Computer crash lost all of my Disney vacation pics from 09

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Well, the title pretty much says it all. Lost all my MNSSHP pictures (except one I bought from photopass), lost all my free dining review photos, all my photos of the horse barn and Kahn (the headless horseman's horse, very beautiful) and all my detailed pictures of the Fantasia mini golf course that I was going to review and put up here.

Its kinda sad, I feel like I can't remember the vacation that well without them.

Oh well...guess I will just have to go again this September and recreate all those photos...

 

[Corbisblue]

Oh no I'm sorry to hear! What happened to the them? Hard drive failure or virus, or something else? Might be able to get them back.

 

[dragonye]

take it to a professional...same thing happened to me twice..did I learn the first time and back up my photos and documents? no but the repair place did retrieve all my photos and stuff..worth a shot - don't go to geek squad as they charged me 3times what a local guy did.

 

[Lynne M]

Don't give up! Just because you can't see them, it doesn't mean they're not still on the drive.

There are companies all over the place that can recover data from drives that have even been physically damaged. DriveSavers is probably the most famous. Data recovery can be pricey, but for all those photos...it might be worth it.

Try not to use the computer until someone can look at it. Your pictures may still be there, but if you overwrite that data, they're likely gone for good.

Do invest in an extra hard drive and backup software. You can get both for under $200, and it's so worth it.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Well, it was a bit more complicated than that. All the pictures were uploaded to my laptop while on vacation. A few days after we got back, my laptop crashed (it does this a lot, its on it's last legs). My BF (who is very good with computers) got all my data off the laptop and onto his computer. A week or two later he was messing around with his computer, I think something with ubuntu, and he miswrote a script or something like that, I don't really understand the technicalities, so his computer has been out of commission for a few months. He was really busy with classes and just used my desktop.

Now that its spring break, he had time to mess with his computer and bring it back online. He recovered all of the files on his computer, except for the Disney pictures. The folder is there, but it is empty. He has run several recovery programs on his computer, and they are definitely not there. So they must never have made it over from the laptop transfer. Which pretty much means they are gone.

I dunno if that made too much sense to everyone, sorry. But we really have done everything we can to recover. We do have our pics from the Behind the Seeds tour and from our very last day (those were still on the camera card).

Thanks for all the sympathy, if any good has come out of this its got my BF kinda feeling bad for me (so maybe he'll wanna go again this coming September) so there is a silver lining.

 

[seashoreCM]

Do you still have the laptop? Maybe you could go back to it to retrieve the pictures.

 

[Corbisblue]

Do you still have the laptop? Maybe you could go back to it to retrieve the pictures.

I was just gonna suggest that I would definitely back up your photos as soon as you can when you put them on a computer. I keep a DVD backup, along with an external HD Backup and backed up online.

 

[newdeal]

get a mac, get a time capsule, never worry about it again its backed up every hour wirelessly through the network and you can restore the whole computer from it or just bring back individual files through time machine

 

[Conan the Librarian]

sign up for the free 2 gig from Mosy, or, even better, the free 32 gig online from www.live.com (microsoft). If you have a hotmail account, you are already elligable(sp). They call it SkyDrive and it works quite well. Only complaint is that you can't upload whole directories at once. I think you could upload a zipfile easily enough.

Just save yourstuff off site!

 

[larryz]

get a mac, get a time capsule, never worry about it again its backed up every hour wirelessly through the network and you can restore the whole computer from it or just bring back individual files through time machine

OR... if you're already running Windows XP or later, get a WHS and never have to worry about backing up your computer again...

 

[mlittig]

I am so sorry and hope there is some way to get them back

 

[Chuck S]

If you still have the laptop, it is possible that the hard drive isn't damaged, my desktop crashed, and I thought I'd lost everything. But the drive was fine, the motherboard was fried...so I was able to by an inexpensive adaptor that made my drive work through the USB port of my new computer, so the only thing I lost were some game programs that won't run on Windows 7. All my photos, spreadsheets, etc. were safe.

 

[rs505]

I'm not a computer professional, but I work with issues related to data on computers as a lawyer, and we have a saying that nothing is ever truly erased from a hard drive. There are people out there that can recover data. They can even recover data from hard drives that have been erased on numerous occasions. The only problem is that it may cost more money than you are willing to spend. But if they are that valuable, then take it to a professional to get a quote. I would also echo that you not take it to geek squad, but real professional data recovery specialists.

 

[Nikisha421]

my desktop is not really on it's last leg but just crappy so I save all of my pix to a thumb drive/ jump drive what ever...so that whenever it does give out I will still have them...I know the feeling...sorrry for ur picture lose

 

[LaurieN]

Here's a long shot....What about the memory card from your camera? Are the pics still on there? I still have some of my Nov pics on my camera.
I hope you can find a way to recover them. I've been in your shoes 2 years ago and was actually able to get most of my pics back.
Good luck to you,
Laurie

 

[AmberHeartsDisney]

you should always back up your computer & pictures. id buy a drive or start burning CD's

 

[Familyof4lovesDW]

I just wanted to say I feel your pain My pictures were on DSIL's computer because we used the in laws camera and she uses it too and it crashed and all of our first trip pictures were on there Luckly we forgot the camera at the hotel the last day and bought a disposable, but the character meals are gone. We do have some of the meals on video when they met the characters. We are going back this year and have a new camera and laptop and will put them on a cd once they are downloaded.

 

[newdeal]

if your computer "crashes" its unlikely the hard drive is actually bad. Often you can take the drive out, hook it to another computer and transfer your pics off it. If the hard drive is dead like other people said there are places out there that can recover your data. Even if the data is erased they can recover it sometimes because the data is still there, just the map to it has been erased but can be recovered unless you use a "secure erase" which writes zeros over the data instead of just deleting the entry in the map

 

[phatltlgirl]

If you have not reformatted your memory card then they should still be there. I learned this last time we were at EPCOT. My DH dropped my digital camera and something happened and all the pictures disappeared. I was freaking out and took it into the developing place in EPCOT and put the memory card in the machine and it showed empty. A CM working came over and asked if she could help. I explained what happened, she took my memory card and put it in her computer and said she could recover some files she saw on there. She told us to come back in a couple hours. When we went back she gave us our card and a cd that had every picture on it from the date I put my memory card in my camera, even though some had been deleted for at least a year. She explained the files are truely never deleted unless you reformat the card.

 

[hansel1]

you should always back up your computer & pictures. id buy a drive or start burning CD's

I used to burn pictures onto disks until last year when I found that the disks had faded and could not recover the pics. I have to external Hard Drives now and I back up my pics on both.