Hard drive died, my pics are gone

15 years ago

I'll apologize in advance for the pity party that's coming.

Our external hard drive died. DH says a pin sheared off of something and the discs were grinding against each other or something of that nature. This year's pics were not backed up. Vacations gone. Birthdays gone. Sports pics gone. Kitchen reno gone.

My friends and family are sending copies of vacations, birthdays, and sports, but nobody else was documenting my kitchen reno.

I had told myself that I wouldn't post any pics until we were at least 98% done. I purposely didn't upload pics to photobucket so that I wouldn't be tempted to post them. Now I'm going to have to search through old pics for any that show the true hideousness of the old kitchen and not just closeups of my kids covered in flour.(I love those pics)

Of course, when we're finally done, I'll post finished pics, but there won't be any sledgehammer pics, or 7 layers of floor pics, etc.

Thanks for listening.

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Comments (8)

ccoombs1
15 years ago
I am SO sorry. We come to rely on computers so much and when they let us down, they REALLY let us down!! After my DD lost her pics, I got an external hard drive and backed up all of my stuff. I am also going to burm everything to DVD at least twice a year. I would be terribly upset to lose my stuff, as I know you must be.
Buehl
15 years ago
That's awful LaxSuperMom! (The loss of family pictures are the worst!)

I would send your hard drive out to experts in hard drive restoration...yes, there are such places! They may be able to retrieve at least some things...

If you need references let me know, I'll ask around at work to see if anyone can recommend someone....(I work in IT so there's a good chance I can find several references for you.)

Now...off to back up my pictures!!!!
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elizpiz
15 years ago
OMG laxsm! You have every right to a pity party. I just switched over to a digital camera this year and even with downloading the pix on photobucket, I'm always afraid they will "disappear". Also like you I have been avoiding posting progress pix because I want to do it once it's all done. Hopefully Buehl's suggestion will be able to work for you.

Good luck...
Eliz
laxsupermom
Original Author
15 years ago
Thanks for commiserating, everyone.

Buehl, Thanks for the offer, but my DH is an IT guy(actually an IBMer) and claims that it'll be about $1500 to recover the data if we send it out. With our friends and family sending us family and kid pics, he doesn't see why I need the reno pics.
Buehl
15 years ago
Yeah, my DH also told me it would be expensive!

IBMer? I've worked with quite a few IBMers in my career...all in the DC/VA/MD area.
t.o.girl
15 years ago
The exact same thing happened to us - we actually brought it to Best Buy and their technical people were able to recover my pictures file. It wasn';t exactly cheap, but it was worth it!
acountryfarm
15 years ago
This happened to me 5 months ago. Everything lost. New computer also. I sent my hard drive to California to a co. called Drive Savers ( i think). They first look over the drive to see if anything is recoverable, if not they don't charge anything. if there are recoverable files it can be anywhere from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars to recover.
My drive turned out to be shot, nothing recoverable. Thousands of pics lost.
I would have paid to have them back. But we did have a limit we would have gone to.
Pictures are almost priceless. Thankfully I had downloaded many to Photobucket & had many of them on DH's compute as well.

Good luck, I feel for you for sure. It is a sinking feeling to see that blank , blue screen.
laxsupermom
Original Author
15 years ago
Miracle! We were hiding Santa gifts in our luggage and DH found a disc he had burned w/ some of the kitchen pics on it in his weekender bag. He had thought his parents might want to see our progress and then forgot to bring them out during the trip(too busy fishing.) He burned them as a DVD not a CD, but it'll just take a little bit of wrangling to get them back on the computer. Yay!

Thanks for all the good thoughts, everyone.