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Reversing the Negative
Clutching data from the wreckage of a photographer’s digital storage system
December 10, 2007
By Ashley Flynn, Director, Damit Australia
Did you hear the one about the photographer who lost his client’s product shoot? He was held liable for the costs of re-shooting the entire job before the deadline, at a massive cost to his business and time, money and reputation.
Imagine if it had been a wedding! Would the bride, groom and wedding guests come back for a re-shoot at his expense? The fallout from such a loss could end a photographer's career.
Why didn’t he have a backup system? Perhaps he did: but it wasn’t working correctly (many backup systems can give the appearance of working long after they’ve ceased to function). Or perhaps, given the terabytes of data photographers can collect, he was using a high-end RAID array – backing up to another disc in the array, which subsequently defied the odds by failing at exactly the same time as the primary data source.
The latter scenario – a million-to-one event of dual disc failures – was certainly the cause of panic for a well-known Sydney photographer who rang our offices after a hard drive failure meant his system, including archives of the past 20 years’ work valued at over $800,000 – suddenly failed.
The client’s problem – one that’s common to many photographers – was that working all day on downloading, editing and producing digital images caused systems to run hot for extended periods of time. What happens inside their computers is that the hard drives function for as long as they can – and then suddenly fail, with little or no warning.
Desperate to recover his life’s work, the photographer asked us to facilitate his last hope: a data recovery action. Our talks with the various data recovery providers led us rapidly to the conclusion that there is enormous variation in skill levels between different providers in the market – from those with little or no specific knowledge of RAID and other storage systems to those with advanced skills and processes for specialist recovery services.
Should you ever need to call on a data recovery company, it’s far preferable to get it right the first time. The data recovery process is one of breaking down whatever data is retrievable into a giant jigsaw of bits and bytes, and – much like a jigsaw puzzle – piecing it together into a sensible pattern. Poor quality data recovery processes pose the risk of further scrambling the puzzle pieces, increasing the chances that the picture may never be whole again.
The services provider we chose was CBL Data Recovery, the Australian arm of a global company with its own patented processes and experts working on just about every continent. CBL had, among its toolkit, a special RAID recovery process that ultimately saw our photographer’s life work restored to him in less than two weeks.
Given the two terabytes of data involved, our photographer was delighted by the cost – in the region of $5,000 - to restore his digital archives. It goes without saying that he has subsequently established a more robust backup system which is tested regularly.
I would love to be able to say that this project was a one-off. More and more, we are seeing digital professionals fall foul of the technology that was supposed to make our lives easier. In fact, Damit has had several clients suffering lost data in the weeks since our photographer’s nail-biting loss – warranting us setting up close links with CBL to on-sell its expert data recovery services to our customers.
Ultimately, photographers can ill afford the financial and personal embarrassment associated with data loss. Photographers, of all people, need to implement a robust, reliable backup system that is regularly checked to ensure its continued performance. Then, if all else fails, choose wisely among data recovery providers, who might just be your last line of defence against data loss.
Ashley Flynn is Director of Damit, Australia’s expert in digital asset management storage systems and software. Damit provides full support services for photographers and others seeking to create, maintain, update and expand their digital asset libraries. Ashley can be contacted on [+61 2] 6262 6308 or through www.damit.com.au
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