My external hard drive that held all of my pictures for the past 5 years failed on me. I have looked into getting it recovered and I have two options. 1. If it is a physical component they can change that piece and I have my pictures back. 2. If it is software issues then they do a data recovery for a lot of money. Either way, for the time being I am missing all of my pictures if not forever. I knew I had to back them up a long time ago, now all the excuses I had for not backing them up are just meaningless. My question is: How does anyone keep wanting to take pictures. I don't want to take any pictures because I have lost any reason or interest in doing so. The way I see it is if I take pictures, what am i going to do with them? Money is tight so I can't print them or put them on discs, I can't store them on an external because mine broke, and keeping them on my laptop is not an option because my laptop has been causing me problems too.
Wow - that would be devastating! I really feel for you.
One of the biggest reasons I post pictures on facebook is so that they are stored online, so I can retrieve them if I need to. This website is good for that as well. The other thing I do is email precious pictures and important documents to myself, so that they are in another place.
Another option is purchasing online storage, which I've not done before, but I've read about and is meant to be an inexpensive option.
@christabug I keep all of my pics on an external hard drive, but every weekend I backup the whole lot onto a second drive. That way, if one drive fails, practically all of my pics are still safe on the other one. 2 hard drives means no heartache.
@christabug I'm a windows user, and I store my photos on Skydrive. I made my account back in the days where they gave out 25gb for free (it's 7gb free now but you can always buy more).
I installed the software on my computer, so anything i drag and drog there will be synced onto the cloud. I've even set it up so that Lightroom saves all the pics there. Everything's automatic.
If you don't want to waste storage space on your computer, you can upload the files to the drive through your web browser as well.
Dropbox and google drive are also good options but the free space given is much lesser.
Always keep your photos in at least 2, if not 3 places. I want to say that a Flickr Pro account allows you unlimited storage online and I think that it is only around 25 dollars a year.
Just remember,even Jesus saves! Always back up your photos.
Oh nooooo! I'm so sorry that happened - it can be so devastating... Happened to me some years ago, only a couple of years after my husband dragged me into the digital photography world and I was so so sad... I've now gotten into the habit if backing everything up on an external drive before I delete from my cards... Really need to set that up to happen automatically... I was also loading up anything I liked in fluckr that didn't get posted here but got behind on that last fall when I was having some puter problems... Really hope your photos can be recovered...
Sorry, but this isn't something you can control. I would enjoy shooting even if i know that i'll never see those pictures (obviously, most of the times i DO prefer to see them).
Other than that, same thing that is told over here... Store them intwo, three places. There is software that keeps all the storage units in sync. Depending on the grade of disaster you may recover them... (Against an Earthquake there is little to be done, other than cloud services, but with small troubles it may save the day.)
Sorry again.
Sorry to hear Christina!
I hope they can recover your project.
From now on you will make backups. Maybe I should start doing so too, again, by burning a cd/dvd now and than. I've had the same issue but was able to recover my docs myself by connecting the internal harddisk (with issues) as an external drive to another computer.
Also you can become an Ace her. At least your uploads will be saved high res.
@christabug Hi - I don't know if someone has suggested this already, but what about buying ace membership on 365? I don't know what it costs, but I'm pretty sure it's a LOT cheaper than a portable HDD (probably less than $5). One of the perks for ace membership is full-res backups of your photos! Hope this helps and sorry about your photos.
I don't mean to sound harsh, but storing on one external drive is NOT backing up, as you have just found out. Myself, 2 external drives, CD's and also a Flickr pro account, yes there is a cost, but what price losing everything?
There are so many online places to save even if it is just your favorites. Go where you can save full -res so they are workable/printable if you ever want. Externals are great if you can afford them but online they are safe even if you have a home tragedy and lose the physical things. Sorry for your loss.
It sucks that your photos may be gone, or in for a hard time for recovery, but why would losing old photos make you lose all reason to take them now? You made a mistake and didn't double back them up. So what? Just learn from your mistake and start replacing what you can with photos using the skill you've gained in the last 5 years.
DeviantArt is free, unlimited, and you can retrieve full downloads of your files. Shutterfly is free but you can only get partial res files for retrieval, or you can order a disc of full res. Snapfish is another option.
Googling things also comes up with MANY solutions...
@christabug Tht's awful and I empathize as this has happened to me also. The first time it happened, I lost everything - every single photograph gone forever. But strangely, that horrible event motivated me to pick up my camera and start making even better photographs. Now I back up my files to an external hard drive. I print the very best of my work also, the images I want to look at daily.
@christabug that's horrible - apart from everything else suggested, what about picasa, an online web album that you can use to share photos (but don't have to!)
Christina! I know your are sad, but don't give up entirely, there are so many memories and creative visions still waiting for you to record. You just need to do things a little differently now. Hoping you get your photos back.
All the flexibility of digital media does come with this tradeoff. Unfortunately, external hard drives today have a very short life span. I'm thrilled if I get two years out of them. Since we no longer have negatives that will last for over a century, here's how I handle my photos:
1. Copy from camera to the internal hard drive on my computer. It's from here that I process all of my photos. (Note that they are still on my camera's card at this point.)
2. Copy from my internal hard drive to 2 separate external hard drives.
3. One of those external drives is automatically backed up real-time to Livedrive, an online file backup service.
4. Once I have three separate copies (2 on external hard drives, one online in Livedrive) I then delete the copy on my internal drive and I format my camera's card.
What I end up with is always three saved copies of my photos. Two are local on separate media and one is online.
That's a shame to lose all your pictures. It just goes to show that computer kit is not 100% reliable and you really must have backups. One backup is a lot better than none, but more than one is really how you should go.
I have all my pics on an internal drive inside the PC, then backup to two external USB drives alternately. I am also thinking I might burn everything to DVDs as another precaution.
I haven't gone for online backup yet (like to have things under my control), but am thinking about it. If you are short of cash that might be an option to pursue, as there are various options that don't cost too much.
henri cartier-bresson said Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst. And that was in the film days when you had to actually think before shooting, so that would be like saying your first 200,000 pictures are your worst now a days. The point is your next best photo is waiting to be taken and photography takes a lifetime to master so just learn from this, implement a multiple point backup plan including online and go out and shoot. Hopefully you can recover your photos, which a lot of the times is possible.
christina, depending on what drive you have, there's a possibility that the hard drive itself is fine and just the casing / controller has gone bust. I'd try to buy a generic external housing, plug the drive in there and then plug it into your computer.
I had a Western Digital MyBook something (cant remember now) but it was a network drive. WD used cheap controllers and it just packed it in. Had to boot up my computer in linux, unlock the drive and then was able to recover this in windows
As for online backups, that really does depend on how much data you shoot / keep. I have about 1TB of data to back up and there's just no reasonable online solution for that. So i've gone with Synology Disk Station. I've got 2 hard disks in the Synology encloser, set to RAID 1 (mirror) so i have full backup of it in case one dies. what i've done wrong is that i've got the same make of hard disks here - this means i'm actually at the mercy of the brand and yes there have been instances of hard drives dying at the same time based on brand (from memory seagate expansion 2TB). My next step is to get an external hard drive so that I can backup my disk station to it and then physically take it offsite (my work) so that i have it in case something happens in my house. The theory being that I'd bring it back and sync it every couple of weeks or so
Yeah, I"m so backing up again. My external HD is full (between my music 'collection' --more like an addiction and my photos). Maybe I'll look into online storage for the photos.
@christabug Most of the online storage providers offer some kind of free deal but (not unreasonably) limit the amount of storage you can have (2GB for dropbox, 5GB for Wuala, and so on). Still, given the number of providers you can probably cover yourself completely for a long time, for free, you'd just need to arrange your backup data so that it is split appropriately over the different providers.
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One of the biggest reasons I post pictures on facebook is so that they are stored online, so I can retrieve them if I need to. This website is good for that as well. The other thing I do is email precious pictures and important documents to myself, so that they are in another place.
Another option is purchasing online storage, which I've not done before, but I've read about and is meant to be an inexpensive option.
I installed the software on my computer, so anything i drag and drog there will be synced onto the cloud. I've even set it up so that Lightroom saves all the pics there. Everything's automatic.
If you don't want to waste storage space on your computer, you can upload the files to the drive through your web browser as well.
Dropbox and google drive are also good options but the free space given is much lesser.
Just remember,even Jesus saves! Always back up your photos.
Other than that, same thing that is told over here... Store them intwo, three places. There is software that keeps all the storage units in sync. Depending on the grade of disaster you may recover them... (Against an Earthquake there is little to be done, other than cloud services, but with small troubles it may save the day.)
Sorry again.
I hope they can recover your project.
From now on you will make backups. Maybe I should start doing so too, again, by burning a cd/dvd now and than. I've had the same issue but was able to recover my docs myself by connecting the internal harddisk (with issues) as an external drive to another computer.
Also you can become an Ace her. At least your uploads will be saved high res.
Succes!
DeviantArt is free, unlimited, and you can retrieve full downloads of your files. Shutterfly is free but you can only get partial res files for retrieval, or you can order a disc of full res. Snapfish is another option.
Googling things also comes up with MANY solutions...
1. Copy from camera to the internal hard drive on my computer. It's from here that I process all of my photos. (Note that they are still on my camera's card at this point.)
2. Copy from my internal hard drive to 2 separate external hard drives.
3. One of those external drives is automatically backed up real-time to Livedrive, an online file backup service.
4. Once I have three separate copies (2 on external hard drives, one online in Livedrive) I then delete the copy on my internal drive and I format my camera's card.
What I end up with is always three saved copies of my photos. Two are local on separate media and one is online.
I have all my pics on an internal drive inside the PC, then backup to two external USB drives alternately. I am also thinking I might burn everything to DVDs as another precaution.
I haven't gone for online backup yet (like to have things under my control), but am thinking about it. If you are short of cash that might be an option to pursue, as there are various options that don't cost too much.
I had a Western Digital MyBook something (cant remember now) but it was a network drive. WD used cheap controllers and it just packed it in. Had to boot up my computer in linux, unlock the drive and then was able to recover this in windows
As for online backups, that really does depend on how much data you shoot / keep. I have about 1TB of data to back up and there's just no reasonable online solution for that. So i've gone with Synology Disk Station. I've got 2 hard disks in the Synology encloser, set to RAID 1 (mirror) so i have full backup of it in case one dies. what i've done wrong is that i've got the same make of hard disks here - this means i'm actually at the mercy of the brand and yes there have been instances of hard drives dying at the same time based on brand (from memory seagate expansion 2TB). My next step is to get an external hard drive so that I can backup my disk station to it and then physically take it offsite (my work) so that i have it in case something happens in my house. The theory being that I'd bring it back and sync it every couple of weeks or so