In search of lost photos

Today, we entrust our photos to various information storage media. To a hard drive, a phone, a USB key, any cloud. But the technology is sometimes lacking, dragging the images of the past into a black hole. It happened to our reporter. Here is his quest to find them.

Catherine Handfield
The Press

Dizziness, worry, eagerness to find a solution. That’s how I felt when I realized my photos from May 2013 to March 2014 were gone. My son was born on the 1^er May 2013. That is to say that I had lost almost all the images of his first year of life.

Years ago, I had put on an (old) external hard drive all my photos and videos captured from 2006 to 2014. When I received a new computer, I wanted to copy the contents of the hard drive to it , but the computer was unable to read it. I was able to recover the vast majority of photos from an old laptop, but I was missing that ten month period, which was only backed up to the failed hard drive.

A repairman found on a classifieds site analyzed it with software. His verdict? Nothing to do. “It seems to be corrupt. »

I found here and there a few shots from the period concerned, but I was still missing hundreds and hundreds of photos, but also dozens of videos. Son’s first smiles, his first meal, his first words…

A frequent problem

This story of a hard drive that fails does not at all surprise Imré Antal, president of the data recovery company Chronodisk, in Montreal. When a customer knocks on his door, most of the time, it’s to recover family photos and videos saved on a medium that no longer works.

“For the past fifteen years, people have had such an ability to take burst photos with their cell phones that they no longer print them at all,” says the computer scientist by training, formerly a journalist for technical computer magazines. When a hard disk fails, we lose 10, 15 years of photos. »

“Rarely in humanity have we trusted a technology that people know so little about,” adds Imré Antal, whom we met at his boutique in Plateau-Mont-Royal. “People are surprised that it breaks down, when it’s very fragile, very miniaturized. »

During our visit, a client, Luc Lefebvre, arrives with his old computer tower under his arm. When he opened his computer several years ago, a black screen greeted him. “There were photos of my children’s first three years of life,” he explained to Imré Antal.

He hadn’t saved them elsewhere either.

If Luc Lefebvre welcomes the situation with philosophy, other customers arrive distraught, ready to do anything to recover their memories. Fifteen years ago, data recovery companies charged $400 just for the estimate, points out Imré Antal, whose company offers a free estimate and a clear price list.

Reading head

I take advantage of this visit to Imré Antal’s shop to show him my broken down hard drive.

For hard drives, failures can be of software, electronic or mechanical origin. From the noise made by the hard disk, Imré Antal suspects that the read head is in question, a classic mechanical problem of hard disks, which are also allergic to microshocks, humidity and heat.

The hard drive is no longer recognized by the computer. The first data recovery attempt, which took several hours, possibly finished off the already weakened read head. If the read head has damaged the surface of the platter, the data below will be irretrievably lost. “There is no university in the world that teaches data recovery,” says Imré Antal.

The computer specialist opens the hard drive in a “clean room” — a large box that blows filtered air to prevent dust from damaging the hard drive. Inside, fortunately, the tray appears to be in perfect condition.

As it will be necessary to order a new read head, change it and reprogram the firmware, the failure is considered severe. The chances of recovering the data are estimated at 75%. The company will send a quote within 48 hours.

A slice of life

Valérie V. L’Épine knows exactly how it feels to lose photos. She experienced it twice rather than once.

The first was in 2015, after a burglary. They stole his computer and external hard drive, which contained 10 years of photos. And in early 2020, she dropped her cell phone on the floor.

“When I think about that, I have the impression that a part of my life no longer exists,” drops Valérie, an archivist by trade.

Internal or external hard drives are not the only media to be lacking. Sometimes it’s USB sticks, removable memory cards from cameras, solid-state drives (a different technology than hard drives), and — of course — cell phones.

Fannie Lemay kept her photos on her phone. And one day — she doesn’t know when, why or how — her photos from May and November 2016 disappeared, both on her phone and on the Google Photos storage service.

This period covered her son’s early childhood, but also a pivotal stage in his life: that of his diagnosis of brain cancer, his operation and his convalescence. Fannie called Google customer service, to no avail.

“It may be a blessing, because these are intense photos, but I would have liked to show them to my son, later, so that he knows what happened. The young woman now makes a copy of the photos that she absolutely does not want to lose on her computer and on Google Drive.

The professional photographer Richard Anber for his part suffered a hard drive failure, there are fifteen years. He was luckier: he was able to recover his content for a fee of over $1,000.

Today, he makes copies of his professional photos on two external hard drives. “And every four years, I change the internal hard drive of my computer,” says Richard Anber, who points out that a simple electrical surge can cause a breakdown.

Imré Antal advises his customers to change their hard drive every three years… and to invest in a quality external hard drive, with an aluminum casing. For greater security, you can also use cloud computing technology (the famous clouds).

Think about it

After 48 hours, I receive the estimate from Chronodisk.

The parts that have to be found and delivered, the handling in the clean room, the know-how: all that has a cost. And in my case it would be $1034. If the data recovery fails, I will only have to pay the $138 deposit.

Are 10 months worth of photos worth $1034? While waiting to make a decision (and my budget will allow it), I put the disc in a sleeve with a handful of semolina to absorb the humidity, as Imré Antal suggests.

Until further notice, this is where (and in my head) I will keep the memories of the first year of my son’s life.