EMERGENCY - Also posted in Recovery

[bslanger]

Hello, and I guess emergency is the only way to put this....an entire wedding, over 1,200 files are simply GONE.
Needless to say, the bride will NOT BE HAPPY if I can't figure this out.  HELP IS WELCOME.

Here is the scenario, and I'll try to be clear.  I try to follow Peter's protocol as close as possible, as an overview.
I am working on a Mac Pro, running Leopard, 7 gigs of RAM, and two eSata external Burley cases, and four internal
drives on the Mac Pro. 

Friday night, I photographed a wedding.  I used Image Ingester Pro to load 5 Sandisk 4 and 8 gig cards.  I created a meta data temple
in Bridge, and have a record in the Bridge listing that I did indeed create a template, so that's one indicator I actually
loaded the files. I went to look in my 01_Rename and Metadata folder on my first Working Folder drive to look for the folder.. and.... did not see any folder.
I checked the backup drive that I use on Image Ingester, and did not see the folder.  I used Spotlight to search by the first 6 characters of
the wedding date: 080502....nothing.  I put in the Bride's last name: Brown, nothing.

I then panicked that perhaps I did not remember to load the cards onto the computer after the wedding.  I then checked Image Ingester logs,
and it showed that I did 'successfully' load the 5 cards.  So then I felt a bit better, that the files must be there somewhere. 

Peter suggested running Repair Permissions, which I did.  I restarted.  I used Disk Warrior 4.1 (Leopard compatible), and restarted....nothing.
Nothing...

The worst case scenario I can imagine as the only possible way this happened is that perhaps the files were somehow loaded into another folder,
and that that folder got trashed.  I did photograph two weddings on Saturday, and then two portraits on Sunday (insane, I know), so I have
re-formatted and written over the cards at least once.  I called Drive Savers, and if I wrote over the cards completely, there is nothing that they can do.
Another thought is that I use Chrono Sync to run auto back ups from my Working Folder to the 2nd internal drive.  If somehow the folder was
erased, and then Chronosync would have followed suite and eliminated it as well.

I hope this has been clear....
I used Image Ingester, loaded the cards onto one internal drive, and then a second internal drive that is the back up for the Image Ingester Pro ingestion process.
I then re-used the same cards for other jobs.  Today, Tuesday, I went to look for Friday's wedding folder, and could not find it.  I could not find it on
either the main drive, the back up drive, or the back up to the Burly drive.  I used Spotlight to search for the name, and for the date, and nothing.
I repaired permissions, restarted, and ran Disk Warrior 4.1.  Nothing. All I have as evidence is the Bridge Metadata template I created, as well
as the Image Ingester record, showing the successful ingestion of the five cards.

This could be a true disaster if I cannot find the files. 
Any help will be MOST appreciated.

Not to be redundant, but I will also post this is the Image Ingester forum.
I have not YET started to panic.


Sincerely,
Brian Slanger

[Marc Rochkind]

Brian--

Is there an external IIP log (Tools-Show Log)? (Might be View Log.)

It's hard to believe that both the primary and backup folders would be dragged to the trash, but you might check the trash anyway.

Can you email me any logs you have? I'll take a look at them this morning.

--Marc

[SteveM]

You mentioned that you created a meta data template in Bridge. Did you open any of the images in Bridge or Photoshop?

If you did you could try using the File > Open Recent command to see if any of the images are listed. Of course this will only work if you opened one or more of the images (and didn't open too many other images). But if an image for the shoot is listed you can attempt to open that image. If it opens then that image, and presumably the others, are still available. You can then use the Save As command to see when they are currently stored on your system.

HtH,

SteveM

[SteveM]

Another thought ...

Do you use the same destination for all ingestions? Or do you, like me, create a new folder for each ingestion?

I have found that I occasionally forget to change the destination folder. In this case the images are ingested to the last folder I used prior to this ingestion. That is, the ingested pictures are in the wrong folder.

For example, my last trip was to Canyon De Chelly and Monument Valley, and I created destination folders for each location. But when I ingested my first set of Monument Valley images, I did not change the destination folder, and they were ingested to my Canyon De Chelly folder.

If you also change your naming scheme each time, and forgot to change it for this ingestion, then it may be that the images are in the folder for a prior shoot with names  based on the naming pattern for that shoot.

SteveM

[SteveM]

You've probably already thought of this, but have you tried running image recovery software on the drive you suspect the images were ingested to?

Note that for a large drive it may take quite some time to run.

SteveM

[bslanger]

Hi Steve,
thanks for the input.
I thought of looking for the files under the last Ingest, and nothing there.
I see that I made a Bridge Metadata Template for the wedding, so that's another
step to prove to myself that I really put the files on the computer, besides the
Image Ingester record.

Here's what I have done so far:
+Repaired permissions on all drives
+Ran Disk Warrior
+Restarted
+Dropped each drive on an new Iview Catalog, to visually see what files I have on each drive
+Ran the Intego Virus Scan on the whole computer
+Manually search some folders where the 'could' have gone
+Ran Photo Rescue on one of the two drives where they were supposed to go.
  - I will run Photo Rescue on the other drives
+Done an advanced search in Finder by date ranges
+Ran Photo Rescue on all the cards

I can still call/consult a disk recovery outfit, and see how many ten's of thousands of dollars it would be for them
to check out the drives.

Here's what I have added for FUTURE redundancy:
+Bought an Epson P5000 80 gig portable drive, to back up on the spot
+Added 5 new 8 gig to my existing card base, so I can shoot forever before having to re-use cards
+Bought new Gepe hard plastic flash card holders in different colors, so I can keep the cards
  separate, and coded by color
+Started using two Seagate portable USB powered drives to hook to the Epson P5000, so that I have
  three backups plus the cards, before the cards even hit my workstation
+Bought a 1 TB Seagate external drive, to use another Working folder back up location, that will NOT be tied
 to the regular back up system that is handled by Chronosync.
+Enabled the 'log' setting of Image Ingester

When I have time, I will re-think and further re-fine all this.
Right now though, it's just not looking good for finding these wedding files.
And, the worst part, other than just having ZERO trace of them, is that I don't really know
what happened.   

The files either were on the drive, and somehow got trashed, and deleted, and then ChronoSync
backed up my error (I have have the 1 TB Seagate that will not be tied to the ChronSycn), or
they straight out just vanished, or, someone via the net came and wiped them out, or the Mac
has some new strange horror event where it loses images, or Image Ingester did not actually
put the files on the computer, or my bad attitude of doing too many weddings cast a spell
on the files so I would be taught a lesson, or....or...or......