Photo Preservation in the Digital Age

[PhotographyBuff]

Hello all,

Just had an external hard disk failure. It contained several thousands of my photos not backed up elsewhere (as well as some other material). Recovering the photos and data was assessed to cost $475 by the specialist.

How do I go about making the decision whether to spend that amount of money to recover my photos or to just forget them and take new ones? What is your advice? And what is your advice in general about how to preserve our photos in the digital age?

I will also welcome any advice about how I might recover the photos/data myself from the hard disk.

 

[RichardTaylor]

How important are the photographs to you or other people?

I normally back up my to two hard drives (one external) and DVD's

 

[viewfromthenorth]

I back up to external hard drives. While I've got a load of stuff online (flickr, facebook), it's mainly low-res, although I've got maybe a few hundred high res ones backed up online

I also print photos out, an unusual concept in this day and age.

 

[Teflon-Mike]

How has the External HDD failed?
I presume its a USB expansion drive. We've had a couple of these, and a couple of failures. Inside the casing is usually just a standard 2.5 (lap-top) or 3.25 (desk-top) IDE Hard Drive. Casing has an interface to power up the disk and talk to the IDE interface on the disk and USB plug on the cable.

On the larger 3.5" HDD's we've had a couple have had the power adaptor go on us. Easy enough to get a new power pack of e-bay for £2.99 or something... and back in business.

Another, the interface has bludgered... too much plugging ion and out to shift it between computers..... Cracked the case, took the HDD out, and plugged it into spare bay on the Desk-Top... then ordered a new enclosure with interface for it from e-bay for I think it was £7.

That disk, after whet two recoveries, eventually did 'die' horibly. The actual heads started clicking as the on-disc control electronics fried. We put this down, to the fact that in the little plastic enclosure, and powered up the whole time, being run not as a back-up or part-time drive but main media storage on the computer, it just got too hot, too often to last, without any form of heat-sink or cooling fan.

'Recovery' via specialist was a question of stripping the drive, and rebuilding it. If the interface electronics, swapping the flexi-strip between the interface sockets and heads wrapped around the metal chassis for one from another, identical drive, or taking the actual disc-stack out and popping them into another identical drive.... NOT easy, and its expensive as you have to add the price of another identical HDD to replace the broken bits to get the data off the discs to cost of time to do it...

As drive didn't have anything that was irreplaceable on it... it simply got binned at that point.

In between times though, it did manage to get unintentionally re-formatted, when her-nibs the 'Format-Queen' had choked her C-Drive with 'stuff' and the computer decided it didn;t want to recognise it... so she stuffed the Windows disc in to the CD and pressed 'Y' when it asked her if she wanted to format the Hard drive... the only one it found..... on the USB cable!

There was some stuff worth recovering on it that time round.... only real bug-bear of it was the disc was a 1Tb drive, and using free file recovery software, we had to have at least that much 'spare' space on a computer to put it all! And we didn't! I ended up clearing down my Lap-Top with a 320Gb HDD, then telling recovery software to only recover individual file types; mpg or jpg, or whatever, so as to limit how much it pulled off the disc in one go, in hope it didn;t swamp the lappy! then burned that to DVD, soing successive 'sweeps' to get all file types we wanted off it!

So... first port of call. HOW has your HDD failed? And can you get it up and running cheaply and easily, cracking case and plugging it into a desk-top directly?

If so, may be salvaged either with new enclosure or just a new power-supply; and if a computer will still talk to it; even if the disk Is corrupt, file recovery could still let you pull data from it.

If not, and it is toast.... its toast. And it would have to be rebuilt, expensively to get it to talk to a computer, and recover anything recoverable left on it.

Is whats on there worth that kind of cash, is the real question? And we cant answer that. Only you can.

Meanwhile; Extrenal Drives are NOT the most reliable.
The external supply 'desk' drives, are probably the most at risk. Powered from seperate power adaptor, when you turn OFF the computer, the Hard drive MAY still be powered up, even though its not talking to anything through the USB. As mentioned, without heat-sink or cooling fan, they aren't best cooled to begin with, so leaving them constantly switched on, isn't going to improve thier odds of long term survival.
IF you use them; back up to DVD, and make sure that when they aren't in use, they are unplugged and unpowered and not cooking themselves on a low heat.

DVD? I remember when CD's were 'invented' and a couple of Radio 1 DJ's picked up on their allegded 'indistructability' and went out and played frisby with a couple in the park before playing them on the radio! No... they aren't are they!

However, optical discs are pretty hardy; and write-once read many, once you have burned data to them, as long as the burning software hasn't used an unusual or incompatable burning algorythm; its normally pretty safe.

I have had a few discs, and I have been burning them since I got a very early Philips TWO SPEED CD-Writer, when they were first launched, for some stupid amount of money more then my car at the time was worth! I've had a few discs that have gone duff over time. Couple through physical damage; others through software compatability; most common, probably 'multi-session' burns, where I have only put a half discs worth of data on the disc, and left it 'open' to add more later; that disc has only been readable in my CD drive, on my computer, and on the same instalation of OS as was on it when I opened the disck to write! So these days I always burn and close. Gauling to only put perhaps 500Mb of data on a disc that could take 4,500Mb... but, what the heck; 4.7Gb DVD's are the same price as 700Mb CD's now! Just bought another cake, £15 for 100..... they are 15p each! (Jeez I when I got that two speed CD Kodak writable discs cost me £3.99 EACH!)

100 x 4.7Gb discs for £15 is 470Gb, or 3.2p per Gb. Compared to about £75 for a 1Tb HDD, which gives you, 7.5p per Gb, its about the cheapest storage you can get.. though chopping up a hard drive to fit of hundred discs, you probably loose a bit from only being able to part fill each, either because of file-sizes or simply convenience.

And it IS pretty reliable. Once on the disc, as long as you do store them reletively carefully, and put each into a protective slip or Jewel case, I use PVC sleeves, something like 200 for 99p of e-bay or something daft... adds not a lot to the cost per Gb anyway... then archive in dish-washer tablet boxes... Hey! they would just get thrown away, and they are a convenient size to take about 30 DVD's!

So, when you wipe-down camera's SD card; what do you have on yours? Mines 16Gb. Four DVD's at most, if the card's full. Archive straight to DVD, mark the disc by Wipe-Down date. Sleeve and box. Whatever happens to hard drives after ought not matter much!

HDD space is then 'working' instant access storage; and an external may be a useful way to get large data capacity to hold a lot of photo's to look at.... but, how much do you really need?

I have over 65,000 images on my PC, pretty much my entire archive collection; They take up about 100Gb of a 500Gb 'slave' or second HDD, in the Desk-top. And that's why I put it there. It has a heat-sink and fan on the bottom so that it is kept cool under frequent or continuiouse use, to prolong its service life, and plugged directly into the motherboard via IDE cable, big files load fast without lag. and I have all my USB ports free for memory sticks, scanners, Car-Readers or cameras!

Wouldn't be so convenient on a Lap-Top; that only has room for one internal Hard-Drive, and at 320Gb, taking 1/3 of that for existing pictures wouldn't leave much for anything else... which is why I have a Desk-Top for photo-viewing or editing. I can still access my Photo's from the lappy via home-hub off the desk-top, and could load a few to it if I wanted to take the lap-top out the house I suppose... but then most photo's I may want to show any-one are loaded at web-res to Face-Book or Photo-Bucket anyway.

If I only had a lappy, then an external HDD might be only real option... and could be OK... but as 'working' mass storage, not archive space.... master files still archibed straight to DVD at card-clear time.

Bottom line; magnetic memory is NOT permenent long term memory. Its designed to be written and over written; its not write once read many. Optical, CD/DVD is WORM write once read many memory you cannot over write, and that doesn't have metal moving against metal to review it every time you access a file; only light. It is the medium DESIGNED for long term archive storage. External HDD's aren't.

 

[veedub]

The above answer covers most things. I think the question that you need to ask yourself is how valuable are the lost photos to you? Can they be retrieved from elsewhere (former clients perhaps)?

A backup system is useful. I tend to use a separate hdd stored at work (i.e. a different location to my master drive).

Have you tried to recover the files yourself using recovery software?

 

[PhotographyBuff]

Have you tried to recover the files yourself using recovery software?

No, I haven't. And the specialist considered that a good thing, saying that that could have made their job more difficult. Is that true?

And are you aware if recovery software can help in this case where the hard disk is clicking? Where can I find such software?

 

[PhotographyBuff]

So... first port of call. HOW has your HDD failed? And can you get it up and running cheaply and easily, cracking case and plugging it into a desk-top directly?

Thanks for your long post and advice. Regarding the above, someone tried it without the case and by changing the "board", but it still didn't work.

 

[Teflon-Mike]

No, I haven't. And the specialist considered that a good thing, saying that that could have made their job more difficult. Is that true?

And are you aware if recovery software can help in this case where the hard disk is clicking? Where can I find such software?

What error messages are you getting if any?

If the disc is dodo's, and has to be rebuilt, then yes, he's right. Forcing buggered heads across iffy magnetic disc you could do more damage.

But... could be clicking because the power supply is dropping out, that might be no more than a connector socket getting loose from wire being tugged to often. Or Could be clicking because the interface card in the enclosure has packed up and not sending data off the disc to the computer.

It IS worth cracking the enclosure and trying the disc in a desk-top direct.
May even be worth a few quid for either USB 'hot-swap' cable, that will plug in and power-up a 'bare' IDE or SATA hard drive for diagnostics or setting up. Or even a tenner or so for a replacement enclosure to eliminate those possibilties.

Could, and likely still is heads or control pack in the disc; but for a few quid, before spending big money or chucking it away; worth a shot.

If its on the way out; and you can, direct or on new interface get it talking; yes, you could finish it off running disc recovery on it, looking at every sector of the disc; but you may not need to, and if you get a little life and windows or OS shows you the folder structure, targeting specific files and copying them off, could save you some if not all data.

Its all risks vs reward.

 

[PhotographyBuff]

What error messages are you getting if any?

But... could be clicking because the power supply is dropping out, that might be no more than a connector socket getting loose from wire being tugged to often. Or Could be clicking because the interface card in the enclosure has packed up and not sending data off the disc to the computer.

Where's the power supply in the disk? Can it be changed? How?

 

[PhotographyBuff]

It IS worth cracking the enclosure and trying the disc in a desk-top direct.
May even be worth a few quid for either USB 'hot-swap' cable, that will plug in and power-up a 'bare' IDE or SATA hard drive for diagnostics or setting up. Or even a tenner or so for a replacement enclosure to eliminate those possibilties.

Could, and likely still is heads or control pack in the disc; but for a few quid, before spending big money or chucking it away; worth a shot.

If its on the way out; and you can, direct or on new interface get it talking; yes, you could finish it off running disc recovery on it, looking at every sector of the disc; but you may not need to, and if you get a little life and windows or OS shows you the folder structure, targeting specific files and copying them off, could save you some if not all data.

Its all risks vs reward.

I had someone crack the enclosure, remove it and change the "interface card" and try it with another one. It didn't work.

What's a "USB hot-swap cable"?

 

[Nod]

For the sake of argument, let's say the disk contains 4,750 images (makes the maths easier!). If the cost to recover them all is $475, that's "just" 10c per image - are they worth that to you?

It's an unfortunate fact of modern life that digital storage can (and does) fail - usually at the most inopportune times. The only real answer is backups and more backups. External hard drives aren't too expensive now and some memories are priceless. Maybe a couple of HDD backups and possibly an optical disk (CD or DVD) or 2 as well - overkill? Maybe but that's better than underkill!

Good luck getting the images back.

 

[st599]

I use a program to copy the memory cards that:

1. Rsyncs the data on the card to a local hard disk in my laptop
2. Rsyncs the data on the card to a USB disk hanging off a Raspberry Pi on my home network

I also regularly Rsync my GIMP and Darktable project files and output to the Raspberry Pi hard disk.

I also keep a USB hard disk in a draw at work. I have my machine set up so that when I plug the hard disk in, it Rsyncs the data from my Raspberry Pi at home - so I have an off site back up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync

 

[higgeh]

i have a network drive and my pc. If one fails then the other should be ok. Going to buy another hard drive though and store it somewhere safer

 

[PhotographyBuff]

For the sake of argument, let's say the dick contains 4,750 images (makes the maths easier!). If the cost to recover them all is $475, that's "just" 10c per image - are they worth that to you?

Great way to put it into perspective. But the images have particular value to me above all. However, if I recover them, I might in the future do an exhibition at least on the theme of one of the largest collections (my photos of a country I had visited). So, indeed most of the images are worth more than 10c to me. I think that in the long run recovering them is worth the $475 I would have to pay. But, obviously, not if they would have to linger on another external hard disk to once again be destroyed in the future. So, I think in the final analysis whether the images are worth recovering depends on the use I will make of them and on whether I can find a useful alternative way of archiving the images (to keeping them on external (USB) hard disks). In other words, it all depends on how I will invest in those images (i.e. whether through exhibitions, etc) and not just worry about how to preserve them for a longer time (even though that is also important). For I believe that nothing can be preserved forever (except our souls). And the best way to ensure something lasts forever would be to share them. I had shared the best of the photos on my Facebook page. However, they are reduced to 30%. Therefore, they are not substitutes for the originals, and the originals may contain many more great photos to be discovered, in addition to the possibility of holding exhibitions of the reduced ones I had shared on Facebook.

It's an unfortunate fact of modern life that digital storage can (and does) fail - usually at the most inopportune times. The only real answer is backups and more backups. External hard drives aren't too expensive now and some memories are priceless. Maybe a couple of HDD backups and possibly an optical disk (CD or DVD) or 2 as well - overkill? Maybe but that's better than underkill!

I agree that overkill is better than underkill in this case, and in retrospect. And yes, some memories are priceless (even though my photos were mostly of nature), and therefore no amount of money would be too much as a price paid to recover them! However, priceless memories can live in our minds too (provided our memories do not fail with age). But photos propagate the memories to others, such as our relatives, and into the future.

Good luck getting the images back.

Thanks for the wish. I seem to be in a kind of dilemma. And I am angry at modern technology's unreliability. Films, as existing physically, would (barring being careless and losing them, or a fire destroying them, or being stolen) never have so suddenly been rendered inaccessible or destroyed simply due to the unreliability of the medium they are stored in. So I would have to conclude that digital photography is no reliable substitute to film photography. And this is of particular concern since photography documents the time period we live in for others to learn about it in the future (whether our relatives, future historians, or people interested in them). The ease of digital photography comes with the price of the unavailability of a reliable and practical means of preserving them.

 

[Phil V]

...
Thanks for the wish. I seem to be in a kind of dilemma. And I am angry at modern technology's unreliability. Films, as existing physically, would (barring being careless and losing them, or a fire destroying them, or being stolen) never have so suddenly been rendered inaccessible or destroyed simply due to the unreliability of the medium they are stored in. So I would have to conclude that digital photography is no reliable substitute to film photography. And this is of particular concern since photography documents the time period we live in for others to learn about it in the future (whether our relatives, future historians, or people interested in them). The ease of digital photography comes with the price of the unavailability of a reliable and practical means of preserving them.

I'd argue the opposite.

Whilst the nature of the medium means that I have more chance of losing a single instance of my digital files than my negatives (hardware has a predictable obsolescence ).

It's simple and relatively inexpensive to create perfect copies of my digital files and keep them safe, whilst analogue copying of negatives or slides is something that would only reasonably be done by the a tiny minority of professionals in film days. If you ask in the film section you'll almost certainly find that the film shooters who are creating backups and ensuring their security are doing so digitally.

So you're more likely to suffer a HDD failure than a house fire, but keeping a perfect copy of your films off site is very expensive and a specialist skill, keeping a 3rd HDD off site is cheap and easy.

 

[KIPAX]

How do I go about making the decision whether to spend that amount of money to recover my photos or to just forget them and take new ones?

You already made the decision.. you dont really care all that much about them or you would have paid.

What is your advice? And what is your advice in general about how to preserve our photos in the digital age?

Backup to multiple devices.


Your questions have no emotion about the pictures.. You seem matter of fact about the whole thing.. Looks more like a student looking for information on a paper he is writing than someone who just lost thosuanbds of not backed up pictures..

Sorry thats just the way it looks from my chair

 

[PhotographyBuff]

You already made the decision.. you dont really care all that much about them or you would have paid.



Backup to multiple devices.


Your questions have no emotion about the pictures.. You seem matter of fact about the whole thing.. Looks more like a student looking for information on a paper he is writing than someone who just lost thosuanbds of not backed up pictures..

Sorry thats just the way it looks from my chair

My decision is not final. It's just that $475 is a large amount of money for my means. So I wanted more time and to think about the alternatives before I took the step and paid that amount and got my photos and other data back. I might well in the end pay that money and get the photos back.

What would being emotional add to the situation? I am just trying to be objective about it. What has happened has happened. Whether I become emotional or not depends on the value I put in the photos. And in the end, if you put it in perspectives and be philosophical about it, photos are just photos. It is the subjects of the photos (whether humans, nature, etc) that are worth far more that the photos. The photos would have documentary value and artistic value. The problem is to weigh that value (and how much of it mine actually have) against hard earned cash. It also has to do with how seriously I take my photography. And those are questions and decisions I find myself suddenly and unexpectedly having to consider and take.

And I am also waiting to get a box for my internal hard disk from an old computer, holding out hope that the file of the most important travel photos might have been present also in it. If that hope proves futile, then I would most probably pay the money and recover my photos.

All I am trying to do, via this thread here, is to generate a discussion of how easy it is to lose photos in the digital age. And being in the 21st century, and in the midst of so many great advances in technology, I think it is really incredible that technology is so unreliable, and that so little effort is put into the creation of reliable means to preserve photos and other digital data. It is simply unfair in this day and age to be allowed to be in the position of losing thousands of photos just because a hard disk that is supposed to save them can suddenly and unexpectedly fail. To put the enormity of the matter in perspective, it would be comparable to having one's car or home suddenly turning into a 5cm cube from which you would have to consult specialists and pay big money to have your valuables recovered. And I think that hard disks are comparable to homes in that they are one's mental and creative "home" (if you allow yourself to rely on them). In this case, the old fashioned paper and pen for one's writings, and film for one's photos seem to be far more reliable.

At the same time I am trying to hear some advice to alternatives to paying the $475, if any such alternatives exist.

 

[PhotographyBuff]

I'd argue the opposite.

Whilst the nature of the medium means that I have more chance of losing a single instance of my digital files than my negatives (hardware has a predictable obsolescence ).

It's simple and relatively inexpensive to create perfect copies of my digital files and keep them safe, whilst analogue copying of negatives or slides is something that would only reasonably be done by the a tiny minority of professionals in film days. If you ask in the film section you'll almost certainly find that the film shooters who are creating backups and ensuring their security are doing so digitally.

So you're more likely to suffer a HDD failure than a house fire, but keeping a perfect copy of your films off site is very expensive and a specialist skill, keeping a 3rd HDD off site is cheap and easy.

Good point!

 

[Phil V]

...

All I am trying to do, via this thread here, is to generate a discussion of how easy it is to lose photos in the digital age. And being in the 21st century, and in the midst of so many great advances in technology, I think it is really incredible that technology is so unreliable, and that so little effort is put into the creation of reliable means to preserve photos and other digital data. It is simply unfair in this day and age to be allowed to be in the position of losing thousands of photos just because a hard disk that is supposed to save them can suddenly and unexpectedly fail. To put the enormity of the matter in perspective, it would be comparable to having one's car or home suddenly turning into a 5cm cube from which you would have to consult specialists and pay big money to have your valuables recovered. And I think that hard disks are comparable to homes in that they are one's mental and creative "home" (if you allow yourself to rely on them). In this case, the old fashioned paper and pen for one's writings, and film for one's photos seem to be far more reliable.
...

Which, as I said in my post - is about as wrong as wrong can be. I've lost negatives in house moves, I've never lost a single digital file - because digital backups are easy and copies of negatives aren't.

I'm sorry about your loss, but you lost your files because you never assessed the risk of a mechanical failure - hopefully you've learned from that. If you'd not assessed the risk of damaged negatives from incorrect storage - they'd be at risk too, and if you lost them they'd be gone forever too (as prints of many old movies have been lost in the hands of experts).

But mitigating the risk in the digital age is easy, it's a shame you had to learn the hard way.

 

[PhotographyBuff]

Which, as I said in my post - is about as wrong as wrong can be. I've lost negatives in house moves, I've never lost a single digital file - because digital backups are easy and copies of negatives aren't.

I'm sorry about your loss, but you lost your files because you never assessed the risk of a mechanical failure - hopefully you've learned from that. If you'd not assessed the risk of damaged negatives from incorrect storage - they'd be at risk too, and if you lost them they'd be gone forever too (as prints of many old movies have been lost in the hands of experts).

But mitigating the risk in the digital age is easy, it's a shame you had to learn the hard way.

Thanks for the sympathy. I think I am learning.

Regarding incorrect storage of negatives, can you elaborate a little on that? I have a lot of negatives stored at the back of small photo albums. Might they be at risk?

 

[Phil V]

Thanks for the sympathy. I think I am learning.

Regarding incorrect storage of negatives, can you elaborate a little on that? I have a lot of negatives stored at the back of small photo albums. Might they be at risk?

There are many plastics and adhesives that give off gases that destroy negatives, sunlight also damages them. Most photo storage solutions are quite harmless - some are designed to be guaranteed safe and a few are downright sadistic.

 

[Teflon-Mike]

It is NOT unfair that you can loose all of the data on a very complicated and sophisticated computer system, through it's relative 'unreliability', almost instantaneously.....

It's not like, system crashes, power outages, or viruses, malware and the like are so uncommon that no-one ever mentions the word 'BACKUP'!

Said it earlier; magnetic media; dating back to the old fasioned audio 'tape-recorder', from which the technology of the modern Hard-Disc Drive is derives is NOT, and never HAS been, and never WILL be a long term, permenant 'archive' storage media.

It relies on metal moving physically against metal, and wearing away, as well as the metal's magnetic polarisation weakening EVERY time a file is accessed, let alone written or written over.

It is GOING to wear out! - Fact

Even if you dont suffer catastrophic failure from any of a gazzilion other potential causes, from some-one splilling a coffee on the computer, to dust getting sucked into the cooling vents to over heat it or clog up the head movements or bearings; to a bit of malware getting down-loaded via a ported advert on a forum you happen to be looking at.

Keeping ALL your preciouse personal data files, most of all your irreplaceable photos, on your every day do-everything PC?

Its like taking all your film negatives; emptying them on the kitchen work-top, and then starting to cook and eat your dinner next to them; shoving them this way and that whenever you need space to make a cup of coffee or letting them fall in the dirty washing up water, when you are putting the crockery away!

FACT that you don't know or care to recognise THAT, is not 'unfair'.... merely unfortunate.

Said it before OPTICAL drives CD & DVD! These are 'Archive' Media.

Write once, read many. Once burned, the data never gets shifted or shoved around the disc to make space for anything else. Its there. FIXED and when read, its looked at by LIGHT with no physical contact between reading head and the storage media; 'Wearing Out' is not inherent in the medias construction and use.

Meanwhile; you took data off the camera that presumeably was on an SD card in the camera.

16Gb Sd cards are about a fiver a piece. No one SAYS that you have to clear them down; wipe and re-use........ If it was a film camera, you would have taken a fim, and when it was shot, it was shot.. you would't expected to take your prints off, and have the processors bleach and re-coat your original celuloid strip with new emulsion, would you?

You'd file the negs to Archive (not leave them knocking about the kitchen counter) and bought a new film.

Could as easily leave your original images on a £5 SD card, flick the protection tab and archive THAT like a negative IF you want to..... also get a few thousand photo's an a 15Gb SD card, for your fiver, unlike the 36 you'd get on a roll of film!

There are many many ways to archive and preserve your photo's and you have simply not bothered, and learned the hard way, learning with something of a shock.

No matter.... we live and learn.... film snappers of youre used to get thier pics back from boots, hand round the envelope... the negs getting splilled on the floor when handed to the next person in line, stepped on ny the dog, packed back in the sleeve with grit and grease, finger prints and dog-hair, then stuck i the back of the sock draw or wherever, when the pics had been put in the album, to be rattled and scratched every morning when getting dressed; beaded with caustic de-oderant while doing your arm-pits while grabbing socks from the draw... leaked on by awful aftershave knocked over reaching for your watch etc etc etc....

And twenty or thirty years down the line, pulled out; scanned, and then given to some-one to try and 'restore'... as Auntie Mable's now dead, and them negs have only pictures any-one ever took of her on them.........

 

[gill]

My photos currently reside on two external 500gb drives I keep at home then are backed up onto a 2tb interval drive that I connect through a hard drive 'toaster' and keep off-site. I backup to this drive every 3 months or so.

When I speak to friends and family what worries me are the numbers of people who backup exclusively through 'the cloud'. No-one saw Lehman Brothers or Enron collapsing right up until it happened... Can anyone safely say their cloud provider will still be around in 3, 5, 10, 20 years? One big failure of a major cloud provider in the coming years could prove a major wake up call for a lot of people.

 

[memorire]

Backup is not just an external hard drive. It is a system and a process. You need to asses your needs and the value of your data before you implement a backup strategy.

I would advice against trying to recover data yourself. If the pictures are worth 475$ for you then by all means recover. But go to a specialized data recovery company, with a clean room and all the works. Consider it payment for a lesson.

If pictures are not worth that much then suck it up and consider a backup strategy which will work for you both in security and in actually performing the backup.

Redundancy and diversity are key concepts you need to consider in your plans.

Good luck!

 

[ash_xt]

I back up most of my photo's on my external hard drive, but also I have a dropbox account and back them up there also, which has the added bonus of me being able to access my photo's from anywhere.

 

[Jad]

Most of my 40 years of photography in on negatives and I keep them stored in archival materials but I have no back up to them. If they get damaged or lost that is the end of them. With my new digital files I have two external HD and also burn them to DVD's. I am currently looking into cloud storage where they can be retrieved if all of my backups fail. If your photos are important to you, then pay the money and get them back. We all have photos we should have deleted before storing them, but the ones that mean a lot to us are worth having. Good luck

 

[modchild]

I recently made the 'biggest' mistake I've ever made in computing by formatting and installing windows to the wrong drive and thereby losing all the photos on my drive. Not an absolute disaster as I had most of them backed up on another drive, but still very annoying. After reformatting the correct drive and installing windows I set about finding the lost photos on the other drive.

I already have Recuva so I tried that but it couldn't find the photos without the drive being formatted again. So, after having formatted the drive again I tried again but only got around 350 photos out of the near 50,000 photos on there. I then found a free program online called 'Pandora Recovery' http://www.pandorarecovery.com/download/ so I gave it a try. Lo and behold, after around only half an hour the program had found over 43,000 of the photos including all of the 3-4,000 latest photos I hadn't backed up. Would be worth trying Pandora if your drive is still working, it's free, very easy to use and very good at what it does.

I've now backed everything up again and have the 1Tb drive dedicated to keeping all my photos up to date plus everything saved on the external drive and also now on my laptop. I'm not planning on going through all that trouble again and will now backup every time I add some photos.

 

[Thedodo]

Right i have only skimmed through this thread and havnt read it thoughougly, but seeing as i am on bed rest for a week or so due to my recent booboo, i will offer to repair the drive free of charge (less any parts needed).
Been there done it myself and had to recover drives many times before.
I need something to keep the boredom away whilst im off work

 

[PhotographyBuff]

How about using Flickr as a backup (as explained here: http://www.labnol.org/internet/flickr-for-photo-backup/27994/)? Do you think that would be really safe?

 

[st599]

If people want to Sync folders on remote computers, I can recommend http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html

Been playing with it all week - seems good. Thinking of replacing my Rsync scripts.

 

[Jan K.]

...someone tried it without the case and by changing the "board", but it still didn't work.

Did you try it without the board?
If not, I would plug it directly to a IDE/SATA port in the PC...

 

[Steve Smith]

And twenty or thirty years down the line, pulled out; scanned, and then given to some-one to try and 'restore'... as Auntie Mable's now dead, and them negs have only pictures any-one ever took of her on them.........

But they are still there and haven't needed any active backup procedures.


Steve.

 

[Phil V]

But they are still there and haven't needed any active backup procedures.


Steve.

If they still exist - they'll be fine .

what if they got lost, or cleared out when Gran died and no-one really had an interest in thinking about them?

Negatives might be 'fairly easy' to keep a single copy of, for those that care enough. But for people who need resilience it gets expensive to get backup copies, and where people are careless, they're no safer than any digital file.

 

[PhotographyBuff]

Did you try it without the board?
If not, I would plug it directly to a IDE/SATA port in the PC...

No, I haven't tried that. Would I be needing any cable for that? Are you sure it is safe to do that? And is there any chance it might actually work without the board?

By the way, I have a box for internal ide/sata hard disks that connects via USB. Might putting the external hard disk without the board into it also work?

By the way, I am presently afraid to try anything with it since I have been told that the more you try to operate it, the more damaged it will become; and the more difficult it will be to extract the data later. Is that true or mere salesmanship?

 

[Jan K.]

No, I haven't tried that. Would I be needing any cable for that? Are you sure it is safe to do that? And is there any chance it might actually work without the board?

By the way, I have a box for internal ide/sata hard disks that connects via USB. Might putting the external hard disk without the board into it also work?

By the way, I am presently afraid to try anything with it since I have been told that the more you try to operate it, the more damaged it will become; and the more difficult it will be to extract the data later. Is that true or mere salesmanship?

I would definitely try removing disc from board, since these boards most often in my experience are the culprits. Discs rarely dies...

No problem in using your other box.

Don't worry about testing it, nothing is written to it.


Btw. you asked for solutions re. backups, here's what I do...

I transfer images to a raw-folder on an internal datadisc and at the same time to another internal backup disc = two different discs.

Once or twice a month the raw-folder is copied to an external drive, where I use one of these USB3 stations for external backups:

Should something terrible happen to the PC, the external comes to the rescue...

 

[Pookeyhead]

Hello all,

Just had an external hard disk failure. It contained several thousands of my photos not backed up elsewhere (as well as some other material).

Well... I feel your pain, but I have to say, this is exactly why not having back up is quite possibly the most stupid thing ever. I'm not saying you are stupid... but that was a very stupid thing to do.

If it's an external drive, have you taken the actual drive out and connected it directly to your machine;s motherboard? It may just be the device's USB interface controller, and not the drive itself.

How do I go about making the decision whether to spend that amount of money to recover my photos or to just forget them and take new ones? What is your advice? And what is your advice in general about how to preserve our photos in the digital age?

I will also welcome any advice about how I might recover the photos/data myself from the hard disk.

As for preservation in the digital age, it should be easier and more secure than in the analogue age. After all.. pre-digital we had negatives and slides, and if you lost them, or damaged them, that was it.... rather like having no back up.

You need back up, and burning images to optical disks, which is what a great many people do, is just not secure enough in my mind. You need at least another dedicated hard drive solely for that purpose, and kept separate, and away from your main machine (otherwise it may get stolen along with your main machine in a break in).

Ideally, the back up solution should be redundant, which means a drive failure will not hose the data... so a RAID device. You can get relatively cheap NAS boxes that use RAID1 or RAID5 even... this would be ideal.

For my own back up, the drive containing my images, is backed up to another drive in the machine as a local copy. This is then backed up using nightly, scheduled incremental back ups to a RAID6 server. This RAID6 server is then mirrored to a RAID5 server, that is not even in the same building to mitigate against fire.

That may be overkill for some.... but I'll not lose data. I'd need to have 4 simultaneous drive failures in order to lose data, and the entire house could burn to the ground and I'd still not lose anything.

I once lost a great deal of money on a commercial job through data loss. I learned my lesson, the hard way. I consider the £2K spent on a back up solution worth every single penny.

 

[Steve Smith]

Negatives might be 'fairly easy' to keep a single copy of, for those that care enough. But for people who need resilience it gets expensive to get backup copies, and where people are careless, they're no safer than any digital file.

The difference is that if you want to keep them, you just have to keep them safe.

Negatives in a drawer or cupboard stand a much better chance of survival than images stored on a CD or on a hard drive.

To maintain digital files you need to be actively backing up. And my usual thought is how do you know that the files you are backing up are ok? I'm sure it's possible to be backing up already corrupt files thinking they are ok.

Whatever the recording medium though, there is no such thing as 100% safe storage for images, video, music, etc.


Steve.

 

[Pookeyhead]

The difference is that if you want to keep them, you just have to keep them safe.

Easy as that huh? Fungal growth? Fire? Theft? Accidental damage? Water leak or flood? Chemical deterioration? You make it sound like keeping them "safe" is a simple task. The fact is though, unless you fork out for expensive duplication of your negatives, you only have one copy, whereas with digital files you can have multiple copies cheaply and easily.

Negatives in a drawer or cupboard stand a much better chance of survival than images stored on a CD or on a hard drive.

CD yes, as writeable optical media is dye based, and deteriorates over time, but a hard drive used purely for storage is a much more reliable device.

To maintain digital files you need to be actively backing up.

So? What's so hard about that? Only a complete idiot operates without back up... you should have back up NOW... and not just for your images.. for everything.

And my usual thought is how do you know that the files you are backing up are ok?

You set your back up software to verify teh back up Again.. what's so hard about that?

I'm sure it's possible to be backing up already corrupt files thinking they are ok.

See above. Plus... I download my RAW files as soon as I arrive back home, then immediately sync my drives and verify against the files on the CF card. Doing anything else is just sloppy and careless. If I find a corrupt file, then it was corrupt on the card... and even THEN.. I set the camera's slot 2 as a back up role, so if it's corrupt on the CF card, then I'll have a spare copy on the SD card. You can't do THAT with film either. If a film is damaged in camera, or during processing (which does happen, even with pro labs) you are truly screwed. If I shoot tethered, I know if the data is OK as it will be displayed on the monitor as I shoot it, and then back it up on the fly.

Whatever the recording medium though, there is no such thing as 100% safe storage for images, video, music, etc.

There's no such thing as 100% safe anything.. and that includes storage of actual negatives!

A decent back up solution that uses redundancy can be bought for a few hundred quid. My back ups could even survive 4 drive failures (simultaneous) and catastrophic fire and flood. Try THAT with a shoebox full of negatives. As a last resort, I also have the full res JPEGs in the cloud should an event that takes out the whole street happens. Chances are though.. if anything THAT cataclysmic happens, I'll be dead, and not be around to recover the data anywway... but at least my images will actually survive me Negatives wouldn't.

The belief that a real, physical object being safer than data is just an outdated concept by those who don't fully understand how to back up data.

If you feel your data is not safer than physical storage of film, then you are not treating your data correctly, or don't fully understand data back up.

 

[Mqta]

I've read about half of the foregoing - if you want a 'forgiving' magnetic storage set up, you need to invest in a RAID array of hard drives.

 

[PhotographyBuff]

The belief that a real, physical object being safer than data is just an outdated concept by those who don't fully understand how to back up data.

This seems a lot like arguing that our physical-body-based identity (our soul) is worse off than our online identities just because we cannot have "backup" (i.e. a clone to transfer our soul into once our "primary" body dies) for our physical body, and we can die; but our online identities can survive our physical bodies! The line of thinking here seems to be awfully digital-revolution-influenced, and to fail to respect the physical/biological above the digital, let alone the soul that is based in the body.

And by the way, most of us don't need our photos or data to survive us, or do not need to overly concern ourselves about that during our lifetime (because, for most of us at least, our lives are more valuable than our photos). And yet most of those arguing about the supremacy of digital storage seem to be highlighting the data's survival of major disasters. The trouble with digital data storage is that we need to think about backup even during short periods of time such as two years. On the other hand, I think that we can safely assume that film, if stored safely, can be relied upon to be found intact (barring a tragedy like a fire) decades later. That, unfortunately, is not the case with a hard drive or DVD.