Retrieve wedding photo and video data from computer

Data Loss isn’t a concern until someone experiences it themselves. Imagine losing all your wedding photos and videos due to hard drive failure. It is more common than you think and can cause a lot of grief, disappointment, and sense of loss.

However, not all hard drive failures mean that your data is lost forever. Depending on how your data was stored, the lost media can be retrieved and restored! Some of the methods for retrieving lost data may require some intimate knowledge of hardware and technology.

Step 1:

Identify if it actually is your hard drive that failed and not something else. Sometimes your computer’s operating system may get corrupted and cause the infamous blue screen of death. However, that doesn’t your data is loss!

Follow some YouTube video guides on how to disassemble your computer and extract your hard drive.

Afterwards, use this USB to SATA connector to plug in your hard drive to another computer.

If your hard drive is from a Mac then plug it in to another Mac computer. Afterwards, use the file explorer to access the hard drive and see if all your data is there. If you are missing any data or get an error when trying to access the hard drive then it might have been corrupted.

Step 2:

If step 1 failed to retrieve your important data then try the following:  

• Use Google to look up hard drive restoring software. Make sure the software supports the operating system your hard drive was extracted from. For example, a software for Mac OS won’t be the same for Windows.
• We recommend you try this software for Windows: PhotoRec
• We Recommend you try this software for Apple’s Mac OS: Disc Drill
• Pro Tip: You might not need to pay for the software, just register and use it as a free trail.

If the software fails to fix your computer and retrieve your data then move on to the next step.

Step 3:

Ask for professional help at a local computer shop. A lot of the computer shops in your local neighborhood should offer data retrieval services. These computer shops usually use commercial grade software and employee professionals.

Before you commit to paying anything, be sure to have them check the hard drive. They can tell you if the data is retrievable or not.

Furthermore, if they confirm the data is retrievable then be sure to get multiple quotes. Data retrievable services are not cheap.

In order to avoid problems like this in the future, we recommend backing your data to a NAS or cloud storage!