Thanks for sharing your experience. Good lesson for everyone. The pics are great too. Glad it all worked out and the party looks to have been more than a success.
Gaurav On 11/13/05, George Sinos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Short version - > > The hard drive on which I store my photos crashed. I restored the > backup copy and didn't lose anything but time. At the same time I > discovered a "hole" in my backup process and plugged it. > > Long version - > > Late last Saturday afternoon I returned from a surprise party. The > family was celebrating a cousin's 50th birthday. > > I had shot about 200 photos (it was a big party) and copied them all > to my external data drive. At that point I converted all the PEFs to > DNGs and ran a Photoshop batch job to make a set of JPGs. > > At this point I started the backup program to copy everything to > another external hard drive. This can take a few minutes so I > wandered away from the computer and got busy catching up on a few > other things around the house. > > Later that evening I returned to the computer to pick a few of the > best shots and upload them to my web site. As I began to edit the > photos I heard an ominous "click, click, click" coming from the data > drive. While I was investigating the problem the drive failed. It > was too late to buy a replacement so I quit for the evening. > > Sunday I purchased and installed a replacement drive and began the > restore process. Luckily it can run unattended. I hit the restore > button about 3pm on Sunday afternoon. It finished shortly before 1 am > on Tuesday morning. > > My restore process copies the files than rereads the source and > destination copies and compares them to verify the copy. (OK, call me > paranoid) So it takes at least twice as long as a simple copy. > > Lesson learned? > > Before the problem I only copied new stuff from the backup drive to > DVDs once a month. Had the problem been more extensive and killed > both the data and backup drives I would have lost everything I'd shot > since October first. I'm adding a step to my process to burn new > stuff to DVDs as it's added to the backups. > > I'm also considering scattering the files over a few smaller drives > just to shorten the inevitable restore process. Another issue, once > the PEFs are converted to DNGs I don't really use them for anything. > They could be archived somewhere other than a working drive for the > same reason. > > Oh yeah, some of the birthday photos are here: > > <http://www.georgesphotos.net/gallery/954900> > > Nothing special, just family party photos. > > See you later, gs > <http://www.georgesphotos.net> > >
