop (no desktop, I travel 10 months of the year so it's not practical) and backed up to two separate external drives, plus about once a month (uploads cost money for me most of the time) I upload everything to my web server which then syncs to a cloud server. So in theory I have my images in 5 different places. But if armageddon hits I could still lose all five of those and lose my ****....

This isn't a new problem, it's been around since the dawn of photography...

I don't bother with cloud storage........ it would take years to upload all my images anyway.

DanPower · May 25, 2012

So I'm guessing when choosing a hard drive that it's best to get one with higher rpm and usb 3.0?

For internal laptop drives I believe you're better off with 5400rpm. They draw significantly less power and the speed increase isn't worth it. Ideally you want an SSD but not all of us are made of money....

For external use USB3 is the standard now, you won't get any benefit unless you have a USB3 capable port however even if you don't have that you might as well get a drive that supports it so that when you upgrade your computer you can take full advantage. USB3 adds nothing to the price..

External drives don't usually benefit from higher RPM as you are usually copying large chunks of data, the RPM mainly helps the seek time but if you are copying large amounts of contiguous data then that doesn't matter so much.