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gpc1

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Greg
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Hi,
I took some pictures with 400d, loaded them from the Sandisk extreme 111 card on to my lacie external hard drive. When trying to import them into lightroom it causes the whole programme to freeze, and then the whole laptop.....eeekk :eek:

Thought it was a lightroom issue but tried again with the Canon CRw pro photo software and the same thing happens.:suspect:

It also happens when copying the files from one harddrive to another. Its like it it comes across a particular file, throws a wobbly and decides to to just stop!:bang:

I think i have narrowed it down to a particular folder full of pictures. All the aother picture folders are fine when importing or transferring across drives.

I cant seem to narrow it down to which files within the folder are actually corrupted or causing the issue though, so I have pretty much resigned mself to losing the whole folder of photos:thumbsdown::sulk::shake:.

So, anyone experienced something similar and been able to remedy it.:help:

Also, I think its time to backup all my music and photos. Can anyone recommend software, process, storage solution etc. Should aget another external drive etc.
Thanks

Thanks all
 
Yes i've had to deal with situations like that quite a few times (i used to work with computers).

First of all backup your photos to somewhere else quick!
One of your hard drives might have some corrupt areas and maybe starting to fail.
If the computer is locking up when you try to copy a massive folder with lots of files or sub-folders... copy them off one folder at a time. Or small groups of files at a time.

Run a scandisk with a surface area scan after that and it will tell you if theres any bad sectors on the hard drives.

Once a hard drive has started doing that, i get rid of them because it can just get worse and worse from there on in.

If the scandisk checks out fine you have some other problem that you can investigate.

Good luck!
 
I have started using Carbonite.

This continuously backs up your hard disk online, takes a few days to do the initial backup, but after that its all pretty seamless. And, that backup is off site (off continent !) so if the house burns down my data is still intact.

I get free months for recommending people, so if you are interested, PM me with your email address and I'll send you an invite.

http://www.carbonite.com/
 
john-oh said:
I have started using Carbonite.

This continuously backs up your hard disk online, takes a few days to do the initial backup, but after that its all pretty seamless. And, that backup is off site (off continent !) so if the house burns down my data is still intact.

I get free months for recommending people, so if you are interested, PM me with your email address and I'll send you an invite.

http://www.carbonite.com/
Click to expand...

That looks tasty. If business picks up, I might start using that instead of investing in multiple externals.
 
Thanks all,

I did wonder whther it was the HD on its way out.

ironic thing is that a mate was over about a week ago and we were discussing HD issues and i was banging on about how wonderful my little lacie drive was and how i had, contrary to press reports, no issues!!!

Will check out that carbonite site tonight. First thing i think i will do is burn everything to disk, and copy everything to my other external HD.

Its suddenly made me realise just how vulnerable all your photos/music/data can be. Imagine losing 10,000 pics, 10,000 music tracks......ouch!
 
gpc1 said:
I think i have narrowed it down to a particular folder full of pictures. All the aother picture folders are fine when importing or transferring across drives.
Click to expand...

How big is this file in particular? I had a similar issue on my external hard drive with a file which was full of pics and in excess of 2GB. Took me ages to sort it out as it kept crashing. If the file is large, try to make it smaller by creating smaller, more manageable files. :geek:
 
Thats the problem, i dont know which particular file it is. Theres about 170 pics (RAW format) in the folder and a number of them, when loaded into prophoto are blank. the data just does not import. Then as soon as you press a key or try to click on an icon on the programme the whole laptop just stalls and you get the dreaded 'Prophoto is Not responding' in the toolbar. It completely frezzes and even task manager freezes and cant close the programme.

Other folders seem to be able to be imported OK to both lightroom and canon prophoto.

I have left the folder on the hard drive and just not imported it and all seems OK. Im tryiong to see if there is anyway of recovering/fixing the folder.

Wonder if i can do a defrag on the external HD and that will work?
 
I have a few solutions for picture backup.

Norton Ghost has a great feature where you can create an image of your hard disk/folder where you store your data, when an external hard disk is plugged in It will automatically run a backup of the disk/folder even if its not been updated it will still verify the file structure.

Other options are tape drives, there are a few USB external tape drives you can buy for you to catalouge your files up to.

With the computer market being flooded with lots of external hard disk manufactures, the brand names are being forced to drop prices, Companies like seagate and maxtor offer External storage solutions of up to 500G Plus for around £100

I also have a network NAS that allows me to store my pictures on it. It has 2 disks with 1 terabyte of storage. Basically 2 500G drives, they are set in a Mirrored pair which allows them to backup data between themselfs. so should one fail the other takes over. You can then replace the faulty disk and it will mirror across with the click of a few buttons via the web interface

Magic :)

Mike
 
gpc1 said:
Wonder if i can do a defrag on the external HD and that will work?
Click to expand...

firstly if the disk is made by a manufacture, find out who.

Maxtor, seagate and western Digital all offer good applications to fault find and fix about 60% of there hard disk issues.

I had a Maxtor Diamon Max disk that just stopped reading data, I could see the file structure in windows and open teh folders but It would not open any data.

I downloaded and ran the application from there web site, it scanned the disk and fixed all errors and game me an error report to send to maxtor. as a result they replaced the drive as they found an issue. But in teh short term i was able to migrate all my data off the disk

Mike
 
Thanks for the advice all.

I like the look of the carbonite site. for 25 quid a year doesnt seem to bad.

Im not sure if its the drive though. The other folders import into lightroom just fine. Have also taken some more shots, created a new folder, loaded the shots from camera to HD the imported into lightroom no probs.

:suspect:
 
gpc1 - if the drive has bad clusters that aren't spreading at the moment, only accessing the files occupying those clusters will cause an error. Its definitely worth checking the drive.

As dj_myk said above... most of the the manufacturers have their own drive diagnosis software you can download for free, or run a full scandisk on the drive.
It might be fixable by scandisk if the FAT is corrupt or something.
 
Thanks again,

I think the order of things is

Copy all good files to second hard drive
Check lacie website for a drive checker
Contact lacie as i think the drive is still under warranty
backup to disk/carbonite
Keep fingers crossed

Im in unknown terrotory with this. Im pretty computer literate and can sort most things myself but this is a first for me so a big thanks to for all the advice.:thumbs::clap:

Rgds
Gpc1
 
gpc1 said:
Im in unknown terrotory with this. Im pretty computer literate and can sort most things myself but this is a first for me so a big thanks to for all the advice.:thumbs::clap:

Rgds
Gpc1
Click to expand...


well IT is my day job and the team I work in run all the backup schedules for 140 Gp practice sites thoughout edinburgh and the lothians. So we know a fair bit about backups and data storage :)

Mike
 
Cheers Mike,

If i simply transfreed the files to a new drive by copy and paste, leaving the corrupted files/folder on the original knackerd drive, then re-formatted the original knackered drive, would this solve anything?

I need to check Lacies website.

Ive just discovered that when i import the corrupted folder into canon po photo a few of the pictures can be seen in the previews. Then there are a number that simply have a cross. When i then click on the pictures that can be seen to expand them they are really pixelated. Almost as if all the data isnt there. The picture is complete, there are no missing bits, its just that the pixels seem huge, with jagged edges. Its then that everything quts working.

hmmmm!
 
OK,

Got a new western digital hard drive and will copy all the picures and music to this.

A couple of questions,

If my old external drive is bad/knackered/has bad clusters, will copying and pasting the files copy and paste the problem. ie is the problem isolated to the physical drive or is it on the file.

Anyone recomend software for doing this or simply copy/paste from one to the other.

Once copied and pasted to new drive, if i format the old drive, will this fix any drive issues that arent mechanical?

Thanks again all
 
Just a thought, could it be the file from the card that's corrupt and causing the crash.

Can you isolate the individual file that's causing the problem. Also might be worth shooting some images on another card say 10-20 and see if they import OK.

If you think it's the card try running a recovery program to see if you can recover the data. Some program's also let you check out the card. If it is the card I would recover what you can, and then bin it.
 
Ahhh,

forgot to add,

Phoned Sandisk and told them i had a faulty card. After some toing and froing they have reluctantly decided to send me another. Sandisk customer service wasnt that great. I
Now, im not 100% sure that its the drive, so i thought best thing to do is replace the card AND the drive, backup the pics and then get the drive checked and bin the card that is possibly corupt. So all bases covered!

The only thing i need to do now is copy over the pictures. I think i have deleted the corupt files so I should only be copying the gooduns.

So i guess would copy and paste suffice or will copy and paste copy any problems. Im trying to avoind any potential damage to the new hard drive.

Muchas gracias
 
Just copy and paste the files. Sounds like you have corrupt files that give read errors on the old disk and they probably will not copy. Do it in chunks of a few directories at a time then if a particular directory fails to copy you know where to restart from.

I have my daily backup on a network drive and a second less frequent backup on a USB external drive. Wonder how long it would take to backup and restore 400Gb to/from that carbonite site?
 
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