Hard drive dies with all my astro images.

[nebulosity.]

Well there goes two years of hard work, late nights, countless hours of designing, building, setting up, polar aligning, image processing, manual guiding, cold nights and lots of fun.

All my astro images, Nightscapes, Time lapses, ect... all gone :sadeyes:

Oh, well. Start again I suppose, and this time making sure that my image library is on a couple of hard drives instead on one. At least a few of my images are on Astrobin :thumbsup:

Hope this doesn't happen to any of you guys.

Jo :(



:sadeyes:

[RickS]

That's bad luck, Jo :sadeyes: Doing backups is a PITA but a necessary evil if you care about your data.

[brian nordstrom]

:mad2: No back ups Jo ? I learned years ago to back up everything , I keep mine on 2x external HD's , do it about every 2-3 weeks .
There are places , one in Sydney ( cant remember the name ) that can extract files from a dead HD , its expensive and takes a long time and it can be done ,, but :shrug: .
Sorry for your bad luck it Sux for sure , been there done that many years ago ,, back-up , back-up , back-up .
Brian.

[MrB]

Do you still at least have the raw files on the flash cards(SD or CF)?
Flashcards are so cheap now I don't delete the raws, just swap out the cards when one is full.

[Astro_Bot]

Ouch! I once learned that lesson myself many years ago, though not with astro images.

I keep my raw images in two places at once, until processed - camera card or laptop (depending on capture mode) and special astro HDD. Then I keep the finished products on my main HDD which is regularly backed up to another. I never give Mr Murphy a chance - he's a right b*stard. ;)

Hope you figure out a way to recover your data.

Did the drive simply not spin up? You could try gently tapping it at boot time - it could work, even if it's unlikely - I saw it work once.

[Occulta]

Jo

Have used these people before who recovered 98% of the data on a failed drive. Would recomend them highly.

http://www.payam.com.au/

Chris

[GeoffW1]

Hi,

I agree with Chris, give it a go. Get a quote or two. Data recovery is big business, and the really good places keep a store of every kind of drive model so they can swap parts into a failed one.

Some HDD failures are just hardware based, like in the internal board, or the mechanism driving the read/write heads. If the heads have not bounced across the disk surface they can get back everything.

Other failures are software based, and if the whole File Allocation Table is corrupt, it is harder.

Difficult jobs can even cost a $1000 or two, but it may be worth it to you

All the best

[jenchris]

whip out the hard drive and bung it in the freezer for 20 mins the reconnect it and when it spins up, be ready to snatch the data before it dies again.
Did that last time I failed to back up - I don't fail any more -I have a backup on my desk (ext HDD)changed data x2 weeks and one on the spare drive in the PC (monthly full) and one in the fireproof safe - which is my full disk mirror.

I'm sorry for your loss - it hurts.

[RAJAH235]

Jo,
Have you heard of "spinrite" from grc.com?
Steve Gibson created it years ago & it's the best HDD maintenance & recovery program out there.
It's just around 180 kb & costs just $89.00 US.
> https://www.grc.com/intro.htm
(I have no affiliation or interest in it.)

[OzStarGazer]

Yes. Try a data recovery program. I used one for a memory stick and it worked fine. The names of your files might be changed, but you can still rename them of course.
There are free online backup programs too by the way, and I think also free software. I lost data with my first computer too, but now I always have a backup.

[Octane]

If the drive is physically stuffed, then, no software is going to work. It will have to go to a professional for recovery.

I feel your pain, Jo. I've been there. Except, in my case, I transferred my images directory to a housemate's laptop to free up space temporarily. In the space of a couple of days, his drive died. Lesson was learnt! Now everything is automatically backed up.

H

[nebulosity.]

Thanks guys,

Until a week or two ago I had my library on the iMac which has time machine backups every hour, but to free up some space I transferred the library to an external and was yet to buy another for backups. Only a day too late!

The drive seams to still spin, it just won't mount. I have tried repairing on the iMac but no go. It's in town now at a computer bloke who is going to run some of his program's on it. Lets hope he might able to get something off, I think the library is around 240GB.

Jo

[wasyoungonce]

Bad luck Jo...guessing the external HDD was a Seagate then?

[Satchmo]

I recommend an external network raid drive that runs two discs in mirror - for the future - the cost is nothing when you think of the amount of hours you spend on your data .

[lazjen]

I hate HD crashes. Been dealing with them over the years and they always suck. So far, we've had backups for most stuff, but we nearly got caught short recently.

Since I've got a reasonable amount of bandwidth, I'm trialling Crashplan (http://www.crashplan.com) at the moment with the online cloud backup component as well. Costs a fee per year, but the way it's set up, our files are auto backed up across multiple machines and on the net, and we don't have to remember to actively do backups. It's already saved me when my Windows OS trashed my machine last week and I had to reinstall it.

Only cons are that seeding via upload (instead of the disk seeding service) is going to take us a long time (I think we've got around 1.5TB to do). I don't mind though as it'll get there eventually.

[mithrandir]

Totally agree. For a bit under $2K I got a NAS and five 3TB NAS certified disks. It has 4 gigabit ethernet ports and USB3 and is set up as RAID-5. I have about 12TB of space available.

[wasyoungonce]

I built a WHS 2011 with HP N54L micro server. I currently run qty 2 4TB HDDs (as a pool with another 250GB HDD as boot drive) with Stable Bit Drive pool so I can remove a damaged drive and it will rebuild the pool image.

I also back up from this using an ESATA caddy but are limited to 2TB backups due to WHS 2011. I will upgrade and install more HDDs as necessary ...can go to 16TB or more depending upon HDD costs. Currently using Hitachi 4TB cool spins...very nice drives indeed!

This set-up has saved my family members from crises of lost data and photos more than one so far so is well worth it.

[04Stefan07]

I am paranoid that something like this one day will happen to me which is why I have a backup system I have set up.

- An external HDD with a full backup of everything on my computer (astro work, music, images, etc).
- DVD discs for long term backup (lasts longer than a HDD and less chance of it breaking) of the important stuff (music, astro and images)
- USB backup of important personal files

Also I have an excel spreadsheet with what is backed up on where and on what dates.

The backup to my external drive I do once a fortnight unless there is a major change/update and my DVD backups once every 3 months since that is long term and is a lengthy process.

I am not comfortable with having just one backup therefore I have multiple.

[noeyedeer]

I'm like Stefan. I rarely trust hdd backups all of my files are on CD/DVD. even blueray disks are quite cheap now for 24odd gb of virtually faultless storage. just time consuming burning them but least it's permanent. I tell people at work if you're using regular external hdd don't put anything on there that you're not prepared to lose, always have another copy somewhere if it's important. and I would recommend the western digitals over Seagate or Toshiba anyday.

fingers crossed the computer man can do his magic.

matt

[OzStarGazer]

This happened to me too once. I did have a backup, but it was not the latest one. Something had come up and I thought I will make the new backup tomorrow, and of course the HD crashed.... Luckily I only lost a month's files, but it was still annoying because it was really a matter of hours...

[ZeroID]

Don't be totally reliant on CDs\DVDs. The normal burnable ones have a life off about 5-8 years. It's a photochemical process and it is not totally permanent. I've lost a pile of Rally pix I took back in 2005-6 that were on Cds, the disk just became unreadable as the chemistry changed.

[wasyoungonce]

Yep I agree...I have seen the dye go off in DVDs and less so in CDs.....early ones. I've tossed ~ 20 or so burnt DVDs.

[Regulus]

This is the main drawback to digital photography and I am sad for you that you lost them.
Most times it is not the disks that have died but a fault in the electronic circuitry, or connection leads. There are, as mentioned down the page, people who will recover the data by testing the circuit for the fault and repairing it. Or disconnecting the disks and connecting them to a new pcb circuit.
Worth getting a quote at the very least rather than lose it all.

Trev

[noeyedeer]

Ive never had problems, I just tested tdk gold cds from 2001 and they're still readable. I only ever used tdk or Kodak gold as they were the only cds that'd work in my cars stereo at the time. I havnt burnt anything for some time as I've had no computer but I tested in my sisters comp no probs.

I'll have a read around the net... an excerpt from www.cd-info.com/archiving/tdk/index.html

" TDK rates the archival lifespan of its cyanine-based CD-R discs at 70 years (based on accelerated aging tests). This paper presents data that reflect TDK's decade-long research and development efforts in the field of optical recording media."

matt

even this disk is still readable with degredation on the outer edge and many scratches .. I dunno I'd use media then hdd anyday.
lmao have a look at that Photoshop version haha. I actually forgot I had mitsui cdrs. a spindle of 100 of these still cost over $250. I know I use to pay over $10 a disk back in the day, worth every penny I say because they still work. (16 years)

[rat156]

If this is the case you will still have everything except the last couple of weeks stuff in the Time Machine backup.

You may need to trawl through the backup directory, but it'll be there.

Of course I'm assuming that you Time Machine backed up to an external HDD.

Cheers
Stuart

[noeyedeer]

I'm totally reliant on good media .. be it hard disks or DVD/CD . you get what you pay for, I think I have shown that cds can last. they were burnt with Ricoh burners too.

hope all is good for you Jo, and I hope a bit of time
burning to good media is better then a cheap hdd. also I store my disks in a box in a closet and still on the spindle
matt

[noeyedeer]

silver or gold dvds? prolly imation crap?

[Marios]

If you put your hand on the drive do you still feel it powering up on a computer start or hear a ticking sound?
If yes it may be possible to access the data with the aid of this recovery application. If it is your computers main C:\ drive that has failed you can boot into this program via the supplied bootable disc image. It does not matter if the failed drive does not present itself to Windows or can no longer boot Windows OS it just needs to power up. You will also need a USB external HDD to copy the data over.

https://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

Good Luck..

[Pinwheel]

Change the HHD to "Slave" & connect it to another computer. See if you can read any files. If you can copy them to the "Master" HHD. Then your data is safe.

[jjjnettie]

I'm going to fall back on DVD's for storage from now on.
My "good" 3tb HDD I bought last year won't stop rebooting. It's never been dropped or over heated. My 3rd ext HDD to crash and burn. :(
I totally feel your pain brother. :(

[johnnyt123]

I remember hearing an ad about a data recovery service called Payam.

You might want to check them out.

[skysurfer]

Oops, that is not good :mad2:

Learning a lesson for next time: buy a $100 1TB external drive. Backup everything aftter you have important data (astrophotos, etc).
I always backup my individual .CR2 frames after a photoshoot of the sky. During a trip I take a larger SD card with me so make a backup and store it separately in case my camera or laptop will be stolen.

[noeyedeer]

if you do, you should buy specific archival dvds, not the cheap ones. theyre usually labelled as such. I would recommend gold CD-r than DVD. if you can afford them these are the best you can buy http://www.mam-a.com/ (mitsui)

matt

[rat156]

I just couldn't use DVD's as archival. My Nikon has two 16Gb memory cards, it often comes back from an outing full, each astro image from the Sbig would easily be 10-20 Gb in raw data.

I have several Tb in backup drives. I back my photos up periodically to two external drives, one I take to my sister's place and leave it there, she drops one off to me at the same time. I would have thousands of DVD's if I used them, far too many to store anywhere in the house. Not to mention the expense.

Just buy two backup drives and make sure you duplicate every backup, then leave one somewhere else in case of disaster. Much more effective and cheaper in the long run I bet. Cheap external 3 or even 4 TB hard drives are easy to get, if you don't have that much to backup, then the smaller ones are really cheap.

Cheers
Stuart

[rally]

Its bad you lost the data but it isn't really bad luck !
Without backups its was a planned inevitability.

But I think anyone who has lived with computers has lost data at some time or another !

All hard drives will die eventually - this you can rely on - some much sooner than others.
So if you arent backing up religiously then you are simply playing a continuous game of Russian roulette and the outcome of that is well known.
Its almost a certainty that you are going to lose everything potentially as often as every 2-4 years ! - if you dont back up

Some of this is simply related to the MTBF of your drive, but some of it will be physical damage or electrical damage from the environment or even your PCs power supply

Anyone on this forum doing AP and who puts any value on their data and all the effort that it takes to accumulate it - and the effort to get all the software and all the drivers and all the settings and parameters working just right - simply must start backing up.

Not just doing it once, but establishing a process where it can happen regularly and preferably automatically

Even if you arent backing up the entire system, at least the Data areas as a minimum - the OS and apps are relatively easy to rebuild - albeit very time consuming (like 40-50+ hours) and fraught with all sorts of version control problems that may make it impossible to restore back to what you had, but the data is usually irreplaceable.

USB drives are cheap these days so there is no excuse that it costs too much, as was once the case.
NAS servers can be built cheaply, even out of old hardware and a bunch of drives, as mentioned internet backup servers are available if you are happy using and paying for them

I run a cheap NAS file server on a 7watt 1GB Intel Atom micro PC (Fit-PC2) that has an internal and an external drive, the external drive is swapped over every so often and I cycle between three external drives.
So I have 4 copies of the data of different ages (at least one of which is stored at another site and 1 of those copies is no more than 24 hours old)

But I also use a Linux service called RSync which updates my "changed" data across the net to one of my work fileservers every night.
RSync is a really smart program that literally runs a service at each end (source and destination) and only sends the new bits or the changed bits of all the files and reassembles it all
So for example a 300mb accounting file may only actually have 20kb of changed data - so that is all that gets sent across the net even though the file is 300mb
Its quite typical that a small business of say 5-10 employees running an accounting system, email and everything else the backup only needs to exchange a few 100mb of data per night - so its uses a very small bandwidth.
The very first time you do this it makes sense to use a hard drive copy of the data to get 1TB of data across to the remote server.
So that's my fifth backup which is itself replicated (mirrored) on two drives on that server.

I have other non critical files (music etc) that resides on my desktop that I dont treat so seriously, but it still gets synced to a Time Machine every night.

I really think that anyone who gets involved in AP needs to consider Backing Up as a critical component just like the camera, mount and scope are critical !

My 2c worth

[Marios]

Fingers crossed for sucess.:thumbsup:

[GeoffW1]

FYI,

Here is the Popular Mechanics take on the subject

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/how-to/tips/4294038?click=pop-more

Cheers

[Stardrifter_WA]

I am currently going through this pain. My hard drive crashed and the files were not recoverable, without it costing me for recovery. New drive, not that expensive, so okay. Out with the 'backup' on a portable 1 Tb hard disk drive, but that wouldn't do a restore, corrupted files.

No problem, I will just restore them from my other portable HDD, manually.

In the process of copying files over, my portable hard drive failed too, I couldn't believe it, and that was only about a year old. I thought I had lost my 2013 US trip photos :sadeyes: I had copied some of the more important photos to DVD. Fortunately, though, I hadn't yet reformatted my cards for my next trip in May, so was able to recover those.

Luckily, I did have a third HDD with copies of files.

Now, I am in the process of reinstalling programs, a time consuming process. Once complete, I will do a new backup, onto two HDD's, one, as a master copy, the other to be used as the ongoing backup.

I am going to buy two new drives.........I will have four back ups! This process lately is making me a little paranoid. :sadeyes:

Also, it is a great point raised here about the longevity of DVD_ROM's. I think a strategy of copying from the back up HDD to new DVD's every couple of years, seems like a wise idea.

As a further point, I also leave one of my back ups with family, as Rally suggested, off site storage, in the event I lose the originals, due unforeseen disasters. I know someone that lost his house in a fire and the one thing he couldn't replace.....photos, although in his case, they weren't digital.

So, as good as digital photography is fantastic, it has one major drawback..........secure storage.

I guess that is one advantage of storing to 'the cloud', but I have an issue with my stuff being secure on there. I don't like the idea of others being responsible with my personal data.

Cheers Pete

[uwahl]

This year I bought a new laptop. It was a well respected brand and at the upper end of the range. Four weeks later the hard drive died. They replaced the whole laptop. It just shows that disks can fail at any time.

When I first started using a desktop computer in 1984 (51/4" floppy drives, DOS ver 2 ) I quickly learnt two important principles.

1) If you type in a command (no windows or mice ) and the system responds with "are you sure? Y/N" always respond with N and think about what your doing (don't have to worry about this one any more) and :-

2) The 11th commandment; " Though shall back up thy data lest the plagues of lost bytes descend on your house"

Sorry to be a bit flippant about a very irritating event but using computers in the old days when hardware wasn't as reliable as it is today drove home some very painful lessons.:sadeyes:

[JA]

Hi Jo,

If it becomes a no-can-do repair (hopefully not), I have heard of drives whose platters are not damaged (and maybe even those that are), having their platters transferred in to another identical hard-drive, solely for the purpose of data recovery.

A possibility in the extreme

Best
JA

[The_bluester]

It is still wise to have a backup from that. RAID5 does not really offer redundancy as such.

If the software works as it is meant to it should operate with a failed drive and rebuild itself when you replace it. However unless you physically look at the NAS regularly or check on it via it's web interface you can miss a failed disc as they should tolerate it and stay online. The risk is that a second failed drive before you replace the first and the array finishes rebuilding means complete data loss.

Edited to add:We have an 8 bay NAS at home, four 4TB discs in RAID5 and one disc stand alone. The stuff we want backed up is backed up by software running on the PC's in question to a dedicated backup share each on the RAID array and then weekly there is an internal backup by the NAS of those shares to the stand alone disc. They are all hot pluggable so in case of an emergency we can also yank the stand alone disc and run with all the really important stuff to us. It also means that in the case of one of us landing a crypto locker virus we have up to a week to prevent it encrypting the stand alone back up, the stand alone disc is not visible to any of the desktops so any crypto locker can not directly encrypt that, we would have to miss seeing it and have the backup processes back up the encrypted versions of the files to the NAS (Not even sure if the backup software would/could) and miss that long enough for the NAS backup process to replicate it to the stand alone disc.

[Octane]

Holy thread necro, Batman!

H

[bojan]

It happened to me when external USB drive fell on the carpet from a chair...
At the first moment I thought everything was gone, but then for some reason I tried to have a look at it via TV (which runs under LINUX).
All the images were still there, and fully accessible.
So I installed LINUX on my PC, retrieved all on another USB drive... and after reformatting the first one, it turned out it was not physically damaged, so now I have two backups.

[Stonius]

A separate NAS storage unit is a good idea. Synology currently make cheaper ones that are not too hard to set up.

Markus

[The_bluester]

Holy smoke, did not even spot it. Never a good idea looking at forums on a small screen, things like the date history are hard to spot.

Still data loss is a pretty contemporary subject any day of the week!

[Nath2099]

I'll place a vote for NAS RAID array. WD have one for $259 plus postage:
http://www.scorptec.com.au/product/Network-Storage-(NAS)/1-4-Bays/63180-WDBVBZ0000NCH-SESN?gclid=CJ-Xkuid7tACFQGAvQodD5gIbg

Never buy anything Seagate would be my other advice!

[Stonius]

Oh, man, +1 for 'Never buy anything Seagate'. They're the reason I had to find out about NAS's in the first place!

Note for anyone that has a Seagate 7200:11 or 12. Update the firmware while you still can! They brick themselves without warning because of errors in the firmware. <jaw twitches with painful memories>

-Markus

[wasyoungonce]

I use a HP-N54L Proliant server with stablebit drive extender and stablebit pool to be able to rebuild drives that fail and span drive. (qty 4 x 4 tb Hitachi coolspins). Plus a boot drive. When it fails I can then attst if it works as advertised!

But nothing is fool or fail proof. They only way is multiple backups methodology but even this misses.

Best advice.....if it's important make a backup, then another incrementing each other. I've actually changed HDD platters on old 286/386 system in the RAAF HTS test-stations. Big job (clean rooms) and prone to fail...let alone the new smaller high density platters.

Its a damn problem even today...cloud backup (or NAS cloud) is IMHO one of the best.

FWIW...remember if its too important to be lost then develop a backup procedure.

Brendan

[JB80]

My HD just went too, thankfully I transfer everything over to the PC and occasionally to a back up drive but it still annoys me as that is the second laptop gone under 6 months.

[Jeremy55]

I use an external hard drive and periodically reserve all my data.

[BeanerSA]

The thread that just wont die. Unlike some of your hard drives.

[Renato1]

I've had two older mains powered external hard drives and one newer portable external hard drive die on me. I bought a kit off Ebay that lets me read them after I remove the hard drives from their covers and attach them to the connectors (IDE and SATA) and retrieve the data via a USB port.

The kit is thus very handy for reading faulty external drives where the electronics have stuffed up and the drive is okay, and for reading internal drives when the computer's motherboard has died and one wants to retrieve that data and put it on a new computer.
Regards,
Renato

[PCH]

What's the name and details of that item Renato? It seems like something to have in the cupboard that you hope you'll never need.