photolandscape Posted April 15, 2007 Share #1 Â Posted April 15, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) I was doing some way overdue file maintenance today. I was moving large files--from a few MB to as much as 125GB--of my digital photo files. My goal was to get them organized on one single hard drive--an external Seagate 400GB. Â Everything was going well, but toward the end I was getting impatient and dragged 2-3 very large files over to the Seagate hd 400 icon. They started copying just fine. But the Seagate apparently was close to being full, and I got a message as each of the large files was transferring saying that the Seagate was full and the rest of the files couldn't be copied. OK, no problem there. Â Now, where I click on and try to open the Seagate, one of two things happens--1) the drive opens and I can see a list of the files on it, but the screen goes gray and I get this message "You need to restart your computer." 2) the drive opens but the list of files is totally gone. At the bottom of the window it tell me there are no files, but only 798MB of room left on the Seagate hard drive. I have tried this repeatedly and these are the 2 and only results I get. Â Bottom line, nearly all of my digital photo data resides on the Seagate. I have maybe 20% of my photo files backed up on DVD's. But that is it. As I moved files into the Seagate external hd today and carefully checked to be sure they were there, I dragged the old ones into the trash and emptied the trash periodically. Â Beyond that, I am speechless and nauseous. Hopefully there is something I can do to recover most of my work. I had just ordered a Maxtor 1TB (2x500GB) drive so that I could copy my files over to it, and mirror them on the two drives, but of course it isn't here yet. I've gotten a lot of great ideas and help here, and I am hoping my luck will continue in this instance. Any suggestions greatly appreciated. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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photolandscape Posted April 15, 2007 Author Share #2 Â Posted April 15, 2007 Two other facts to add--I am using a Mac G5 tower, running OS X.4.9. The other hard drives (2 external, 2 internal) are functioning just fine. I get the same problems with the Seagate when I plug it into my G4 Powerbook laptop. So, that seems to direct the focus entirely on the Seagate 400 hd. Thanks. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveEP Posted April 15, 2007 Share #3 Â Posted April 15, 2007 OK - you have a problem..... always bad news. Â In Applications / Utilities you will find a Disk Utilitiy that can often repair a problematic hard disk. This would be something to try ....have it verify the volume first before you try to repair it. Â BTW - try to be patient with it - this 'can' take some time..... Â If you are worried about -repairing it- you may want to wait until your larger HDDs arrive, then have this utility create a backup image of the damaged drive to the larger HDDs so that you can always restore it and have another go later.... Â Good luck! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Photoskeptic Posted April 16, 2007 Share #4 Â Posted April 16, 2007 Don't panic. I had a similar problem with mine. Keep searching the files on the hard drive. Mine eventually turned up in a different folder on the Seagate. Strange, I know, but look somewhere not so obvious. Good luck. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gerasdoc Posted April 16, 2007 Share #5 Â Posted April 16, 2007 The worst thing that you would have to deal with is paying a service to extract the files from the discs. That would take some time and money. Usually, when a hard disc "crashes" the file structure is lost and the OS has no way to locate what you are looking for. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
losta Posted April 16, 2007 Share #6 Â Posted April 16, 2007 If there is only 768MB of space you probably don't have room for the directory to be written. You need to either make some space though that is risky. I would try to clone the drive onto a bigger drive and then try something like disk warrior, drive genius or data rescue II on the bigger drive. If worse comes to worse I'm sure a company like drivesavers can find all your files though it will cost you. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
papimuzo Posted April 16, 2007 Share #7 Â Posted April 16, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) After imaging on a larger HD, may I suggest this: Home of Gibson Research Corporation Hope this helps. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wattsy Posted April 16, 2007 Share #8 Â Posted April 16, 2007 Data Rescue is your friend in these kind of situations (thankfully rare in my experience). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hans Roggen Posted April 16, 2007 Share #9  Posted April 16, 2007 Whatever you do...don't go the Norton Utilities road...that's a program known for making things worse since the move to OSX. I can tell by experience after one of my HD's failed and i lost a years worth of commercial pictures. Norton only messed up my disk further so that nothing could be recovered even by a professional recovery company. So i know how you feel mate. I couldn't sleep for days after it happened.  Disk Warrior is know to revive disk whose directories have gone bad. It doesn't really alter your data on the disk. It just creates a new directory that you can testdrive before actually changing anything. It's a save route to try.  Have you tried the disk on another computer? And like Dave said: be patient...it can take a long while for recovery programs to do their work.  Good luck  Hans Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Bernd Banken Posted April 16, 2007 Share #10 Â Posted April 16, 2007 Disc Warrior would be the first and unexpensive choice to get back the directories. My son had this problem lat year on a Power Mac G4, running OSX10.xx. It worked fine as we both are no wizards..... Â Bernd Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
larry Posted April 16, 2007 Share #11 Â Posted April 16, 2007 Steve, Â If you haven't already done so, do a search with Spotlight (upper right hand corner on the toolbar). Good luck! Â Larry Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
kobold Posted April 16, 2007 Share #12  Posted April 16, 2007 1. Repair Disk Permissions (the Disk Utility [utilities] first. See what that produces.  2. If DPs can be repaired, then run DiskWarrier. This will take a while.  I am not sure if you can clone IF the OS cannot 'see' the drive.  hth. For the future, never fill drives. HDs are less than $1/G now, so cheaper—much cheaper—to have many HDs. I have 2TB on the desktop.  Good luck Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
photolandscape Posted April 16, 2007 Author Share #13 Â Posted April 16, 2007 Thanks one and all for the great advice on what to try, and just as important, what not to do. DiskWarrior sounds like the best initial solution. I tried downloading it yesterday, but can't get it to load on my G5, so am waiting for a tech support call as we speak from Alsoft. It's Monday a.m. here, so they seem to be helping others with similar problems from this past weekend. Â More to come. I am strangely optimistic that I will be able to recover my files, but we'll see. Â Thanks, Steve Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RSL Posted April 16, 2007 Share #14 Â Posted April 16, 2007 I was doing some way overdue file maintenance today. I was moving large files--from a few MB to as much as 125GB--of my digital photo files. My goal was to get them organized on one single hard drive--an external Seagate 400GB. Â Everything was going well, but toward the end I was getting impatient and dragged 2-3 very large files over to the Seagate hd 400 icon. They started copying just fine. But the Seagate apparently was close to being full, and I got a message as each of the large files was transferring saying that the Seagate was full and the rest of the files couldn't be copied. OK, no problem there. Â Now, where I click on and try to open the Seagate, one of two things happens--1) the drive opens and I can see a list of the files on it, but the screen goes gray and I get this message "You need to restart your computer." 2) the drive opens but the list of files is totally gone. At the bottom of the window it tell me there are no files, but only 798MB of room left on the Seagate hard drive. I have tried this repeatedly and these are the 2 and only results I get. Â Bottom line, nearly all of my digital photo data resides on the Seagate. I have maybe 20% of my photo files backed up on DVD's. But that is it. As I moved files into the Seagate external hd today and carefully checked to be sure they were there, I dragged the old ones into the trash and emptied the trash periodically. Â Beyond that, I am speechless and nauseous. Hopefully there is something I can do to recover most of my work. I had just ordered a Maxtor 1TB (2x500GB) drive so that I could copy my files over to it, and mirror them on the two drives, but of course it isn't here yet. I've gotten a lot of great ideas and help here, and I am hoping my luck will continue in this instance. Any suggestions greatly appreciated. Â Steve, You're getting a lot of good advice about how to recover what you've lost, so I won't add to that, but here's some advice about how to avoid the problem in the first place: (1) Never "move" files you can't afford to lose. Copy the files and if the copy is successful, then delete the originals. I know, that's an extra step, but well worth the trouble. (2) Never, never depend on magnetic storage devices for the long haul. Mirroring drives is a great idea, but you also want to make at least two copies of everything on DVDs. Yes, DVDs can fail too, but if you have copies on your mirrored hard drives and have at least one set of everything on DVSs stored off site, you're probably home free. I've been a software developer for about 30 years and I've found that people never take the trouble to do these things until after they've had at least one serious crash. Now you know. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
losta Posted April 16, 2007 Share #15 Â Posted April 16, 2007 This won't help your problem now but hopefully it will prevent it from happpening to someone else here. Be safe, hard drives are cheap, your photos aren't! Â -never have just one copy of your important photo files. -immediatley when copying from flash memory back up to at least 1 seperate drive or other media -don't delete anything until you are certain you have another (or 2 other copies) -try to have an off site backup -try to keep at least 10% or more free on your hard drives -migrate your files to new media every 2-4 years Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
photolandscape Posted April 19, 2007 Author Share #16 Â Posted April 19, 2007 A Follow-Up to My Original Post-- Â Yesterday, my DiskWarrior4 cd arrived. I plugged it in, let it go about its business, and within 2-3 hours it had readmitted me to my previously inoperable hard drive. It appears that it was a file directory issue, and DiskWarrior4 repaired it. There are lots of file that were saved and move to a new folder. I am not sure why some of them ended up there, but with a few hours of careful rearrranging, I should be able to put things back in order and be happy and content once again. Â Thanks to everyone for your good advice and support. It certainly is nice to know that there are people out there who try to help others work through these sorts of calamities. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
losta Posted April 19, 2007 Share #17 Â Posted April 19, 2007 I'm happy to hear that with the help of DiskWarrior you were able to find all your files. Congratulations! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RSL Posted April 19, 2007 Share #18 Â Posted April 19, 2007 That's really good news. Now that you have 'em back, secure 'em. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
marknorton Posted April 19, 2007 Share #19 Â Posted April 19, 2007 Yes, the key to sleeping easy at night is to backup your changed files every night. Checkout a NAS box with integrated RAID 5. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
yoMammabot Posted April 19, 2007 Share #20 Â Posted April 19, 2007 Disc Warrior has really saved my bacon twice this year.. its simple and seems to do the trick. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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