I have a problem which I am sure that others have faced, I have a gagle of pictures I took for a 50th wedding anniversary... the originals were on my hard drive and I had up loaded the rewored stuff to the internet for viewing by the family. when I got up next morning hard driv had failed!!
now I have been around long enough to know to copy twice and pray later...well it didn't happen ...
what I would like to know is the best way to up rez what I have on the web to be able to make a photo album for the family, files I have look good at web sizes but are average 95K~100K in size... images can be seen here
You can't uprez web stuff for printing an album, not unless you like "awful".
Take the disk offline (out of the computer) and don't mess with it. Send the disk to a specialist company for recovery. It can be very expensive. If you want less expensive attempts to recover (like putting the actual disk in another drive case with an identical controller), then you may lose all chance of specialist recovery.
jetmutant wrote:
now I have been around long enough to know to copy twice and pray later...well it didn't happen ...
Apparently not long enough.
It is absurdly simple to use download programs like DIM4 to copy (and rename) files from your CF/SD card reader and simultaneously copy them to the main drive and a backup drive (such as a bare drive or external drive). That way, you have copies of the files on three drives: internal, external, and card.
At the very least you can be sure to make a backup to second disk by copying the image files before wiping the CF/SD card; even if the backup is a labour intensive CD or DVD.
If the card is still available and hasn't been written on after formatting or deleting images, you can still recover them from the card with software.
What software do you have? Lightroom and PS do a fine job of up sizing. The third party software like Genuine Fractals are not worth the trouble.
As Monito mentioned there is a limit to what you can do with the web size you linked to. Just try doubling the size and see what you get. The best option is if the card has not been overwritten.
Photoshop will do a great job on hi res files - files that have a lot of information to begin with, but nothing will work well on web res images. There's just not enough to start with there. I think that the disk recovery route is viable but expensive. At least it's a lot less that it was the last time (and only) I had to do it. Back then it was a grand per gigabyte.
Well I’ve found over the years (20 of them in IT) that 90% of hard drive failures are the PCB’s. Most of the time you can slap a new one on and away you go. There are companies that sell them, not cheap but not enough to break the bank. It might be worth a try. Here is one of them http://www.onepcbsolution.com/?gclid=COm86emd4q4CFcsAQAoddxO2Yg
I have a problem which I am sure that others have faced, I have a gagle of pictures I took for a 50th wedding anniversary... the originals were on my hard drive and I had up loaded the rewored stuff to the internet for viewing by the family. when I got up next morning hard driv had failed!
How did the drive fail? I've had instances where the controller on the Motherboard failed, not the drive itself - and even one time where just one specific controller port failed and plugging the drive into a different port found it still readable. Did you check the drive in a different machine?
Much depends on whether the drive spins up or not. If it spins up, try swapping the PCB as suggested above and reading it (not write!) immediately after connecting it up. You might be able to buy a used drive of the exact same model number as yours.
If it doesn't spin up, try putting it in the freezer overnight and then trying to read it (not write!) immediately after connecting it up.
Regardless, do not boot off the drive. Connect it up as a secondary drive in a working system.
Me too been in the industry for a while... it spins but just clicks... why I am so pissed is that I thought for sure I had double copied all the information (why the cards were used again) It in fact was in back up mode when I got up next day to find it ded dead...I have been searching for a week on 6Tb of drives to find THE folder... I sent the drive back to the mfg for a replacement as it was only a month old
I guess I will just have to eat teh crap sammich on this one, I think I can keep the pictures in the albulm smaller scale so they won't look so bad...
Nothing like a good kick in the behind every once in a while to remind you you are human and therefore very capable of screwing up the proverbial wet dream...
For a 50th wedding anniversary, I'd cough up the $1800 and try to take the first-class, customers-above-all road in customer service.
First and most importantly, I think it's the right thing to do.
Second, you may find that, at the end of the day and if things go well, they may be willing to chip in to cover some of those costs. If things don't go well, your thorough and dedicated efforts to recover the data may prevent a raging client, or someone who tells everyone they know just how badly you screwed them, or a negligence lawsuit. Any of those would cost you more than $1800 in money and lost business.
Third, if things do go well, and even if you do eat the $1800, you could potentially recover multiples of that amount from recommendations they make to friends. This goes with the prior point: whether it ends well or badly, this is exactly the kind of story that people will tell to all their friends... so try to make it end well.
As a totally separate note from this, and eschewing the obvious "duh" notes about your need to improve backup and verification procedures, I'd also recommend that you look into the kind of insurance coverage that could cover the costs of either the $1800 recovery fee, or some kind of compensation to your clients. And be ready for next time, because someday there will be a next time.
The $1800 is a moot point as I sent the drive back to the mfg, after I was sure that I had copied all files from the disk,
The couple are good friends with meand my family,
I would have sprung to have the information off the drive had I known that I didn't have the files., They are a close knit Itallian family, I have worked for them before and have done work for them since...
I would never impose on any customer to have them cover something I should have, There will be no other ramifications as I have taken measures so that this won't happen again...
I do have very good insurance that covers most things but not this, I couldn't/wouldn't run my business without it.
As they are very inderstanding of the situation... lucky for me.
I was just hoping that someone here had the magic fairy dust to make the pictures look good in an album, not give me loads of crap about how I am a screw up... oh well
Genuine Fractals is the best resampling program I've used. That being said, there is no magic fairy dust, and most of the comments you've received have been constructive in their attempts to help you find a solution for this time, and/or hopefully make it better for next time. Of course you've gotten some flak for this, but that was inevitable and probably still a healthy part of the discussion.
Yeah I figured I would get the flak, deservedly so, It's just wasted time though, I have made corrections I think will solve the issue.
I was just hoping that with the vast experience here that I might get some helpful insight... or just magic fairy dust. I think if I keep the pictures at 5X7 size they will look Ok... not as good as full rez files but Ok, better than the alternative.
I will give Genuine Fractuals a try and see what I get.
