How long would u wait for pics...prob with photographer

I am honestly sorry about your situation with this, I can tell you now if she sends the hd away to a recovery company they can get the photos back, don't know where she got that cost from though because I have seen quoted in the region of £1000-£1400 to recover a hd, never having had to employ a company to do it though so cant confirm it.

This is happening all the time, new photographers just don't have a clue about backing up the wedding photos, myself by the time I leave a wedding I have 3 copies of all the photos which then get copied on to 3 different hd's, one hd gets taken offsite to be copied and backed up for safety reasons, I am paranoid? of losing anything.

Hope you get them back but I would ask her what she is doing to get your wedding photos restored.

Sorry to hear you're having problems with your photographer. That sounds stressful and quite upsetting. I'm guessing that you want the photos most of all so would suggest you don't start pursuing a refund just yet as it may hinder you from obtaining the photos.

Just to clarify, is she suggesting you should pay the recovery costs? She has charged you for a service and has not delivered so you should not be expected to pay anything further. Did you sign a contract?

Either way, I would suggest you send a follow-up message to her email address and set out your expectations and ask for confirmation about when the photos will be with you. Although the situation seems a little odd, I would try to sound sympathetic in your message so that she is more amenable to have a conversation with you about it. If you go in too bullishly, she might just feel try to ignore you rather than get involved in a confrontation.

Good luck!

There are pieces of software out there that can recover data from corrupted hard drives, even if it has been deleted, but whilst they are great, they are not 100% guaranteed (sorry, don't want to make you feel worse). I don't know what the cost would be but I know the actual software is mega expensive.

In truth I can't believe she didn't have a backup of them, very poor planning on her part. All our photos and important stuff are backed up to drop box and an external hard drive. But I'm in IT and have seen how much hassle it it to try and rescue data.

I would message her again asking when she is likely to know if the photos are recoverable as you are, understandably very concerned. Do you have any kind of contract detailing what she was providing? You could quote that back at her. I would also make sure you have copies of all the message sent to and fro. Another thought, rather than waiting any long for the edititing when she manages to get the photos, could you ask for them as they are and a partial refund?

Hope you get this sorted soon and end up with some lovely photos.

HI Millie, what a dreadful situation. I am truly sorry that you have gone through this, but there is a hope. They can recover the images without any doubt, it has a cost of it, but to be honest, it isn't your problem. Your photographer has to have insurances for different situations and she has to manage this, even if she needs to put lot money in. Backing up is a common issue with new photographers who are trying to save every penny on lenses and put on the side other things and backing up the images well is same important than taking those shoots. I got my images on 2 different hard drive, and 2 different online cloud store as well.

I would give her time to sort this out or give her a time slot that if you don't get your images back by (reasonable time 1-2 months) than you will have to act against photographer breaking the contract by loosing your images.

This is true and if there is something there they should be recoverable.

I too back up and back up and store off site, because apart from anything else the images are just as important to me, but this is an extra cost that is reflected in a higher price to the bride and groom for their wedding photography and is just one of those things that can add £ when the "W" word is mentioned, lots of corners can be cut like no insurance or backup equipment and that should reduce the photography cost.

If she says she cannot retrieve them then maybe someone on here can for you.

I'm renowned for being utterly paranoid about keeping multiple copies of my customer's wedding photos. Unfortunately the amount of people whom I see storing photos on a single external hard drive is scary.

In this situation I would reach out to her again and offer to see if your insurance will cover the costs of recovery. Basically you need to try to determine if she has genuinely had a hard disk fail or if she's lying for another reason. What were the photographs like that you have seen? Sometimes a newbie photographer will try to blame equipment failure rather than admit they didn't cope as well as they'd imagined and they have a bunch of blurry dark images that can't be rescused in Photoshop.

You need to be polite yet firm. Posting on Facebook is no longer going to cut it. I would email or write to her. Offer her as much help as you can but make it abundantly clear that you aren't just going to go away. Do you know her address? Do you know if she's insured?

This is something if she has professional indemnity insurance that should be covered but if she's new then there's a chance she may have skipped this step. Good luck and keep us posted.

I had a horrible situation a few years back where both my external and main hard drive died on the same day. Wedding images were alternatively backed up thank god. Recovery cost around £150 for my other stuff.

It is usually achievable to recover files from a drive that is a spinning disk. If its a solid state device, this is not so easy.

It is also possible that her memory cards may well have a lot of images of yours still on it. if you know what you are doing, these can be recovered too....

If she needs some help, please ask her to contact me.

Peter

Thanks so much for your replies. Its reassuring that the photos can maybe be recovered, so I am having everything crossed that this will happen. Hubby called her last night to get an update on whats happening. I cant speak to her at the moment because I am far too emotional about the whole thing and will end up saying something I could later regret.

She has said she has taken the drive into ACS and they are looking at it and will tell her how much it will cost once they have looked at it, probably by the end of the week. Hubby has explained that we do have wedding insurance but they will obviously look to recoup the costs from somewhere and we don't really want to do that to her as we feel its unfair and she has just been unfortunate to not have the equipment/know how of how to run a business. Its a learning curve for her, but doesn't help my problem. Im not sure if she has insurance or not, like others have said, she could have skipped this to save on money.

The agreement was all pics edited and on a disc only. No album etc as I can get this done myself. And what I paid for the job is irrelevant. If she couldn't do it or be able to produce what she promised then she shouldn't have taken the job.

Sorry for the rant.....im still upset about the whole thing. This was supposed to be the best day of our lives together and feel its now slightly tainted. Fingers crossed ACS can sort it for her and I will get my pics shortly.

Will keep you updated.

How awful for you Millie, what a nightmare. Please let us know how you get on xxxxxxxx

Just had a call from my photographer. ACS are saying it needs to be sent away which is going to cost her triple figures......can anyone please help, I can pass details on to her if you leave comments on this.

Thanks

Get her to contact a company called DataWreck. They can extract the files that involve your wedding without the cost of rescuing the whole drive. They will also give a student rate.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, it is also likely that many of your images "could" still be recoverable from her camera data cards. Formatting cards does not wipe data.

Peter

On a slightly negative note, your insurance pay only pay out up to the cost of what you paid the vendor...IF you had a contract with the vendor. Best to check the small print. Sorry to add negativity to a distressing issue.

Peter

Here is Data Wrecks pricing and contact details:

http://www.datawreck.co.uk/prices.html

hth

Peter

Thanks for those details Peter, will pass those on to her now. Yes I have read my insurance details, and they will cover all costs to replace the day (hire of suits/make-up/hair etc) and will pay for the cost of the photography, which I would have no problem in her doing again.

All good photographers should have liability insurance which she can claim against in the event of data loss.

Was she insured?

She should still be able to get some the images from the camera card by a recovery company even when written over this is not 100% but any that canot be had from the drive perhaps could be had from the card

Thanks again everyone, just got off the phone with her, she is insured so has left the hard drive with ACS and they are going to send it off for her and hopefully get the data recovered.

How likely is this though? I like to be prepared.

It is very very likely......

Peter

Phew......that is good news!!

Sorry to hear you're having such an issue! Keeping everything crossed you get your pics soon!!!

As an extra precaution, I would suggest that she doesn't use any of the memory cards that she used on your wedding until all files have been recovered from the external drive.

Peter

Since she has confirmed she is insured and is communicating then hopefully the cost of recovery isn't her main concern. Triple figures seems fairly reasonable given what a specialist company needs to do.

As Peter has said, the chances are good that a recovery firm will get most of the photos off.

It's a real shame the tog has had to learn the importance of backing up the hard way so soon. I genuinely hope she's not put off by this experience. On my first wedding I suffered a corrupted memory card. A card i've used many times before. Luckily I found out when I took a break at the start of the reception so swapped it out quickly. Lost about 20 photos in total and I've never bought a cheap unbranded memory card since!