Solved External hard drive help

[rettionplo]

I am confused about my external hard drive.

When I first got my computer it was suggested that I get an external hard drive, which I did. I was meant to believe that if I deleted a picture, I would still have a copy of the picture on my external hard drive. Well, I would delete pictures, but I didn't worry, since I knew that a copy of the picture was on my external hard drive.

Well, after many years, and deletion of pictures, I am being told if I delete a picture, it is also deleted from the external hard drive.

Yikes! Would someone please let me know what is correct.

I appreciate the help. Thank you.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Carol if you have a copy on the external unless you specifically delete anything form it it will saty there.

Also a good thing to do is this http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html it is good for making a complete system image and you can make the images on a regular or ad hoc basis.
From these you can reinstall all your gear

 

[rettionplo]

External Hard drive question continued

Thank you for your fast reply. I have been told numerous times to keep my external hard drive plugged into the computer at all times.

Say for example I have a picture that is on my hard drive and my external hard drive. The external hard drive is plugged in. My number of the picture is scan0001. Say I delete picture scan0001 which is in my photo gallery, is picture scan0001 which is on the external hard drive also deleted.

I am sorry that I have to extend the question that I asked previously. I don't understand why people tell me to keep the external hard drive plugged in if there is a picture I might lose.

I thank you for your help.

 

[Ranger4]

Carole. If you save a picture to your main computer operating system, which is Windows 7, it would be saved to a folder that you would normally nominate. If you have actually put a copy of that picture on your external drive, then it will remain there even if you delete that picture from your main drive.

No copy of that picture would be saved to your external drive, unless you actually do so. If you wish to have a back up copy of that picture, on the external drive, you would have to save it there. Normally you would save pictures to your main drive & then copy & paste them across to your external drive. If you have not been doing that then there will not be a copy on the external drive.

As ICIT2LOL has suggested you should have a look at Macrium Reflect for doing images of your main system drive. Doing a regular image protects your data & pictures etc., from being lost in the event of a major hardware failure. If you do an image say once a week, then a major failure will at worst only be a week out of date.

If you decide to use Macrium, we can assist you in getting that set up.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Carol it really does no harm to keep the drive plugged in all the time - the only thing is if the machine suffered a catastrophic hit from a surge or suchlike then it is possible for the damage to extend to the drive. Now that is highly unlikely but possible.

Now it is not essential to keep the drive plugged in at all times I don't know who is telling you that unless you are using the drive as a back up ie that imaging stuff I told you about it will not do any harm to disconnect it. You can also have as many drives as you like hooked up. It is really common sense and your choice to.

Now the pics no unless you go directly to where that pic is stored ie the internal or external drive and delete it then it will stay on the internal or external drive ir totally depends on which drive you pick to work on. So for example if you didn't want the pic on that external drive you have to go to Start > Computer > then pick the external drive - open it - find the pic and then delete it.

There are instances for example if one has more than one drive on a computer and if you were to want to clean the drive then you may pick the wrong drive and then you would lose the data (pics, docs etc)

Don't worry about asking questions the only silly question is the one you do not ask

 

[TechnoMage2016]

We've all heard the old adage that "there is an exception to (almost) every rule."
One exception to much of what I've read here is a program that "Sync's" an external drive with the main drive, so they both have identical files. So if you change or delete a file on the main drive, that is reflected on the external drive. However that could wind up being a recipe for disaster, that's why I've never used such a program.

I believe 110% in doing both data and entire C: drive backups at least weekly, to an external hard drive, and NOT to a cloud. If something bad can happen to a computer, eventually it will, somewhere, some day to someones computer.
I've been in the computer and electronics repair business since 1964, and I've seen some disastrous damage to electronics by lightning.... even to devices that were not even plugged in at the time. I saw one case, where lightning jumped three feet across a kitchen counter and blew up a radio, before it jumped on to the kitchen sink faucet. The radio was not even plugged in.

I strongly agree, with the statement that if a computer is damaged by a surge or a voltage spike everything that's connected to that computer can be damaged as well. I had a very weird thing happen to me once, where my PC Power Supply went berserk and put out high voltage on both the 5v and 12v lines.
Almost everything in that computer was "Roached" (burned up)

So in short, I'm very much in favor of only connecting external storage devices when they are needed to make backups, and then for safely, disconnect them. That's only a suggestion, but one that's based on many years of experience. I feel that I'd be remiss if I did not pass that advise along. I'd rather be SAFE than SORRY.

Cheers Mates!
TechnoMage

 

[RolandJS]

Are you using one of those constant backup via sync programs? I'm wanting to understand what is happening to both internal and external HDs.

 

[AddRAM]

Whoever told you that is wrong.

Copy, Paste, Verify............ Copy, Paste, Verify

And I totally agree with TechnoMage 100% only hookup the external when you need to use it.

 

[RolandJS]

...Copy, Paste, Verify............ Copy, Paste, Verify
And I totally agree with TechnoMage 100% only hookup the external when you need to use it.

+1 to both AddRAM and TechnoMage; I too trust copy and verify from time to time; and my ext HDs are only connected during backup/restore operations.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Pretty well reflecting what I said Carol I missed that you may be using some sort of sync software and really you only need to do what AddRam and the others and myself have said just use a normal backup system and the Macrium I ref'd before is as good as any and it will image the whole system not just pics.

 

[rettionplo]

External hard drive

I thank everyone who has helped me with my external drive questions. I have decided to go to windows seven forum whenever I have a question about what to do and what not to do. I have lost so many pictures because of what I have done. Thanks once again to all of you.

 

[mitchell65]

Just to add my twopennyworth. If you delete a file from your main hard drive it will go into your recycle bin and from there you can restore it with just one click!

 

[ICIT2LOL]

I thank everyone who has helped me with my external drive questions. I have decided to go to windows seven forum whenever I have a question about what to do and what not to do. I have lost so many pictures because of what I have done. Thanks once again to all of you.

Just a thought too Carol what I do from time to time is to put my pics on sticks - I find that useful when I have to do installs of whatever OS one is doing. It is just a matter of copy paste Pictures to the new install Pictures. Plus the sticks are so transportable and high capacity sticks are not that expensive these days

 

[RolandJS]

Carol, I really hope there is a way to undelete or recover deleted files from that external hard-drive! Have you tried Piriform's Recuva, PhotoRec, or anything else? As long as the ext HD has not been vastly over-written, there might be some hope.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hmm Roland beat me to it with the recovery stuff I find Recuva good to use but never have had to use it that much. Some others that might help Best Free Data Recovery and File Un-delete Utility | Gizmo's Freeware
Now I would be surprised if the data recovery stuff cannot pick up something because I regularly check for duplicate files and weed them out to give me more disk space so they should be there wheresoever.

One last mention I used (and still would) to use this a lot to recover data from a drive
BOOTABLE UBUNTU
Make a bootable Ubuntu disk Download Ubuntu Desktop | Download | Ubuntu
Set the BIOS to boot from the optical when the machine boots it will show you a screen with TRY or INSTALL > select TRY not INSTALL
When it is finished - it takes very little time you will get a screen like in the pic .
Open the drive you want > User and dig down until you get to the data / settings you may be able to copy / paste the material you want to an external source or other installed drive doing this.
I am not sure if it will but I have recovered tons of data etc using this method both on "dead" or just plain drives that you cannot get data from using Windows.

There are other Linux based boots that will do the same thing but I find this quick and easy. Just remember this runs in a Linux based system and does not involve Windows which is good because there is no interference from Windows stuff.

 

[Ranger4]

It might be worth Carole trying some of the data recovery methods, but I think the real problem was that Carole thought when she saved a picture to her HDD a copy was automatically saved to her external drive as well, which seems that did not happen.

So trying to recover data that is not there at all, will likely prove fruitless.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

when she saved a picture to her HDD a copy was automatically saved to her external drive as well, which seems that did not happen. So trying to recover data that is not there at all, will likely prove fruitless.

Good point Ranger

 

[RolandJS]

It might be worth Carole trying some of the data recovery methods, but I think the real problem was that Carole thought when she saved a picture to her HDD a copy was automatically saved to her external drive as well, which seems that did not happen. So trying to recover data that is not there at all, will likely prove fruitless.

+1; I was just hoping that somehow sometime something would copy stuff from internal to external -- as you said, if that did not happen, there is nothing to recover.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Yep I suppose although running say Recuva https://www.piriform.com/recuva is not going to cost anything or take long I shouldn't thin. If there is nothing there then nothing lost - so to speak.