I don't usually post to the gallery as a norm, maybe commenting here and there at the most.  I just thought I would share an unexpected disaster that has happened to me and I thought maybe others might benefit from my mistake.

I'm also not trying to solicit any sympathy here, as it was totally my fault....I just hope that others may benefit when the time comes.

On Sun. I spent most of the day transferring all my images from 2006 from my hard drive to my external drive...approximately 42 gigs of images.  During the process I was also deleting the images from my hard drive to the trash.  After many tiring hours of transferring and deleting I realized too late that I had dumped everything I shot in 2006 into the trash and deleted it....gone, gone , gone!!

It seems during the process of transferring and deleting I lost focus on what was going on and was impatient to finish the project.  Thus a moment of inattention and all was lost.....

I guess I just wanted to tell my horror story because sooner or later we will all have to back up our images......BE CAREFUL!!  Normally I would back all these images on CD's before attempting to transfer images.  This time I did things out of sequence and have paid the price.  The only shots I have are loaded in my gallery.....thank goodness at least I have some low rez. pic's that 2006 existed for me in images.

I've learned my lesson, I hope you all never have to go through this.....on the bright side it's a new year and I can shoot everything over again....so get ready to suffer!!

Mahalo's for listening to my rant...Aloha!
Dave~

Oh noooooo??????  Say it ain't true?????  Sorry to hear that my friend.......  Aloha

:crying: OMG that's as bad as bad gets!!! I really need to back up all that I've got here cause well yeah there isn't any back up as of yet. Sorry to hear this buddy. Ahhhh what can I say hope you have fun re-shooting it all? :unsure:

Oh noooo...all those beautifull and interesting shots gone! I am sorry to hear this and thanks for pointing it out it could be a disaster handling our precious photos.  I wish you great courage to re-shoot them again.

seeya   Tunde

When I transfer to an exteranl drive I always finish the transfers,then check that everything is on the exteranl drive and the delete from the hard drive.
We all get tired and ratty on these long boring tasks,some advice is if you have been at a task a long time and getting tired - leave it - there is always another day.
Sorry to hear of your horrors but these events sometimes make the rest of us use the grey matter and think about what we are doing.
Sooooooooooooooo sooooooooooorrrrrrrrrryyy to hear of your disaster we all know how you must be feeling.

That's a bad loss..! Sorry to hear that... To add some further warning to this story: I backed up to an external hard drive, but so far I have kept the original files on my Mac's hard disk... last week, my external hard disk with the backups just died..! So even if you do backup, be aware that it still can go wrong...

All may not be lost my friend as the images may well be able to be recovered drop me a line I will try to help you..

Restore deleted files that are no longer in the Recycle Bin! When a file is deleted from your computer, its contents aren’t immediately destroyed. Its hard drive space is made available for use, but until that space is overwritten, your old data is usually intact. 

Try and not delete or install anything on your Hard drive 

**danob is right, all may not be lost!  I would also mention, try to avoid downloading  files until you have recovered your lost image files.  Two years ago my laptop crashed, making the the contents of my hard drive (including all my photos and graphics) inaccessible.  The Geek Squad was able to recover to CD-R nearly 100% of my image files intact.  There is special utility software to allow recovery of deleted files, so long as those physical areas of your hard disk have not been overwritten in the meanwhile.

Best of Luck!**

Attached Link: Recovery

:ohmy: There is still hope Dave. I hope that you can recover some or all of your work. MAN, that sucks!

lol hope you can get the photos you did back

Sorry Dave but i am sure that Danny can help. Good to know their are programmes around to recover lost images. Even though it was a disaster Dave at least i know now that we can recovery our images. All the best finding yours.
Chris

Thank you everyone for your input...I can feel the love!!  Just hope that the lesson learned here will help others when the time comes....Mahalo to everyone for your sympathies and good wishes.....here's hoping for the best! 

Aloha,
Dave~

Sorry to read of you error and glad you may salvage something. I am only just starting to shoot digital and already i am surprised how quickly i fill up Cds when i did my first back up last week.

Its a habit I must get used to,especially after reading this.

Backups from HDD to external HDD are OK --  that is to say better than nothing. 

OTOH, backups from HDD to CD or DVD have the advantage that none of the
files can be deleted. 

IMO, the best would be to backup from HDD to CD (or DVD) and then make a
second CD (or DVD).  It doesn't hurt to use the DOS command "FC" (that
stands for File Compare) to be sure that the backup is readable on both
CD copies. 

... of course, you'll store those 2 copies at 2 different locations ... riiiiiight???

Does anybody want to know where I get inexpensive blank media?

--
MGD

I had a cd go bad before. Just one lol .  and my brother told me they good for five years so if you got some old ones you may wish to copy them.

Ooh - that sucks!
Had a hard drive full of commercial images die on me - cost just short of $900 to get the files back!

Yeah, the folks above are right - they may yet be recoverable (is that a word?)!
Good luck - sorry Dave!
-Lew

@ MGD....Normally this is my preferred method of saving images, right to CD or DVD.....this is the first time I tried to back it up on an external drive to work on images later.  My computer was running very slow so I thought I would free up some space before burning them....Probably won't go that route again....Thanks all for you input, still trying to get them back, haven't thrown in the towel yet!!

Dave~

I really hope you can recover all or at least some of the images. The only ones I have lost in the past have come from my  personal mistakes...then I knock my self on the noggin but it doesn't help.

I use both external HD and CD for backups.  Now I have lots of CD's getting older and think those should be copied...from before the external HD added backup.

Thank you very much for the info. I appreciate your story to remind me to back up my images. My computer got so sluggish from the RAW images that it wouldn't reboot. We had to do a last resort retrieval from one computer to a new laptop via a cable. It worked but I know there could be a next time. We learn from our mistakes AND each others. Thanks again. Jodie

@ odie**

**When you wrote, "We learn from our mistakes AND each others"

I was reminded of another version of that idea,

     "Learn from other people's mistakes ...
      you don't have enough time to make all of them yourself."

--
MGD

You might try a program called "PC Inspector smart recovery"  I've had to use it once and it worked fine for me.  I think it is freeware with a request for donations if I remember right.  Probablly a valuble program for all us photographers to have handy at one time or another. 

Thanks Jadench I will give it look.....Aloha~

Yes Dave, let us know how the recovery effort goes. We're pulling for you!

Well for all of you wondering how the recovery went.....it was so, so.....I did recover some files and others were either corrupted or truncated.....All in all, I guess it was better than not trying at all. Thanks to Dan, I used a program he recommended which did a great job, but  I guess I got what I could out of it.  I thank each and everyone of you for your concern and hope that when it comes time for you all to save your images you are more careful than I was, or you could end up losing a whole years worth of images....I have really learned my lesson the hard way!

Aloha to All~
Dave~