I have been reading the same stories online for about 10 years now. “Back up your files, my hard drive just crashed”, “I just lost three years of photos what do I do now”, “I accidentally dropped my external hard drive and now I cannot get my client’s images off of it”. The posts go on and on in the various photography groups I am a part of. It is heartbreaking to read and a part of me is “thank god that has never happened to me”. But then I go about my merry way. I do have lots of systems in place to protect my images on my hard drives but then it finally happened….
At the end of June, I did a large commercial job for my local fire department. I knew it was going to be a big job. We had 11 firefighters in total. We photographed them using props of fire, smoke, sparks and water. I did a lot of standard portraits of the gang in front of trucks and in the hall first. I filled my 16GB CF card, pulled it from the camera and put in a safe place. Inserted my new card and carried on up to the burn building to do our more elaborate set ups. It was a truly incredible day making new friends and amazing portraits!!
We finished up around 9:30pm and I excitedly went home to upload my cards. I inserted the first card from my camera and uploaded all of the burn building shots, squealing with excitement over what I captured. I inserted my second card and got an error message that read “your computer cannot read the inserted device”. WTF?!? Ok, do not panic, you have had card readers malfunction in the past. Pulled another card reader, same thing. Re-inserted the card back into my camera, it now claims that I need to re-format the card. Kinda starting to panic now. Two hours later, I still cannot find the files or get them off my card. I did not know whether I should throw up or cry – not lying, I may have done a bit of both!!!
“Just sleep on it” I told myself. Figure it out in the morning.
Morning came and hit the internet bright and early hoping to solve my first world problem. I downloaded several different programs claiming to be able to recover lost data. Nothing. Everything I did said there were no images to be found. Now I am kinda freaking out. I then googled “cf card data recovery” and found a company 6 hours from me that looked pretty good. I mean seriously, how do you choose a company with something as nerve wracking as getting your client images home safe and sound. It was like choosing a nanny for my 330 little, tiny babies. Who is going to give them the love and protection like me?????
OK, they have won a ton of awards, they must be great. I contacted ReStoring Data in Vancouver, B.C. and they got back to me immediately. I couriered the card to them and it arrived the next day. They messaged me to say they received the card, would assess the situation and provide me with a quote. If they could not retrieve any data from the card, I would not have to pay anything. Long story short, my new heroes at ReStoring Data retrieved ALL, yes ALL of my images. It turns out the CF card had firmware corruption and memory chip degradation. Within 12 days of sending my card, I was picking up my images from the post office!! It did cost me the price of a first born child but it was worth every penny in my opinion!!!
ReStoring Data was incredibly professional and I have never seen such amazing customer service. They emailed me every step of the day and I felt completely taken care of. Best company ever and I highly, highly recommend them.
So, if you are reading this be sure to tuck their info into your database just in case you have your own “it finally happened” situation.
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Corrie Lindroos
Williams Lake Photographer
