Learn from my near miss

[GuyB]

I had a collegue shoot a wedding for me on an EX3. We exchanged files from her mac to a FAT32 external drive, no problems.

I brought the drive home, connected it and did a Clip Broswer SD convert on it, no problems.

Then I put the drive aside for about 5 weeks. Didn't bother making another backup, this one will be alright on the drive by itself.

Now, today I connect the drive to access the wedding and all I get is 'corrupt partition'. Crap! I get a drive letter but thats it, no contents. Never ever seen this before in 15 years in the IT industry.

Ring my collegue, nope she deleted her copy of the files about a week ago.

In desperation I googled something like 'partition recovery' and followed the first link I came across (Perhaps there is a point to pay Google for search return priority). Downloaded the demo and pointed it to my HDD (which I had now connected directly by internal SATA.

This software reported seeing everything just fine on the drive, full BPAV folder structure. AU$100 later and a few hours for the link for the full version to come through and I have recovered all of the clips of the hard drive.

Name of the sofware: "RecoveryFix"

I have to say it saved me big time. There maybe something cheaper or even free but I tell you what, when you see the files being recovered you really don't care about AU$100.

Lesson to be learnt: ALWAYS keep at least 2 seperate copies of your files somewhere! I got lucky, it could have been much worse.

[DavidChia]

Hee hee, thank you for sharing... Glad you got the files back... I had the same issue before too.. when the hard drive just died on you... the feeling is really down... but the up is when you get it back ... yes $100 is nothing when you know that the shots can't not be reflimed again... feeling is Priceless... But then this case... $100

[MitchLewis]

Unfortunately this software is only available for Windows. I think there's something similar for the Mac, but I've never heard anything about it.

[GuyB]

I am sure there is something avaliable for the Mac somewhere. If not, worst case you could connect the drive to a PC and do the recovery, it would be worth it.

However the point was not to advertise this piece of software, but hopefully reinforce the importance of taking the appropriate actions to ensure you never need it ;-)

Personally I am keeping a copy of the origonal captured files for others I shoot for for at least 12 months (probably much longer if HDD capcities continue to bloat). I do somewhat feel obliged to ensure my clients arn't left in the same situation as I was in but that is just my individual choice.

[MitchLewis]

Good advice Guy.

[tonykart125]

phew!

[jaw]

I recently had a client's brand new WD 750 drive go bad after two weeks. Full of RAW photos from a photo shoot. Got DiskWarrior and was able to make full recovery. Well worth the investment, as you said. Good thing to have in your toolkit.

[adamr316]

Everyone...PLEASE HEED THIS MAN'S WARNING! We are on a new frontier with tapeless video shooting and it is absolutely essential to have at least two copies of your footage. A corrupt hard drive is like having your tape destroyed.

And the chances of a hard drive crashing randomly is probably higher than some lunatic coming and destroying your only tapes. Or your tapes falling apart (save the MiniDV jokes for the comedy club!) My solution from the get-go was buy two TB-sized external drives and as soon as I could transfer my footage to both of them.

Sony's Clip Browser software is set to Data Protection mode (under the Tool menu) and perform CRC check after copy. Once both hard drives have a copy of the video files I can safely erase the footage off the SxS cards.

I had about 10-12 hours of footage that I shot with an HVX200 that was only on one hard drive. I warned my co-producer time and time again that he needed to get an external hard drive so that we aren't putting our irreplaceable footage on the line. He never got around to it and lucky for us I bought a new computer that had large enough drives for the footage.

HE STILL HAS YET TO THIS DAY TO GET ANOTHER DRIVE. If something would have happened to that drive that would've been $1,000 of camera rentals, gas money, car wear and tear...not to mention our time and the talent's time...down the drain. With BIG hard drives going for under $200 now (MyBook 1 Terabyte Home Edition is going for $150/free shipping as I type this on a popular chain website)...is that not worth it? Or a G-Raid 1 TB for $280 at another popular store.

[Bobonli]

I just shot my first footage with an EX-1, a rental, so it's not like I have access to the cards when I return it.

I've been fussing all evening backing up the files onto two other drives. I'm very cavalier about my tape stock footage and almost never make a back up but, since I'll never see the SxS cards again I thought better of gambling and did redundant b/u in two places.

Your post serves as important positive feedback that redundnacy is so critical.

Having had my first taste of tapeless workflow, I'll probably never go back!

[menchifus]

I make 4 copies of all my footage...at least until I'm done editing. Upon shooting, I copy the footage to two external hard drives and two more copies to a laptop with separate partitions. This might be overkill but I work on projects that cost from $50,000 to $100,000 and more. Can't risk screwing this up.