Crashed Hardrive Recovery Horror

Late last summer, right before I found out about Matt, I had a hard drive crash on me. It was a 500GB hard drive and it was FULL, completely FULL of client and personal photos.

Luckily, there were only a few images that hadn't been backed up, most were just edits that were totally replaceable and I could do over myself.  (From two specific portrait sessions shot a couple days before the drive crashed. The negatives were all backed up, but not the edits I had done.)

I took the drive to a few places to try and have it repaired, not initially realizing the depth of the issue initially. I called the manufacturer first for help, then called a private tech to look at it, then went to a few computer shops. Each place gave me worst news than the last.

The bottom line was the mechanics of the drive itself had worn out and it couldn't boot up anymore. In order to recover the data from the drive, it had to be disassembled in a "clean room" in a lab. The private tech told me to watch it with who I took it to because he had seen people get quotes as high as $10,000 for that kind of work. He sent me to a couple of underground people he thought might be able to help, but unfortunately, they didn't have the capability to do it safely. (At least they were totally honest and upfront about it.)

After I finished doing all of that running around I exasperatedly threw it on the couch and washed my hands of it. (Plus my finances were in REALLY bad shape. I didn't even have income to pay my rent, let alone some huge repair bill. I was living off my life savings.)

Right around that time, I found out everything about Matt. Then you know, I'm like checking myself into like, psychiatric day care facilities for myself. Awesomeness.

Somewhere in here during the drive crash,  one of my clients/familiy member of a friend notices some pictures are missing from her wedding set. Oh, weird, right? So I go back through them, and guess what? Like, 100 of her pictures which were on that darn disc didnt load on to her website. And they weren't back up before the site crashed. Whereas everything else on the drive had been loaded online so it was backed up. Even if I hadn't burned DVD back ups of everything, I at least had everything stored online on the client's websites. Or so I thought. Well, now there were pictures missing. And they were on this flipping drive.

I went through my computer, recycle bins, memory cards, the website, other client's websites, everything I could think of looking for those darn pictures. And ACTUALLY I did find some of them. But they weren't the pictures the bride was referencing. I found pictures from the wedding in the recycle bin and on a memory card (even though it had been months some how they were still hanging around randomly) but not THOSE particular portraits, which fantastically enough happened to be the posed family and friends portraits. Ugh.

By this time I'm shooting weddings every weekend, in therapy at least 3 times a week and on enough medication to tranq a horse.  I so could not handle all of this. The drive got put on the back burner while I tried to figure out what to do.

Periodically I've called placed and looked up places but alot of places want to ship the drive off to labs in the midwest and it really freaks me out that something woudl happen to it. Not to mention all of the horror stories I've heard. From all the people that have already looked at it, I've already been assured over and over again the data is perfectly fine and safe and can sit there forever like that, it's just the machine that poo-pooed.

As we got closer to the holidays, I got another email from another bride who got married in 2009 and who we did a little trash the dress session the day after her wedding in Carmel. She was going through her master discs and websites and... guess what? The pictures were missing. We both started on this frantic search through everything before finally figuring out those freaking pictures are on THAT drive too! Are you KIDDING me? What's with all this stuff springing up after the fact?

Uggggggh.

So, things have calmed down some, and I am not as out of my mind as I was a few months ago (although I think we all know things aren't great!) so with some encouragement from my friend I got back on the horse and tried to work on this fiasco again.

I revisited the places I had researched the last few months, picked a couple, talked to them all, narrowed it down filled out some paperwork and finally got the darn drive down to their offices for diagnostics exams. They claimed it would take like 2 days.

Here we are a week later I finally get an email back. (Hello? What kind of customer service is that? I think I picked the wrong place!)  Well, diagnostics are done, they're going to recover it, but they won't start it until they have my go ahead.  Because, you know, I have to approve the cost and all.  They gave me a quote.

Are you ready for this?

Are you SURE?

Positive?

...

No backing out now, right?

Are you with me?!





$2,036.00


ARE YOU FLIPPING KIDDING ME?!

I think I'm having palpitations. I emailed him back to clarify exactly what they would be recovering for that amount. (It better be the whole freaking drive and not just the 100 missing pictures!!!!!!!!!!!!) I'm going to die. Earlier today I ran by the boarding facility for the dog, and I kind of made peace with everything for the cost anyway and that it was going to be okay and it would work out fine. Then I got a load of this number. But you know at this point, I kind of want to just chuck my credit card across the counter and be like WHATEVER! FINE! Charge me $2,036 to recover these missing 100 pictures. It was my fault for not double checking these two websites. WHATEVER! You gotta do what you gotta do. You gotta get the pictures back somehow, and how else am I going to do it? These people got the power. They have my drive, they're going to get it back so I have to do it.

But holy FREAKING COW.. how on earth am I ever going to pay that off?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's just so much freaking money, I just... just... I mean... Uhhhhhh?? There's nothing you can do about it.  You just throw the charge card at them and pretend it never hapened. I mean, what else can you do, right? It's so much, it's like, you can't... you can't even connect the dots intellectually to what that even MEANS. It might as well be a million dollars.  I just bought a brand new laptop with a 500GB hardrive, 4 years of McAfee, 3 years of warranty and home repairs service from Dell, yadda yadda yadda. $500. Are you KIDDING me?

I'm gonna go throw up now.