Big Problems ~ Photography help storage^^ - gfx elite forums

Ghostmonkey · #1 (**permalink**) February 24, 2008, 08:47

Any help :RD on this would save my five pillows worth of tears. Heres the monkey's finger poking me in the eye. I have been scanning glass negatives for the last year and saving them into a maxtor hard drive. Then last week the file would not open it says they are corrupted. They always did open. Anyway is their any program or something that can resolve this *%$# of a problem. And the idiot who was supposed to be making the hard copies to the disks didn't do his bit * I so should by a bb gun and pop him a couple in his mike johnson*. If there is anything that can be done let me knowwww it would be so appreciated.

обезьяна

DrNoXx · #2 (**permalink**) February 24, 2008, 12:08

ok... you should desribe us a little mor in which type of files you have stored the scans and if the harddrive still works properly... then tell us which program u use to open the files... what is this %$ ting you say... we can not guess it... well if you define your problem a little more we might be able to find out what's the problem.

Ghostmonkey · #3 (**permalink**) February 25, 2008, 07:17

Thanks DrNOXx I know ten breaths and speak ^^

Hard Drive is Maxtor One touch - Yes it works I can save files to the hard drive and open them, but when I go to delete them I get an "I/O device error" which Maxtor seems to be notorious for - Files are in Tiff formate - I can get some images up tomorrow, so you can see and also more info. Thanks so much I really appreciate your time and you help.

seishirou · #4 (**permalink**) February 26, 2008, 06:51

I'm sorry to hear your problem ghostmonkey.
I can't offer any help as I don't have any experience with Maxtor One-touch.
Just 1 suggestion though.. stay away from Maxtor

I have a lot of bad experiences with Maxtor drives.

Btw, since it's an external drive, can you try to replace the cable? Maybe it's faulty cable. Although at worst, it'd be the problem with the HDD's circuit board.

gfx_murphy · #5 (**permalink**) February 26, 2008, 09:31

people with similar problems here:

Code:

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7590_102-0.html?forumID=67&threadID=28919&messageID=1280008

Seems like a simple chkdisk does the trick for most.
You could also try a number of file recovery software - Ontrack EasyRecovery, GetDataBack, Rstudio tools.. etc.

Ghostmonkey · #6 (**permalink**) February 27, 2008, 08:49

Thanks for the info, but the hd died only a year old : ( So I already started to scan all the negatives again, that is why I didn't get back right away and I apologize for that. Thanks for your help guy^^ *da ghostmonkey give hugs and kisses to all*

Andy41 · #7 (**permalink**) February 28, 2008, 22:35

Lost over 2500 photos last year, from a hard drive failure. After all those years of telling others to back-up, I'm the one person who should have done it. I tried various photo rescue programs, but nothing helped. I gave the drive to a couple of IT specialist friends and they failed too. Luckily you have the negatives to re-scan, I lost over 3 years of digital images, none of which I shall ever be able to take again. I now back-up all my images to a second USB 500Gb drive and the best ones also onto Dual Layer DVD (8.5Gb) discs. Nothing lasts forever and I guess I learned the hard way. The only person you can trust to care about your work is yourself. So my advice is Back it up and back it up twice to be sure.

Another piece of advice. Do not back up to a drive or media you use regularly. Oh and with the price of hard drives with very high capacities dropping every day, I'll be getting, I'm taking some advice given to me by one of the IT guys, replace your drives every two years and keep the old ones in a safe place.

Also never give advice to others that you don't put into practice yourself.

Good luck with your re-scanning.

Glass negatives, now that takes me back, they must be very old photos. The last time I saw some of those was in the early 80's when a guy found some in the basement of a very old house they were rebuilding, he bought them over and I used my JVC video camera to get images from them, using the neg/pos switch. Fascinating stuff. Would be great to see some of the images you have.

DrNoXx · #8 (**permalink**) February 29, 2008, 00:46

have brought us to backup everything we think that is important for us.

I use RAID since years now and it saved me twice already when the main HDD gave up with all the actual data and workflows on it. Well, Raid is the best as long you will not be hit by a ligthning or a virus kills all data. For normal causes it is great. The HDD dies, the system tells you that one of the HDD#s is dead and if it should go on using the other one alone and you say yes and go on with your work until you come down town to get a new HDD or the postman will bring it to your door. No more running or getting excited.

When using a RAID in the secure configuration, you will have a third HDD there, that will automatically copy the data from the still working HDD when the second drive dies and this third HDD will do the work of the one that died - that is what is called hot swapping if I am right. I use this configuration the last five years now and I am thankful I took the money for something that made sense. I know what it eans to loose data in the last moent before a presentation because the HDD of a Laptop would give up. Unlucky you didn't bring your data burned to a DVD with you... any transport can harm a HDD even we take them with us all day and nothing ever happens.

Raid has aother allures though... you will write data a little slower thatn usual as they have to be written to two HDD's but, well it reads quite a bit faster as it reads from two HDD's that are mirrored and so contain the same data

The second is that I backup EVERYTHING important TWICE on some HDD's, using at least one external AND on DVD's, so if the one way fails, the other one will be the backup you will have when needed. This sure makes a lot of work as you have to sort out three or more storage places when you clean up BUT it is the secure way. It means, too that it will be several DVD's with the time, but DVD's are not soo big a thing and they are a nice archive, especially if you use a tool like whereisit, that will scan not only your HDD's but your CD's/DVD's, too and you will really find your stuff wherever it is archived

FAST.

Well, I use Western Digital since years. Two gave up in seven years... one after a few months of use which I got reimbursed - but without data LOL (what a luck I had RAID), the other one after two and a half years of use. Well some day every HDD wil die and it will be that the data will disappear slowly and the first you don't even recognize the coming death of a HDD.

Ok, enough - a pity if anyone looses data because of taking it too easy, people. The day it hits you, it will be the others that will say: "Why didn't you backup your stuff?"

DrNoXx · #9 (**permalink**) March 3, 2008, 14:48

i'd like to share with you a story of a friend here, it is more on archiving, but close to topic anyway... here she goes:

"one thing that has proved very very worth the time in my case is archiving on external harddrives and additionally on DVD.

i only realized this recently, when some flash-files (.swf AND the corresponding .fla) i had archived on the external drive were corrupt, obviously because i had run a virus scan on the whole drive and it must have considered them as evil and "cleansed" them!!! well, i can tell you guys that i had some adrenalin going (this was on a tight deadline...) until i had dug up the archive DVDs from the bottom of some drawer to find the files in perfect condition on there... phew!

so, my conclusion is: the more ways and the more duplicates you make of your file archives, the safer it gets! of some really important files, i store copies at a friends house, INSIDE A FIREPROOF SAFE, just in case... this may seem a bit overdoing it, but i have met a guy that was even more paranoid... he was at the time writing his dissertation (in other words, a whole f+++ing BOOK that took him about 2 years to finish) and he was constantly backing up his work on CDS (this was in 1999 ;-)), storing one at home, another one at a friends house, and another copy he would carry in his pocket at all times, just in case his house would get burglared, burn down, get struck by lightning, flooded... oh, and i think he put a copy into a bank safe on regular intervals, as well... if you think now THAT is REALLY overdoing it, keep in mind that external harddrives can fail, RAIDS can get infested with a virus (or "cleansed" by your friendly anti-virus software) and yes, DVDs CAN loose data because of high burning speeds, sloppy manufacturing/bad quality, heat, dampness, time, etc...

i was lucky to meet this "paranoid" but actually pretty sensible guy at the time because he made the importance of backup instantly clear to my newbie self - and having (to a moderate degree) followed the concept has saved me/my data quite a few times already."

lcoulter · #10 (**permalink**) March 4, 2008, 05:22

Sorry for your trouble. Try Getdataback before you give up, it saved my life once. I had an external fail with thousands of important files on it, and it saved 95% of them. I now back up onto 3 externals, dvds, and store some off site.

I have three externals, a Western Digital, simple tech, and Maxtor.. I have had 2 WD's die over the years, so I don't know what brand to recommend. I do keep mine turned off when not in use now, it can't hurt and I think it extends the life IMO