Its getting beyond a joke now. Last year i killed the drive with the last 5 years of my photos and portfolio on. Then last week my laptop expired and then last night i barely touched another 500gb external drive in the process of adverting a tea-tastrophy. What happens instant drive death – it wasnt even writting to the damn thing at the time either. FFS.

I now have one dying DSLR, one defunct laptop and two dead external drives and not a single photo to show for 5 or 6 years of photograpghy.

The bitter kick is that both times i have lost drives is been on the cusp of either selling work or being ask to do more work/exhibt my photos.

I think its time to accept that im not intended to be a photograpgher.

One_reallyquitegutted_hippy 🙁

Back up….

No chance of any form of recovery?

Try PhotoRec, I’ve used it quite successfully in the past.

There are two types of people 😯
– Those that make backups.
– Those that haven’t experienced losing valuable data.

You have a future in making computer engineers rich! Maybe you should ask the likes of Dell for a job in their testing department….. if the computers can survive you they pass quality control

The backing up is an even longer story involving women, theft etc.

The first drive i lost i have been quoted 395+vat for data recovery.

I have £6.79 left of my overdraft until the end of the month.

This is getting all to close to end game for this hippy.

What are the drives actually doing? Not spinning up at all or just not showing any data?

Jon, what sort of drive is it and is it spinning up at all?

If you’ve been lucky you might just have fried the case and not the drive inside. They’re usually standard SATA/IDE drives inside once you take a screwdriver to it and the data can be recovered just by bunging it in another PC. I can have a look if you like?

Buck

SpinRite

amazing.

I 2nd SpinRite, has saved me a few times

Drives have power but dont spin up, just make tapping clunking sound. Suspect write head has impacted platter. XP/Vista doesnt detect either of the drives.

Drives are a 500gb Lacie and a 320gb Toshhiba.

Upload stuff to Flickr – a Pro account is dirt cheap ($30 / year) and you get Gigs of storage all looked after for you. All my decent photos are on there.

Don’t give up, mate. It must be a killer, but you still have the ability to carry on taking pics. This is just a set back, not the end.

You could try online back-up like Backblaze in future.

Camera is going to have to be repaired first main shutter release is internittant and the auto focus is dying.

Im so foxtrot uniform charlie kilo’ed off with everything right now.

Its sunny and i cant even be bothered to go ride.

Want a hug?

If it’s a Lacie drive, the number one suspect is the power supply – even if it seems that the drive has power. I had a drive pack in with the same symptoms you describe, but it works fine when I swap the power supply. Try it, before you despair!!

I had a lacie drive pack-up not long ago, same ticking sound you mention, it hadn’t lasted that long, but long enough to be out of warranty of course.

If it makes you feel any better mate you are not the only one in this predicamant, My gf is in her 2nd year of a photography course and both her external drives went tits-up within a week, luckily i had put everything onto DVD the day before so a lot was saved but its amazing how when things go wrong they REALLY go wrong. I feel for u bud, stick with it

Most people learn first time around ;-. I’ve never touched a electrified fence twice.

Lets hope it sinks in on the third 😉

Bad luck though. It’s crap when you lose pix.

Theres isnt going to be a third time. Im just going to sell my DSLR when it comes back from repair. Ive lost 300k+ photos now, plus the missing backups which we dont talk about.

Cheers for the offer RB, i’d settle for a double bourbon, a ciggy, a nice sunny wall to lean againt an 7.62mm of copper jacket lead to be honest.

Aw, come on mate- chin up. Get yer cam fixed, and carry on. Don’t give up. You’ve got loads of pics in you, yet. Blank canvas and all that.

Don’t ever give up.

Haven’t read all the above, so apologies if already said…

Perhaps you’re static charged or something? Nylon pants etc etc.
In fact, best to see if you are not earthing too well.

Just a thought.