PHOTOGRAPHY DISASTER! How I Recovered ALL My Lost Photographs?

[@Wairoakid]

Good to hear you recovered the photos. My system for 50 years of photographs consists of 1) An Internal Hard drive containing all photos including scans of 25,000 negatives. I upgrade this drive to a larger terrabyte when the drive gets within 250 gig of being full. This is the working drive 2) A Synology NAS with a specific drive dedicated to photographs. This sits by the computer and the internal drive is regularly backed up to this NAS drive by SyncBackPro by a schedule. 3) An external drive that I manually backup the internal drive to monthly using SyncbackPro. I disconnect this drive after backup and store it remote from the house to protect it if there should be fire etc and theft at the house. One thing to note is I had a lot of hard drives that have been stored for years that had been used to store smaller amount of the photos archive. I decided to check them and found that a number of those drives did not work and could not be recovered even using Disk Drill. Lesson: it don't rely on a backup drive that is not regularly operated to ensure it is in a working state. If you just leave a drive for years unexamined you may find that it will not work if that is your only backup. Interesting to read about LTO tapes. I must have a look at that.

[@ForsgardPeter]

Thanks for sharing. Yes LTO tapes is one solution.

[@LigreDesubi]

I've had issues like that. The feeling when you lost or maybe have lost files, pictures and so on is terrible. But the goog side is that you learn the lesson. I have now everything important duplicate, and the pictures in three separate hard drives.

[@walterxplinge3867]

What a traumatic experience. I'm glad you were able to recover all your work, even though it did take some time. Computer storage failure was a constant concern in the majority of my working life; I was the techie who was employed to make sure it didn't happen, or was easily fixed if a failure did occur. I think I can confidently say with my working experience there is no guaranteed safe way to store data. The only way to recover from a failure when it does happen (and it will as you found out) is to have multiple copies stored in different places. I hope you find that your solution gives you greater peace of mind.

[@ForsgardPeter]

Thanks.

[@streetphotographyguy]

Great you could recover your photos, Peter! I already had two accidents with hard drives where I lost years of photographs, and since then I trust the mighty cloud. But who knows what's better...thanks for the video!

[@ForsgardPeter]

Thanks. Sorry to hear that you lost some photos. Cloud is a good solution.

[@nigelalexander1594]

Yes Peter, I would like to see your Lightroom workflow. Thank you.

[@toncouwenberg8646]

Hi Peter, great that you were able to recover your photo’s. What I do: Have two backup drives and switch those each week. The “oldest” backup I store in a different place. So in case of fire, I still have a backup but might lose my photo’s of last two weeks.

[@ForsgardPeter]

That is a good practise.

[@TheRealfubar]

no backup, no pity 😉 3-2-1 rule remember: sync is not a backup. it will sync ransomware encrypted files too

[@ForsgardPeter]

Yes, I am aware of that. It is still quite good options.

[@Daniel-o1l2e]

​@@ForsgardPeterWell, I think you have not understand the core of your problem. If you use automatic sync tools, there will sync the data of a corrupted main source. May it be a file system error or ransomware. Or you deleted something accidently. You need manually done backup as well. I use external hard disks and label the date, when a backup was created. Than you have to store them at a different place and hope they never get stolen.

[@BHDIjiin]

I did have this happen to me, and I had two hard drives. One main storage and one backup and both failed at the same time. What happened was my PC power supply failed and burned the circuit boards on both drives. Even with that damage done I managed to save my data from not one, but both. I like to tinker with stuff and I did some research, so I got hold of donor circuit boards from the same model of drives I had from a refurbishing company in Canada (I reside in Scandinavia). Couple of weeks after ordering they arrived and I got a hold of my soldering iron and transplanted the damaged drives ROM chip that the new circuit boards need to be able to read the data from the platters from the drives with my data on. Reassembled the drives, plugged them in a computer. And it was a success. Both drives fixed. Didn't want to take any chances so I moved everything on new drives, Now one in the PC and one External drive that doesn't stay plugged in. Additionally I now use cloud storage as a 3rd and remote backup. Moral of the story for me is, don't have your backup on the same power source as your main storage.

[@ForsgardPeter]

That power source tip is valuable. Thanks.

[@rickthomas9894]

Yikes! I could feel my stomach clenching with empathy pains! So glad you were able to recover them. I have a radically smaller library of photos but their haphazardly backed up acrcoss three hard drives and a few different versions of LR. I'm acually looking for an alternative to LR. Going to search your KZbin videos to see if you have some recommendations....

[@JamesMeeks-l3j]

Glad you got your photos back and a good lesson for us all. I would like to see your Lightroom process please. Having been away from Lightroom for a while, I recently started using it again and would like to see how others are using it.

[@ForsgardPeter]

I have a plan to make a video about how I use Lightroom Classic.

[@ronyzmiri]

For my backups I have two ,external hard drives. They are stored in different places. Once a month I make backup on both of them. Every 5-7 years, I just buy new external drives.

[@ForsgardPeter]

Good way of keeping backups.

[@MelvinLim]

Thank you for this video. I lost 5 years of photos on my external hdd too and still haven't got around to recovering them because sending it to a service centre is just over my budget. Hopefully I can get something out by trying your method.

[@ForsgardPeter]

DiskDrill is wort trying. It can work in some cases.

[@bobmorse5896]

Regrettably, my backup habits resemble your old approach; all backed up, but to multiple drives, all local. In addition, I've changed from Windows machines to predominantly IOS machines. I've begun moving all files to a 12 TB spinning drive, with a matching Time Machine backup drive. On a day-to-day basis, everything first goes on two SSD drives. No online backup yet. Working on it. Glad you recovered your files; I imagine it was a nerve racking event.

[@sabinche]

Oh yes..... Creating backups is so important. Fortunately, I haven't had a big dilemma yet. I make backups, but in the most convenient way: multiple external hard drives. But at least I create some 😉. And I also have a cloud solution. In general, however, I think there's still room for improvement. Best regards!

[@photographiezautrement]

Hello Peter, sorry for your mishap. All my photos are on NAS. One NAS for production and archives (25 years). One NAS for backup production NAS, located in the studio to take over in case the first NAS crashes. And one NAS for backup production NAS again, placed in a safe place, outside the studio (fire/water protected) The first two NAS are in Raid 6 (protection for the loss of two disks) and the last one in Raid 5 (protection for the loss of 1 disk). Cloud is not viable for me (too many data, recovery time would take several weeks) Current capacity: 14TB. - Current maximum capacity: 34TB - Backup Software : Carbon Copy Cloner. One backup everyday at night

[@tylerbrown9797]

If your photo library isn't super massive, honestly syncthing on devices with large drives is an amazing, resilient file sync tool. While it isn't intended to be a file backup utility it is a powerful generalist way to ensure files are on multiple different devices, and has no concept of a central server or single point of failure (unless a fileshare is explicitly set up that way). Syncthing is free and open source and works out of the box over the internet or over a local network connection which makes it much more capable than one at first might assume. Also, there is no cloud, or rather you ARE the cloud lol

[@photo818]

Glad that you recovered your photos and work, it has to be one of the scariest things to experience. I have an external drive that i transferred folders to a new larger hard drive, they all transferred easily except 4 folders that I need to get transferred but once I connect the hard drive it doesn’t transfer, the colored wheel just spins and doesn’t go any further from there, this is on a Mac computer, any suggestions as to how to get these 4 folders transferred?

[@ForsgardPeter]

Unfortunately it is very hard to help this way on computer problems. Have you trieds to ask ChatGPT or other AI tools what the problem might be?

[@photo818]

@@ForsgardPeter no I haven’t but may do so. I’m also a member of PPA and they offer file recovery so I may contact them as well, thank you for your reply!

[@ForsgardPeter]

Try PPA and see how they can help.

[@kksweden583]

I have all my photos, slides and pictures since 1973 on my computers harddrive ....AND also on several external LaCie Rugged Mini harddrives (max 1TB each). Always one "group" in my flat and the other "group" in my concrete garage. They are never in the same place at the same time.

[@ForsgardPeter]

That is a wise thing to have them in separate places. That is something that need to think about too.

[@bowieknife]

+1 for LR workflow! Mine is messy with almost no keywording... But I only have one catalogue. I'm glad anyway you managed to recover everything. I use a SanDisk G-drive for my main photo storage. And I plug in a separate HD every month to sync. I technically should be safer to have two drives always synced and have a third drive that's only synced monthly and brought off site but I haven't gotten round to that. I don't like the thought of my photos in the cloud so I haven't considered that.

[@jutubjestzlem]

Ah yes, hard drives… they always fail sooner or later. Can’t really trust them. As you said having backups is really important. I personally backup all my photos to LTO tapes. The drives are expensive, clunky and not really user friendly. But when it comes to medium, they are incredibly reliable. It’s also easy to incrementally add new batches of photos to an existing tape, until it’s full. Then just store the tape somewhere safe and get a new one. Over the years I experienced multiple hard drive failures, but not a single tape failure. Still can read tapes recorded 15 years ago without problems. The tape drive mechanism will probably fail sooner than the medium.

[@ForsgardPeter]

Thanks I will into the LTO tapes.

[@jutubjestzlem]

@@ForsgardPeter If you're a Mac user, I am aware of only single vendor that provides a complete solution (i.e. tape drive with Thunderbolt interface along with necessary software). It's called mLogic.

[@Steve-Wreckdiver]

In my opinion not a good idea to have multiple LR catalogues. I agree with Scott Kelby's approach to back-ups and library management.

[@ForsgardPeter]

I have found that the catalog that I have my recent images and work with is much faster than having 100 thousands of images in the same catalog. It is always possible to merge catalogs too if I want less catalogs. The new workflow has worked well for me. I do not need to go back to images from 10 years back that often. I will check out Scott Kelbys approach to this. I have a few of his books from way back, but is there a certain video in YT that you recommend?

[@Daveesrc]

Done it, got a Tee shirt..

[@simonatterbury]

Holy sh*t. I've had this happen twice this year and currently recovering two drives (one for a work colleague) with Disk Drill. Last year had to have one drive professionally recovered as it was a hardware head failure, cost over £300. I have 17 10 - 16 TB archive drives and use Disk Catalogue Maker to catalogue them all so I can do a search across all of my drives without having to mount them. I've been told archive to spinning drives not SSD's as an SSD failure is usually more fatal. Cloud is not an option as I do a huge amount of video work and generate 2.Tb plus of archive per month (5Tb in September). I would be interested in your Light Room work flow as use it but I much preferred Aperture before apple killed it so only scratched the surface.

[@ForsgardPeter]

Sorry to hera that you have had the same problem. One downside are the costs and the work to transfer everything.

[@samki_foto]

Good to hear photos were recovered! I am obviously just a weekend hobbyist so I use mainly those online services from Adobe, Google and Microsoft. However they are not 100% synced together Adobe having them all. I don't have LrC catalogs because I use the newer simpler Lr. Travel method is that every evening I transfer photos to Android using USB-C cable from camera to Android. From there they go to these online services. This way I have travel photos in SD card and online should something happen.

[@samki_foto]

This daily syncing to online while travelling us the reason why I choose by its Wifi capabilities. No wifi no reservation. This is downsize of course to must have internet fir online storage.

[@ForsgardPeter]

That is good way to back up photos while travelling.

[@heinoperm9442]

Peter, set up RAID 1 or higher so the data is always duplicated between drives and if one fails, second one can instantly recover the first. Next take a hard backup to S3 or smth. And you are good for life.

[@ForsgardPeter]

I did have a RAID drive, but it did not help. Maybe I did sothing wrong?

[@photographiezautrement]

@@ForsgardPeter There is a lot of RAIDs. Minimal security is Raid 5 (3 disks minimum). Better is Raid 6 (4 disks minimum). Raid 1 divides your capacity by 2

[@sweden_ove2074]

😅 Lucky you. Its good that you get two new HDDs. But I recommend tree HDDs. And also think of file errors due to destructive particles from the sun and the galaxy. They can destroy not only files. But the whole disc system software, and destroy the correct backps with broken ones. I studied this subject two years ago in work on museums photo archive for future history. I have now three discs. One that only get new contant once a year, and that is stored in heavy 3 mm led box 😅. Before i fill it with new files, I will run corrupt file check, and same on my other two discs. Problem is. I haven't found out what software to use for the corrupt file check, (yet). 🙈😱

[@cameraprepper7938]

I always use 3 very good HHDs of different models/brands, never two of the same model/brand, becaus if one has a fault, then the other might as well have the same fault, Now when memory cards are getting cheaper, I may buy more and never reuse them, so I always have 4 copies of all photos.

[@GiancarloBenzina]

There’s no such thing as a reliable disk! Never has and never will. Same applies to data synchronization and “copy”. Get this deeply! Nobody needs to call his stuff work to make his irrelevant stuff more important than it is! Edit in your mind what’s relevant to be maintained (= copying and verifying each single work every 3-5 years or longer term if you use other long-term media, from old media and format to new media and long-term format. Both, all three, near-site copy, off-site backup, accessible cloud store version. What software you use does not matter as you will haver to verify the triplicated works correct content and accessibility. You see now why you need to take this more seriously than you do if your work is really as valuable as you claim. Thus categorize it first! Gold, Tin, Waste.

[@christopherbonis]

In my experience, cloud storage is expensive but worth it (for just his reason).

[@ForsgardPeter]

That is the downside. I am using Photoshelter anyways for delivering images to clients. It was a practical choice even though it is not as smooth a workflow for backups as I would hope.

[@Fuchs85DE]

You still need another copy

[@milunacodes]

You should get a Synology NAS and that way you have automatic backup to fix the single point of failure that you had here. It also has some software that allows you to share the pictures online easily.

[@ForsgardPeter]

I have thought about that solution. For now I will go wat I have.

[@Fuchs85DE]

I have two Synos in different parts of the house plus a cloud backup. And even a third syno but I am

[@vladnickul]

One needs to (learn) use some comand prompt :) it will save you all the money :))

[@ForsgardPeter]

I know, but I am glad that ChatGPT was there to help. Not everything needs to learned as long as you know where to get help.

[@MrGuto]

Just get a NAS and you’ll be set

[@ForsgardPeter]

I have been thinking about that.

[@sweden_ove2074]

With a NAS you will infect all backups if a file gets corrupt. Or if you get ransomware... I stopped trusting NAS two years ago.

[@olirc]

NAS is an absolute waste of money that everyone is so excited to tout. All you need are enough HD space to cover you for double your use. Get the Black internal drives from WD (weigh up the pros and cons of HDD vs SSD) and use a SATA bridge and use them like cartridges. Structure your folders sensibly. That's all you need. Add triplicate if you want to go down the route of offsite storage, or on online solution.

[@gobgobcachoo]

Do not trust chatgpt. You dodged a bullet that you didn’t get a hallucinated answer that would of really put you up a creek. Seek a professional next time. Yikes.

[@ForsgardPeter]

ChatGPT is quite good on these types of problems. It is very good in coding for example. It has worked perfectly so far. In general knowlegde it can sometimes come up with wrong answers. These AI tools are getting better and better all the time.

[@gobgobcachoo]

@ForsgardPeter You're a fool, more. I understand llms the more I stay away from them.

[@ForsgardPeter]

We can all make our own judgements. I have used AI quite a bit. Of course it is not perfect, but it can help a lot if one knows how to use it. I think one has to be a fool not to use it as a help.

[@gobgobcachoo]

@@ForsgardPeter Ai sludge is trained on your images. And all of our images. It's tainted everything. See for yourself, Google image search and, "baby peacock" look at the garbage that will make it harder to find real information. Have fun.

[@ForsgardPeter]

I am totally aware how AI has been trained. How have a human being been trained? In photography > looking at photographs and learned from what has been done in the past. Now I am monetizing the knowledge that I have learned by looking at other photographers work. AI will be a part of our lives in the future. It does not matter if we like it or not, it will be anyways. AI images will disrupt photography industry big times. All of that is not good, of course. It is going to happen and I rather be part of that than being left out. Knowing how to use AI in my work will keep me in business.