Photo Hold
My 500GB FireWire drive i used as immediate storage for my photos went bad. So all photo uploading is on hold until i can get things back together. I’m not sure if the drive actually had bad spots on it or if it was just a corrupt MBR from not being properly ejected. I’ve fixed those MBR problems before, but this one was different — making me think something else might have happened. To top it off, its FireWire interface seems to be fried, i think because somehow i was able to plug the cable in backwards (rounded edge on the squared edge).
Right now PC Inspector File Recovery is scanning for lost files — it says it’ll be done by 12am Friday night. Hopefully i’ll be able to recover everything (important, at least). I poked around with TestDisk probably a little too much for my own good, and should have just started backing it up right away. All of this shouldn’t have been a problem, but i don’t have recent backups on my other external drive.
Normally, i copied files directly from memory cards to my main FireWire drive, did some rough date-based folder organizing, deleted obvious bad shots, then uploaded to Flickr from there. I had an automatic backup going to a second external drive, and i guess you could count Flickr as third backup. But things got unorganized as i borrowed cameras after mine died in January along with trying to work an Apple laptop into the workflow, and then getting a new 10MP camera this summer.
I’ve had my eye on something like NETGEAR’s ReadyNAS Duo (or Time Capsule?) for large, dumb storage of files (photos, videos, etc.). But i also still need a large working drive with a fast interface (eSATA or FireWire), because moving thousands of big files over a network is not fast enough. A NAS would also be great because it can feed media to my Xbox 360, and not have to tax my old Windows machine for streaming videos.
The frustrating thing is that i had just straightened out all my Philippines trip photos from July (they ended up being scattered across several memory cards and my laptop, and with messed up time stamps from different timezones). So we’ll see tomorrow night if i’ll have to do all that again. And now there’s wedding photos that everyone wants to see.
Hopefully i can decide on (and afford) some new hardware, recover and reorganize everything, and get back online quickly. Any suggestions?
Forgot to mention Drobo earlier — another interestingly flexible large storage option.
I can’t see them yet, but File Recovery has found over 4600 files so far, but is now saying it won’t be done scanning for another 30 hours.
About 15 hours to go. 7750 files and 267 directories found so far. I had well over 25,000 photos on there, so i’m hoping that number jumps up pretty quick (not looking likely, though).