Lost Photos! Help!

[zmikers]

I can not believe this:mad:. I had photos from a big trip last summer saved in 4 places, on my computer, external hard drive, on CD, and on my DigiMate III external storage device. My computer crashed about a month ago and my external hard drive had a registry virus so I reformatted both knowing full well I had my Trans Siberian photos stored in two other places. When I went back to load them off of my CD, it says the CD is empty. So I plugged in my DigiMate and that has malfunctioned as well. It must be a curse. Luckily the 2nd half of my trip is still alive and well on a second CD. Any suggestions please! Can I get the lost data off of the CD?

[Rhys]

I can not believe this:mad:. I had photos from a big trip last summer saved in 4 places, on my computer, external hard drive, on CD, and on my DigiMate III external storage device. My computer crashed about a month ago and my external hard drive had a registry virus so I reformatted both knowing full well I had my Trans Siberian photos stored in two other places. When I went back to load them off of my CD, it says the CD is empty. So I plugged in my DigiMate and that has malfunctioned as well. It must be a curse. Luckily the 2nd half of my trip is still alive and well on a second CD. Any suggestions please! Can I get the lost data off of the CD?

Probably not but you can try to recover the deleted files from the reformatted disk using PC Inspector (free).

Windows has a nasty little habit of telling you everything's fine and saved to CD when it's not.

The digimate data is most likely to the the most easily recoverable. Use PC Inspector. It sounds like a hardware flaw so take the drive out of the digimate, put it into a USB caddy and let PC Inspector do its stuff.

[zmikers]

Probably not but you can try to recover the deleted files from the reformatted disk using PC Inspector (free).

Windows has a nasty little habit of telling you everything's fine and saved to CD when it's not.

The digimate data is most likely to the the most easily recoverable. Use PC Inspector. It sounds like a hardware flaw so take the drive out of the digimate, put it into a USB caddy and let PC Inspector do its stuff.

OK, thanks for the advice. I'll see what I can do.

[D Thompson]

also see this thread http://www.dcresource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40692

[zmikers]

also see this thread http://www.dcresource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40692

Great, thanks for the link. I'll see if it works, but it seems that my cd has just been erased for some reason. I'm sure I'll ge the photos back some how. Thanks again.

[Anthony]

My mate takes the piss out of me as I do so many backups but you can never be to careful.

Anyway I am the "kiss of death" when it comes to CD/DVD writing and the thing I tend to do is not fix the CD/DVD so if you try different software or hardware you can not get the databack also windows shows that as an empty disc. This is due to the table of contents not being written ?

Download and look at the disc with http://www.isobuster.com/ you will have to pay to get the photos back. I have tried other software but this one was the quickest; some software I tried was running all night and still had not recovered the data.

You may stll be able to get the databack from your hard drive using a recovery program as the data is still there even after a format. I did it about 5 years ago using from memory a free program called NTFS recover althought I can not find the link now.
I can not find the program anywhere but they have some free and pay ones here:
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best/free-ntfs.html

[zmikers]

Bonzo - Thank you too for the suggestions. I'll give those a try too. I've tried so many things now. This is getting ridiculous, but where there's a will there's a way!

[zmikers]

Even ISO Buster says the cd is blank:(

[Anthony]

I would say that if ISOBuster can not find anything there is nothing there :(

[Bynx]

Bonzo - Thank you too for the suggestions. I'll give those a try too. I've tried so many things now. This is getting ridiculous, but where there's a will there's a way!

Almost right Zmikers.....but where there's a will there's a wail. :p

[zmikers]

Almost right Zmikers.....but where there's a will there's a wail. :p

LOL.....Ya that too!

[zmikers]

Rhys - you were right, it was an electric problem with my digimate. I took the hard drive out of the casing and took it into the local computer shop. The files were there all along, I just wasn't able to get to them through the poorly built digimate piece of sh**:p Long story short, I got my files back. I don't think I'll ever get back to Northern China, Monolia, Siberia or the rest of Russia to get more pics. Anyways, I'm a happy boy now.

Thanks for everyone's ehlp and suggestions here:D

[Rhys]

Rhys - you were right, it was an electric problem with my digimate. I took the hard drive out of the casing and took it into the local computer shop. The files were there all along, I just wasn't able to get to them through the poorly built digimate piece of sh**:p Long story short, I got my files back. I don't think I'll ever get back to Northern China, Monolia, Siberia or the rest of Russia to get more pics. Anyways, I'm a happy boy now.

Thanks for everyone's ehlp and suggestions here:D

And people wonder why I recommend memory cards instead of portable hard drives for long trips etc!

Glad you got it all back. It was a wild guess but judging from my Hyperdrive, the hard drive is of better quality than the unit. The hard drive from my Hyperdrive is in my wife's laptop. The Hyperdrive itself is empty right now and for the forseable future (until SSHDs get cheap enough anyway).

[zmikers]

And people wonder why I recommend memory cards instead of portable hard drives for long trips etc!

Yep! Learnt my lesson. Especially now that memory cards are getting larger, faster and cheaper, there's no doubt which route I'll take next time:o Anyways, thanks again for your help. I'm absolutely delighted to get those photos back.

[Rhys]

Yep! Learnt my lesson. Especially now that memory cards are getting larger, faster and cheaper, there's no doubt which route I'll take next time:o Anyways, thanks again for your help. I'm absolutely delighted to get those photos back.

I remember paying $115 for a 1GB memory card in 2005. I can now get 32GB for $72 from NewEgg. Prices have not just halved in the past 3 years, they've fallen by 98%. Heck, my 40GB hyperdrive cost me what 3 of the 32GB cards would cost now and I've only had that for 2 years.

[James DeRuvo DHQ]

Moral of the story ... always verify you backup actually backed up (the CD) and swap out thumb drives every other backup. Better yet ... CARBONITE!

[talkingdog]

^^ all memory can fail, multiple backups and one off site is the best route, carbonite is awsome and pretty cheap

[zmikers]

I'm going to have to look into carbonite. I'm not really sure what it is:p Yes multiple backups is the way to go. Luckily out of the 4 backups I had, I managed to squeeze the photos off of my last choice.....PHEW