Froknowsphoto Knows Data Loss

Aug., 27 2020 – Jared Polin of Froknowsphoto knows data loss, and now knows DriveSavers

What’s your worst nightmare as a photographer? Mine generally is showing up to a photo shoot, but all I have in my bag is a Pentax. Actually it’s losing all of my photos from a shoot because the card went bad, or even worse, losing my entire catalog and RAID backup because of a RAID failure.

I actually had a card go bad on me while I was in London photographing an artist in a recording studio. I was in the middle of shooting video when an error message popped up on the back of the camera to tell me that something went wrong with my card. I turned the camera off. I turned it back on. I pulled the card. I checked it on my computer. And it wouldn’t even show up there.

Thankfully, I had redundant recording on for stills, being that I had two card slots in that camera. But I didn’t have on redundant recording for video. So all of the video I recorded throughout the day was poof, gone. The first thing I did after regaining my composure was send an email to the card manufacturer who asked me to send the card back to them to see if they could recover it.

After they had it in-house for a few days, they told me it was a complete loss, and there was nothing they could do to recover the video. Thankfully, I didn’t lose any photos. But it’s not like I could go back and recreate videos of this once-in-a-lifetime moment, where I was capturing video of the artist while recording his song. Those moments are gone forever.

Here’s the thing. This video is brought to you by a company called DriveSavers. Now, they’re a data recovery company that I didn’t even know existed when my card went bad, even though they’ve been around since 1985. Honestly, I hope you never need to use them. But if something like this ever happens to you or someone you know, you now know that there’s a company like this that exists.

Here’s what drive savers can do. They can recover data from all types of devices. Basically, if it stores data, they can save it, whether it’s a hard disk drive, SSD, RAID, NAS, phone, tablet, memory card, or even thumb drives, they have the ability to save your data. I wonder if they can recover the data from a five and a quarter inch floppy disk that I found on the street.

It’s also not just normal drive failures that they can help you with. If you dropped your hard drive, your drive isn’t mounting, it was damaged by smoke, fire, or water, the drive is making weird noises, or for some reason has been reformatted, they can help you. DriveSavers has partnered with all the leading storage manufacturers to make sure they have a large inventory with over $1 million worth of parts to ensure fast recovery.

They have clean rooms to allow them to open hard drives safely without fear of losing data that dust may cause or causing any further damage to a damaged drive. It’s actually pretty insane what they are capable of doing to recover your data. In my failed SD cards case, they might have been able to replace a damaged or failed PCB chip in an attempt to recover my data.

They even have the ability to open up your hard disk drive and replace all types of broken or malfunctioning parts to then use specialized recovery tools to recover your data. Here’s how the process would have worked if I knew to send them my corrupt SD card. I would have gotten free shipping, free evaluation, and only paid if they were able to recover my data. If they can’t recover your data, you don’t pay them.

They offer priority service for ASAP recovery, a standard one to two business day service, and economy, which is five to seven business days. If you or someone else needs to use DriveSavers, please be sure to use the code “froknowsphoto” to get 5% off your services. In the meantime, here’s some tips for protecting your data, so you hopefully never need to use DriveSavers.

First, if you have two card slots, use them. Set the camera to redundant recording so you have the same files going to two different cards just in case. That’s what saved my ass when I was in London. Back up all of your files to external devices. Now I say devices, because storing your files on a single external drive is not exactly a backup. Drives are cheap. Recovering your data is expensive.

I have multiple backups on location here at the factory. Next, you can send a backup of all your files to a family or friend’s house. Every month or so or after a major shoot, grab that drive from them and update it before giving it back. Invest in a NAS system. Now, I don’t care what brand you use, as long as you’re using something.

We have redundant Synology service here at the factory along with one more at my house and a copy of everything else in the cloud as well. Even if you’re not a pro photographer, it’s important to back up your photos. You want to save your family’s memories. You want to always have your child’s first steps, your parents’ and grandparents’ lifetime of photos.

Back your stuff up in as many places as possible. Take all the precautions you can so you don’t need to call DriveSavers to save your ass. But if you ever do run into a situation where your card or hard disk drive fails, you now know who you can turn to, DriveSavers.

For more information, head on over to drivesaversdatarecovery.com and remember to use the discount code, “froknowsphoto” to get 5% off. Thank you very much for watching, and be sure to leave us a comment down below if you’ve ever had a card go bad on you or a drive fail.
– Jared Polin, Froknowsphoto.com. See you.