External Drive Backup Stupid Questions...

[Lionheart]

Same one I've got Liz. They're great! It's fast, it's plug and play (used to be plug and pray in the old days-hahaha-anyone remember the days of windows 95?) and hot swappable, and best of all-really lightweight. Comes with a nice protective case that holds the drive and cables. Don't leave home or office without it.:-)

[Liz]

Thank you, Leon.

Same one I've got Liz. They're great! It's fast, it's plug and play (used to be plug and pray in the old days-hahaha-anyone remember the days of windows 95?) and hot swappable, and best of all-really lightweight. Comes with a nice protective case that holds the drive and cables. Don't leave home or office without it.:-)

I'm glad to know it works so well. I did wonder about the fact that it's so small. BTW, what is "hot swappable?"

Liz

[Lionheart]

Hot swappable just means you don't have to turn off the computer to remove a device. Older components were semi-hotswappable: you had to click the "safely remove hardware" icon on the task bar before detaching the device, something you don't have to do with this drive, just don't unplug it during a file transfer :-o

[Lionheart]

Just when I was getting used to trusting my USB Western Digital drive.... I transferred 20 GBs of photos from my laptop to the drive to transfer to my desktop. I deleted the files off my laptop before completing the transfer from the USB drive to my desktop, and the USB drive is toasted. It won't read when plugged in to any computer...arrrrrgh. 3 GB of those photos are of our future 5th partner in the practice graduating earlier in the month...double AAARGGGGhHHH. Now I'll need to spend $1000 or more to get the data back.
:-(

[Liz]

Leon,

Why don't you start a new thread to get some help. There may be someone here who would know a much less expensive way to get them from your laptop and/or the digital HD. I thought it was fairly easy to retrieve data when deleted from computers.

I'm sorry that this didn't work for you for very long. I better watch that new Western Digital of mine!

Liz

Just when I was getting used to trusting my USB Western Digital drive.... I transferred 20 GBs of photos from my laptop to the drive to transfer to my desktop. I deleted the files off my laptop before completing the transfer from the USB drive to my desktop, and the USB drive is toasted. It won't read when plugged in to any computer...arrrrrgh. 3 GB of those photos are of our future 5th partner in the practice graduating earlier in the month...double AAARGGGGhHHH. Now I'll need to spend $1000 or more to get the data back.
:-(

[Lionheart]

Unfortunately we've been down this road before with mechanical failures on drives. Extracting data from a fried hard drive takes a long time.The last time this happened it was a 160 GB drive, took 2 months with the drive running 24 hours a day before they extracted the data off the drive, then they had to piece them back together on a new drive. according to the company we sent to, it takes just as much time to extract 1 gb as it does 160, because the entire drive needs to be combed. The faster we want the data back, the more it costs. We went with the slow option, and it cost about $1400. Oh well...a lot of those photos were baptisms at church, and now the pastor wants photos to bring with him to a conference and i don't have them.:-( Fortunately, the practice related photos are always backed up in three places on our network, so the ones I had on my laptop were dispensable.
Leon

[Liz]

Leon,
I don't want to be redundant on this issue, but what about getting the images from the card(s). I'll give you this link before I give up (in which you posted previously). I think there is some reference to hard drives.

What if you lost your digital images?

Wow! What an incredible loss........or rather an expensive one.

Liz

Unfortunately we've been down this road before with mechanical failures on drives. Extracting data from a fried hard drive takes a long time.The last time this happened it was a 160 GB drive, took 2 months with the drive running 24 hours a day before they extracted the data off the drive, then they had to piece them back together on a new drive. according to the company we sent to, it takes just as much time to extract 1 gb as it does 160, because the entire drive needs to be combed. The faster we want the data back, the more it costs. We went with the slow option, and it cost about $1400. Oh well...a lot of those photos were baptisms at church, and now the pastor wants photos to bring with him to a conference and i don't have them.:-( Fortunately, the practice related photos are always backed up in three places on our network, so the ones I had on my laptop were dispensable.
Leon