Friendly Reminder - Back Up Often!

Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM

08/18/2002 01:51:49 PM · #1

Well, I had quite the scare this weekend.

I was sitting at my computer while on the phone, not even touching the computer, when all of a sudden the dreaded blue screen of death comes up. OK, no time to panic... one little hard-reset and I should be up and running, right?

So, I push the Big Red Buttonâ�¢ and see the words no IT person ever wants to see:

DISK BOOT FAILURE. INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ANY KEY.

A couple of hours and a bunch of diagnostics later and I've isolated the problem to the drive itself. It is now, offically, time to panic. Let's just say I've not been nearly as careful as I should be about backing up my photography.

The good news was that even though nothing I tried to make the disk readable worked, I was able to determine with a high degree of confidence that the physical disk was fine. My data was probably intact, I just couldn't get to it.

After calling for data recovery service estimates this morning (US$1150-3900 in case anyone is wondering), I managed to locate a demo of a piece of data reconvery software. The demo proved itself, but of course the fully functional version is US$199. I'll know for sure if it works tonight.

What's more, the diagnostics cut into my shooting time, so I didn't get quite the shot I wanted, and I had to edit it on my laptop (I'm dreading the comments on my post-processing next week).

It could have been a lot worse. If the disk were physically damaged, software would not be an option. Please, please please, if you've been putting off backups, do it right away. If you wait "until you get around to it," I know from experience you probably won't get around to it until the day after you need it.

In the meantime, I'm chalking this up as a happy ending and an expensive lesson learned.

-Terry

* This message has been edited by the author on 8/18/2002 1:52:51 PM.

Kavey

Sigma 18-125mm f/3.5-5.6 DC for Canon

08/18/2002 02:25:38 PM · #2

Eeeeeeeeeek!

Oh my god my heart leapt into my mouth...

So glad it's a happy ending... and what a timely reminder that is too...

Thanks!

Kavey

mci

Canon EOS-350D Rebel XT

Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM

08/18/2002 03:12:29 PM · #3

Originally posted by ClubJuggle:
Well, I had quite the scare this weekend.

This happened to me a couple of months ago. I had one of these bum IBM 80 gig drives packed with stuff from a lifetime's worth of computing. I've lost plenty of data before, but have never gotten into the habit of backing stuff up and have been stung plenty of times because of it. After panicing this time, I did the same as you. I called a data recovery place and was all set to actually bite the bullet and pay the money before I figured I'd try some data recovery software. From the sound of the drive I was almost sure that it was a physical crash, but it turned out okay and I got all my data back with the handy data recovery program. (I believe it was called GetDataBack, and was quite a nice little program. $69 for FAT, $129 for NTFS from getdataback.com)

Needless to say, it's a scary situation. I hope everything turns out okay for you.

* This message has been edited by the author on 8/18/2002 3:12:13 PM.

08/18/2002 03:40:56 PM · #4

Originally posted by ClubJuggle:
Well, I had quite the scare this weekend.

I was sitting at my computer while on the phone, not even touching the computer, when all of a sudden the dreaded blue screen of death comes up. OK, no time to panic... one little hard-reset and I should be up and running, right?

So, I push the Big Red Buttonâ�¢ and see the words no IT person ever wants to see:

DISK BOOT FAILURE. INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ANY KEY.

A couple of hours and a bunch of diagnostics later and I've isolated the problem to the drive itself. It is now, offically, time to panic. Let's just say I've not been nearly as careful as I should be about backing up my photography.

The good news was that even though nothing I tried to make the disk readable worked, I was able to determine with a high degree of confidence that the physical disk was fine. My data was probably intact, I just couldn't get to it.

After calling for data recovery service estimates this morning (US$1150-3900 in case anyone is wondering), I managed to locate a demo of a piece of data reconvery software. The demo proved itself, but of course the fully functional version is US$199. I'll know for sure if it works tonight.

What's more, the diagnostics cut into my shooting time, so I didn't get quite the shot I wanted, and I had to edit it on my laptop (I'm dreading the comments on my post-processing next week).

It could have been a lot worse. If the disk were physically damaged, software would not be an option. Please, please please, if you've been putting off backups, do it right away. If you wait "until you get around to it," I know from experience you probably won't get around to it until the day after you need it.

In the meantime, I'm chalking this up as a happy ending and an expensive lesson learned.

-Terry

Something else maybe worth trying before you fork out on recovery
services/ software is to boot off a different drive and see if you
can access the disk that's dead. It could just be part of the boot
code/ OS that is screwed up and you'll be able to copy the data off
the drive.

But yes - backup often - and don't always assume back-up media is
not error prone - its worth at least having 2 back-ups sets that you
rotate in case one is bad.

ClubJuggle

Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM

08/18/2002 03:58:47 PM · #5

Originally posted by GordonMcGregor:
Something else maybe worth trying before you fork out on recovery
services/ software is to boot off a different drive and see if you
can access the disk that's dead. It could just be part of the boot
code/ OS that is screwed up and you'll be able to copy the data off
the drive.

Good sugestion, and one I already tried. I'm actually running on my old 13GB drive now. The 60GB is plugged in as slave. The system recognizes the physical drive but can't read the files. Norton Disk Doctor and a free utility called MBRWork also failed to correctly locate and reconstruct the partition. The software is necessary to rebuild partition and file structure.

Also I tried the same thing from a second PC with the same results. :(

-Terry

* This message has been edited by the author on 8/18/2002 4:03:53 PM.

Damitriel

Sony DSC-F717

08/18/2002 05:20:24 PM · #6

If you really want to be safe you have to store one set of your back-ups off site. Voor example at your work.

I'm a system administrator, and at my work we make daily backups of all our data. Every day we take the most recent backups with us to our homes. Every month we make a backup for long storage, wich is stored at home for a month. If the month is over we make a new one, and store the old one on site, but not in the same building as the servers.

Always check your backups, restore some random stuff.

08/18/2002 05:24:57 PM · #7

Originally posted by Damitriel:
If you really want to be safe you have to store one set of your back-ups off site. Voor example at your work.

I'm a system administrator, and at my work we make daily backups of all our data. Every day we take the most recent backups with us to our homes. Every month we make a backup for long storage, wich is stored at home for a month. If the month is over we make a new one, and store the old one on site, but not in the same building as the servers.

Always check your backups, restore some random stuff.

It all depends on how safe you want to be - at work we store our
back-ups in different countries to be really safe (I'm serious)

For my home stuff I have 2 backup sets, and then every month or
so move a back-up to work. I'm not so careful with my home backups
because it isn't so critical if I lose say 1 month worth of
photos/ data, but I do an incremental backup every week or so.

For most people who do no back-ups at all, it would be a start to
even consider it :)

Kavey

Sigma 18-125mm f/3.5-5.6 DC for Canon

08/18/2002 05:27:30 PM · #8

Wow!

Gordon where do you work and what does your company do?

Or is it one of those things where you could tell me but then you'd have to kill me?!!

;)

Sony 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 E-mount

08/18/2002 05:38:53 PM · #9

Originally posted by Kavey:
Wow!

Gordon where do you work and what does your company do?

Or is it one of those things where you could tell me but then you'd have to kill me?!!

;)

Its just a situation where a particular set of data represents
2 or 3 years work of multiple hundreds of people and has value in the
hundreds of millions.

The point is the amount of effort/ paranoia you put into doing backups
is proportional to the value of the data or the difficulty of replacing
it.

Something like 90% of home users don't even back-up anything at all
though...

It doesn't even cost much - I do a full back up of all the data on
my PC and it takes maybe 7 or 8 CD-Rs. I don't bother backing up
applications because I can 'afford' the time to re-install.

jmsetzler

Sony Alpha a6000

08/18/2002 06:42:29 PM · #10

Terry,

A use a fairly inexpensive backup method myself. Hard drives are cheap these days. I installed a 30gb hard drive as a slave in my system. I run a scheduled backup (via windows backup utility in Win2k) to the secondary hard drive every night. If my primary drive fails, I have to replace it and reload my OS and apps, but my data is recoverable this way... :)

Canon EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM

08/18/2002 07:30:40 PM · #11

Originally posted by jmsetzler:
Terry,

A use a fairly inexpensive backup method myself. Hard drives are cheap these days. I installed a 30gb hard drive as a slave in my system. I run a scheduled backup (via windows backup utility in Win2k) to the secondary hard drive every night. If my primary drive fails, I have to replace it and reload my OS and apps, but my data is recoverable this way... :)

The only problem with this sort of pseudo-RAID type back-up is if
something trashes all the files - eg a virus, and then you 'back-up'
all the trashed versions.

You might for example run something that replaces every jpg and tiff
with the same picture, but keeps the file names/ sizes etc the same,
and then you back 'em up.

Read-only media/ tapes/ CD-R etc are suseptable to other failures,
but not this one as they don't tend to be 'active'

KarenB

Canon EOS-70D

08/18/2002 07:46:31 PM · #12

Sorry to hear, Terry!
You know, I just backed up last night... and I was only "reminded" to do so because I ran out of disk space as I was trying to transfer my photos onto the computer. I only have a 10GB hard drive! Between the kid's games, and my new larger photo files, I have to back up quite often anyway.
I am going to investigate installing a larger hard drive, or an additional one.. but this story will serve as a good lesson to back up often!

jmsetzler

Sony Alpha a6000

Sony 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 E-mount

08/18/2002 08:18:35 PM · #13

Originally posted by GordonMcGregor:
Originally posted by jmsetzler:
[i]Terry,

A use a fairly inexpensive backup method myself. Hard drives are cheap these days. I installed a 30gb hard drive as a slave in my system. I run a scheduled backup (via windows backup utility in Win2k) to the secondary hard drive every night. If my primary drive fails, I have to replace it and reload my OS and apps, but my data is recoverable this way... :)

The only problem with this sort of pseudo-RAID type back-up is if
something trashes all the files - eg a virus, and then you 'back-up'
all the trashed versions.

You might for example run something that replaces every jpg and tiff
with the same picture, but keeps the file names/ sizes etc the same,
and then you back 'em up.

Read-only media/ tapes/ CD-R etc are suseptable to other failures,
but not this one as they don't tend to be 'active'
[/i]

I'm backing up on a 7 day rotation so this would not be a problem...

08/18/2002 09:12:42 PM · #14

Originally posted by jmsetzler:
Originally posted by GordonMcGregor:
[i]Originally posted by jmsetzler:
[i]Terry,

A use a fairly inexpensive backup method myself. Hard drives are cheap these days. I installed a 30gb hard drive as a slave in my system. I run a scheduled backup (via windows backup utility in Win2k) to the secondary hard drive every night. If my primary drive fails, I have to replace it and reload my OS and apps, but my data is recoverable this way... :)

The only problem with this sort of pseudo-RAID type back-up is if
something trashes all the files - eg a virus, and then you 'back-up'
all the trashed versions.

You might for example run something that replaces every jpg and tiff
with the same picture, but keeps the file names/ sizes etc the same,
and then you back 'em up.

Read-only media/ tapes/ CD-R etc are suseptable to other failures,
but not this one as they don't tend to be 'active'
[/i]

I'm backing up on a 7 day rotation so this would not be a problem...
[/i]

So you have some storage that they are on that isn't plugged into the
computer all the time ? There have been some viruses that basically do a 'find
all jpgs' and trash them. I got the impression you had both hard
drives plugged in all the time.

Kavey