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OMG my hard drive just crashed - photos are gone


11 years 11 months ago #227754 by iTravel
My computer is giving me a blue screen every time I boot up. All my photos are on this computer. Any idea's please?!
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11 years 11 months ago #227755 by Baydream
Get professional help - or at least a good geek. It may not be the drive and recovery is possible.
Shoot, learn and share. It will make you a better photographer.
fineartamerica.com/profiles/john-g-schickler.html?tab=artwork
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11 years 11 months ago #227756 by chasrich
The blue screen might just be some corruption to your Windows system. Hopefully you can recover all of your images once that has been corrected. After the emergency has passed come up with a good backup plan. Do it soon while the impact of losing everything is still fresh. ~fingers crossed~ Best of luck!
“Amateurs worry about equipment, professionals worry about money, masters worry about light, I just make pictures… ” ~ Vernon Trent
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11 years 11 months ago - 11 years 11 months ago #227764 by rmeyer7
First, don't panic! (Easier said than done, I know...) A few questions:

1. How comfortable are you with computers in general? Would you be comfortable if you had instructions on a way to recover your photos (and other files if you need to), even if it had a lot of steps that aren't 100% familiar to you?

2. How many gigabytes of photos do you need to recover, and do you have enough space on flash drives to hold it all?

3. Do you have access to another computer where you can download a file and burn a CD?

If you can say yes to all those questions, I have a suggestion for you. It will work, *IF* - as Charles said - it's just your Windows system and the hard drive is not dead.

Let me know if you're comfortable with giving it a shot -- you can PM me if you want and I'll do my best to walk you through everything.
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11 years 11 months ago #227766 by iTravel
You guys are such a big help. :beerbang: I'm going to play the safe card and take the computer to Office Depot. I just took a step back and took a few deep breaths and going to let someone else deal with it. Hopefully it won't be as bad as I'm making it out to be.
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11 years 11 months ago #227909 by Jim Photo
Keep us posted and good luck with that!
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11 years 11 months ago - 11 years 11 months ago #227913 by shelland
Blue screen should definitely be OS related. Hopefully they can just plug it in to another PC and pull your data. Maybe they can just copy it to that new external hard drive you're about to buy for backups? RIGHT? :)

Good luck!
Scott

- Twin Cities, MN
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11 years 11 months ago #227955 by robbie
That`s scary,goodluck and buy external hard drive for backup.
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11 years 11 months ago #227957 by digishutterbug
When this happened to me I had so many photos on my harddrive that there was not enough room for the strtup files to run. I don't really remember what I did, but I think I booted up in safe mode and moved enough photos onto an external drive to allow the startup files to run. If you have a lot of photos on you hard drive you might want to try that.
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11 years 11 months ago #227963 by geoffellis

digishutterbug wrote: When this happened to me I had so many photos on my harddrive that there was not enough room for the strtup files to run. I don't really remember what I did, but I think I booted up in safe mode and moved enough photos onto an external drive to allow the startup files to run. If you have a lot of photos on you hard drive you might want to try that.

Unlikely that that was the actual cause. You can have no space left on your primary drive and the operating system will still boot. this is because files/applications that are opened on boot are read into volatile memory, not hard drive space. there is an exception to that... if you dont have enough ram then there is usually a page file (swap space) reserved on the hard drive. but this is already reserved.

but i concur with Matt... blue screen is OS related. Any computer tech with a basic understanding of hard drives should be able to rescue your data... provided its unencrypted. And hopefully you werent using File System Encryption, cause that can be much more trickier to rescue... as that stuff is usually tied to the account you use to log in... which pretty much means you need to figure out whats wrong with the OS and fix it if you want the files back.

i recommend a dual partitioned hard drive. primary hard drive for just the operating system... with os+file system encryption for security... and then a second partition for data... like photos... that is encrypted using software like TrueCrypt. if something happens to the OS partition, its pretty easy to copy the TC volume and open it elsewhere.
www.geoffellis.ca
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11 years 11 months ago #228004 by Joves
Well the quick and easy way would have been to get another HD and install it, set it up as the master with the pins. Then you load your OS on it, shut it down then put in your old HD after you change its pins to slave and start the computer. Then you can access the files on the slave and move the ones you want to the master, after that you format the slave. I have done it several times when I had HDs dying and it works for a screwed up OS as well.
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11 years 11 months ago #228064 by Flash Steven
How did you make out? Fix or do they still have your computer?
Canon 7D w/grip, Canon 40D, Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS L Canon MPE 65mm f2.8 macro; Sigma 70-300mm f2.8; Sigma 150mm f2.8 macro; Sigma 8-16mm f4.5-5.6
Photo Comments
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11 years 11 months ago #228109 by mclayton
Definitely call a professional. Don't attempt to do anything yourself.
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11 years 11 months ago #228253 by iTravel
All fixed everyone, they replaced the hard drive and they were able to get all my files off the old drive. That was a close call.
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11 years 11 months ago #228256 by CWphotos
I'm so glad to hear that! Make sure that you get an external hard drive, and back up all your files. They aren't very expensive. :thumbsup:
What you are is so loud, I can't hear a word you say!
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