Amazing news: I have my data back. Everything! What a great relief!

I spent the last weeks searching for the same hard disk that died in my desktop computer in order to try to swap the electronics from a working disk to my broken disk. The same meant not only the same brand and model (Samsung SP2504c), but also the same manufacturing date and same PCB (printed circuit board) version. Finally, I found an exact match. Actually, I bought another hard disk from a slightly different manufacturing date to perform some first tests. Today, the package arrived.

The first test run was not too promising: I swapped the electronics of the newly acquired disks to see if in general the transplantation could work. It didn’t. The one disk was four months older than the other. It did run up, but didnt show any data. When I swapped the PCB back, I saw that the operation hadn’t harmed the disk. So I took the risk to swap the PCB into my broken disk. It started (long moment of silence) and then all the partitions showed up in my system. Connected the external backup drive and started the backup – you cannot believe how happy I am right now.

The operation cost me about 40 bucks instead of 1500 for data recovery – thanks, ebay. And, yeah, Lord of the hard disks: I got the message. I’ll backup every week from now on. Promise.

Wonderful news: My hard disk died. Most recent backup: 3 months old. Why did it die? Ironically, I bought a new disk to be on the safe side, put it in my pc, connect all the cables – Computer runs up, crashes – old hard disk is dead. Of course, there is officially no connection between putting in a new hard disk and the death of the other, but it seems like a strange coincidence. I could beat myself up for not backing up more frequently, but there are always other things that seem more important at the time.

So it’s basically my world cup series (the hi res) and some other projects that I’ve been working on that’s lost, maybe a total of 30 GB, I’ll have to see whether I can afford data recovery.

Anyways, I’ll snap some mo’ world cup pictures tonight, I’m just not sure where I will do the post (laptop screen is really not made for that).

Update Feb 17: Hooray! New header design! New colors! What do you think?

Those of you who encountered weird behaviour on my blog today might have guessed: I am testing some new features. So far, the menu has changed into this jQuery dropdown menu – but there is more on the way.

Hey folks,

as you can see, my camera’s still in a thousand pieces. The new shutter I ordered 4 weeks ago still isn’t here, which is frustrating!

Since I can’t wait to finally continue my new series I spoke of in the previous posts, I’m just going to have to borrow a friend’s camera for my big shooting event that will take place in two weeks. I’m excited.

Another teaser for the neon series I’m working on.. almost surreal, isn’t it? I tweaked my post production process a little to enhance the intensity and I am quite happy with the results. Also, I like the crispness my 50mm lens produces at f/2.2.