So... a freelancer erased one of my hard drives.

[googacky]

So here's what happened:

Sassinsky said no dice at the $500 level, but that they could get the data back for $2500 in a labor intensive process. At that price point it's cheaper to retrack, so...

I sent the drive to Gillware since they came recommended and it's no charge to check out the drive. The guy I talked to there seemed much more realistic about the prospects of getting the data back. He said it would be a tall order. They also could get back nothing more than my $100 program could, so the drive is coming back and the band is retracking. Luckily the bystander freelancer in all this had part of the project on his drive, so the drums, guitars, and vocals are safe. The keys, bass, and some overdubs will need to be redone, and he's waited around for nothing. Poop!

[lharless]

don't make your freelancers feel stupid. go apologize to your guest engineer and buy him a beer immediately. yes, it's his fault that he erased the drive, but it's not his fault that your data is gone. this should have been a simple matter of replacing the data from a backup drive back onto the drive that was erased. why was it not?

my personal beliefs are; any time you fail to place a safety barrier between your gear, your data and failure, you are failing yourself, your gear, your data and you are failing your client?le. one erasure of data from a backup drive should be *expected*, in all cases. there should be a couple more safe drives with the same data distributed to separate safe zones around your world.

you have to plan for the worst and hope for the best.

[googacky]

lharless, none of my data was lost. I know better than to not have a backup. One of the freelance guys involved lost part of his project. I feel bad for him, but ultimately he should have had a backup of his data. I like the maxim that if it's digital and it doesn't exist in more than one place then it doesn't exist. Hard drives are too fickle and human error is too permanent when it comes to things like this.

[ChrisCo]

My only remotely similar experience was when OSX was having a problem if it was shut down or restarted with firewire drives still mounted, and it would corrupt the directory structure so that the next time the drive was actiated it did not appear readable to the system and Finder offered to reformat the drive.
The fix I was able to find was with Alsoft's 'Disk Warrior' which was able to look at the drive, analyze the directory structure and correct the mistakes, and then replace the directory.
But I've never tried it for data recovery when the data was intentionally removed and the directory structure was rewritten to reflect an empty drive. You might check with them to see if they have an alternative product that could do that function, or to see if Disk Warrior could do it. I just checked the program and it doesn't seem to have a recovery selection, but maybe there's something I missed, or something it can do for your situation, or even something in the latest version.

Best of luck to you.

-Jeremy

Thanks for bailing me out yet again. There are a few shareware programs that may help me out with this EXACT problem (whoodathunkit) for Windows (and my brand friggin' new external HDD).

Ugh.

[b3groover]

The best data recovery software I've found for Windows is GetDataBack. That baby has saved my ass numerous times. So far I have not found a harddrive / compact flash / SD card it couldn't read.

[ChrisCo]

Update:

(from the beginning) My external hard drive was not being read by either of my computers because the file structure had been corrupted. Thinking that I may have to take'er back, I frantically searched for the receipt, but to no avail. So after reading this thread, I looked to find some software that would potentially "save" the file structure so that I could at least have access to the hard drive. When this search came up as less than fortunate (I'm not going to spend as much on software as I did on the drive), I went on the Western Digital website to see what kind of service they offered. When I registered the XHDD, the support included the original software that came on the Hard Drive, so I figured I could format it and restore it back to its original shine and luster (figuratively speaking).

So, going through MS DOS, I tried to run Scandisk, but I guess it's got to run it on its own, there's no prompt command for scandisk.exe, but I DID run ChkDsk (trying to remember the days of yore, when you had to know the C:\Folder\filename.exe n' shit) and it said you could fix the file structure if you typed chkdsk /f F: (letter o' my drive)

ANYHOW, "Take home message" is: If your 2nd hard drive has its file structure corrupted, you can go through the "Command Prompt" and use MS DOS to fix it, using the "Check Disk" feature. Just type Chkdsk /f (letter of the drive): and it should work its magic.

[radiationroom]

+1 for backing up....

This is how those freelance guys will learn....

Unfortunately, being under the deadline gun :ar15: producing radio programming for IBS as well as XM, the risks that come from renting gear to freelancers is a luxury that is beyond what I'm willing to take. Be thankful that an erased drive is all you are dealing with. I used to do live sound, and after the experience of having my gear systematically destroyed/stolen over the course of a few months I quickly got out of the business of renting my stuff out. If you want to prevent yourself allot of future grief I suggest that you do the same, even if that means closing your room to freelancers. Sorry for not being able to offer you some encouragement here...

73's - Peter Carli