My computer totally crashed. We have been saving pictures on a backup harddrive, but apparantly a whole YEAR of photos didn't save to it, and obviously none of our documents. So now we have tons of pics totally gone, some really cute ones too. It makes me so sad that I wasn't extra cautious with them. I now know of a few better sites to save pictures on, like Carbonite, but a few friends told me there is a way to get that content back. Does anyone know how/who to contact for something like this?
Apparently, when restoring the system, our computer went back to the default settings so we lost everything, even though we tried to bypass that.
I had some photos also on picassa and a few other online sites, but didn't update them very often and on one site, picnik, they all got erased anyways.
Office Max, Office Depot, and Staples have commercials promising to be able to retrieve info from crashed computers. May be worth a call. You can also call a computer forensics company.
There are recovery services available. They are expensive, but it sounds like it is worth it to you. Call Best Buy - if they don't have one, they should be able to point you in the right direction.
generally "erasing" a drive just point the computer to save on empty sectors and the stuff is still there if you know how to look for it. Ask around for a recovery service in your area, or else Staples or Best Buy have geek squads that could possibly do this for you.
I have a back-up drive for all my photos and manually add them there in folder by year and subfolder by subject (Xmas, birthdays, vacations, etc) PLUS I load them into a Picasa (free) web album, and they are on my laptop, so if one crashes I still have other locations. Finally I actually print some of my favorites and keep a photo album since it I feel it is much easier and less demanding to show guests a photo album to browse or not if they feel like it, than to sit them in front of a computer (reminiscent of those 50's slide-show parties).
Good luck.
I'm so sorry! Definitely see if Geek Squad or someone like that can help you.
I just started using Sugarsync for everything. I was worried about losing all of my school and home files, and I also wanted to be able to access my files both places. It took forever to sync all of my pictures, but it's done now. I feel so much more secure knowing I won't lose everything if one of my computers crashes.
I really hope someone can help you with your photos.
The same thing happened to us a year ago. We lost almost 2 years of photos. I try not to dwell on it too much. I had some of the photos "backed up" on Kodak, So I have photos of my 5 year old Daughter from the missing time period. It's a bummer. Try to focus on the photos you do have (if you can't retrieve the missing ones
I'm so sorry - that happened to us, too. I called a tech from the Geek Squad to come to the house and although the computer itself was completely shot, he was able see that the picture files were still there. They were able to transfer those files to our new system when we replaced the laptop.
Just remember this when the computer is old and trashed too. Someone out there can get most of your 'stuff' off of the hard drive. Just be aware of that down the road. I do hope you get them back. I have Carbonite and also an external hard drive.
I'm about to seriously cry for you :(
I'd immediately go to Geek Squad or something like that to see if there's a way to do it, or if you haven't tried already, do a complete system restore, but if you had to load everything from the backed up hard drive already, them that might not even be worth the effort.
I hope you get them back!!
You can try software to get what you can or you can take it somewhere to see if a company can restore the files. Can be pricey but possible.
We bought a new iMac, transferred all our files to it, and the hard drive promptly crashed. I took it to the Apple store and they had all of my files extracted from the failed hard drive and onto a new iMac within a few hours. I don't know how they did it, but it can be done! Pronto, take your computer to Apple (or Best Buy if it's a PC) and see if they can help you!
Then, buy an external hard drive that is at least as large as your computer's memory storage (so for my iMac that has 1 Terabyte of storage, I bought that same size external hard drive). That way there is enough room for all of your photos, videos, documents, etc. I set mine up to back up every 24 hours in the middle of the night. Losing photos is my worst nightmare. I hope they can recover all of yours! :(
Try calling an independent PC shop, one that does repairs and such, see if they can pull the hard drive and remove what is on it.
Just a thought.... good luck!
If it is the OS they can pop out the hard drive and read it. If the hard drive is destroyed you are out of luck.
You'll have to find a techy to do it. I know my boss did that once (hired someone to retrieve the data off my computer that crashed) and it cost him about $1,500.00! So, it is possible, but costly!
Another alternative to Carbonite, which you have to pay for, is a Google dropbox. You can get a dropbox free which has a very large memory (can't remember how big) and then if you need more space, you can purchase a larger drop box, but you probably would not have to do that. The free one holds a lot! Once you save your files to your hard drive, you just upload them into your drop box. Its great and its free!
You can take your hard drive to a recovery specialist. Its costs LOTS of money though. Or, you can put your hard drive into a new computer and pull them off yourself. So long as the hard drive was not damaged (which it shouldn't have been) then all your data should be there.
I would leave the finding of the photos to the professionals. If there is a way to retrive them I would not want to block it by trying to find them myself. Good luck. Hopefully some family and friends has some images of your kids too.
What I usually do is when my memory card from my camera has about
300 photos, I get a DVD made. This way if, after I put them on computer,
my computer crashes, I know I have my pictures. My biggest fear is losing
my pictures.
I see that you have many good answers already, but I wanted to chime in! I am a picture fanatic, and have lost some photos similarly, and recently I actually had the foresight to spend a little time transferring all of my pictures to a website( just before my computer crashed), facebook is an obvious solution, but Shutterfly offers FREE unlimited storage of photos and you can make your own website to share them. It is super easy and then later you can download them back to your device, share them, make photo gifts or prints etc. Facebook changes their stuff around too much to trust all my pictures there . So I upload them every couple of months to the shutterfly site and also send out for hard copies to put in albums a couple of times a year. So I know this doesn't solve your problem, but hopefully it can save you in the future.
I wish I could remember the name of the company we used. They were in Canada, costs us $600 to get the data recovered. They recovered about 90 % or so of the lost data when our hard drive crashed and they put the data on DVD's. A horrible thing to happen to anyone, I feel your pain. If I come across the name of the company, I'll post it later.
I took mine to the Geek Squad at Best Buy. They couldn't recover my photos and videos, but they sent it off to Geek City or something like that, who were able to recover, I think, all of them. I think it cost somewhere in the $300-400 range, but to me it was worth it. Good luck!
It depends. If you have reinstalled the operating system on the same harddrive that kept your pictures they are most likely lost. The best thing you can do after a crash is take out the hard drive and try to plug it into a working computer to retrieve any files you still need, before you try to restore the system.
You could bring your harddrive to a data retrieval/computer repair place and ask them to try to locate any files that may still be there...
Good luck!
