Old guy with new computer

[hermosabeach]

Once this is solved, they sell external enclosures for back up

https://www.frys.com/product/7996890?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

[sonofeugene]

Ok, the computer that crashed was using Windows 7. there is no way to reboot, there are no hidden icons, nothing but a blue screen. Its done.

I connected the drive to my second laptop that also runs Windows 7.


That's the computer that told me to format the drive.


Next, I connected the drive to my new computer that runs Windows 10.


It does not request a format. It shows an empty drive, ready to go.


Adobe Lightroom is the program that wrote the data to the hard drive.


So, not knowing jack about computers, I have 2 questions.

How is mirroring 2 back up drives going to survive the crash a single one couldn't.


Is it possible the crash wiped the data on the drive completely or just the path to it?

Strange that the crash of your main computer drive affected your external drive.

If you plug the external drive into a good computer, if the external drive is good, it should simply be read by the good computer and you should be able to access it. At this point, I'd have a pro check out your external drive before you do anything. It could be simple like a bad power supply in the external case, or it could be a problem with the drive itself. I had an external drive that I thought was toast and then swapped the drive into a known good external drive case and presto, I had my drive back again.

As for mirroring, all that does it create two identical drives at one time. Essentially you're just doubling down on your backup. Should one of the backup drive die, you have another.

And backing up separately to two drives is a waste of time unless you're running it automatically at night and you don't care how long it takes. I have two mirrored drives internally in my tower for backup and also two mirrored drives in an external enclosure that are also for less frequent backups. They are all identical. And because it's a Mac and I use Carbon Copy Cloner, each drive, besides being identical in content, is also bootable. Should my main drive go bad, I swap one of the backup drives into the slot for the main drive and I'm up and running again that fast. Don't know if there's any capability like that for PC's, though.

So, to be clear, there's no difference between a backup done via mirroring and one done on two drives sequentially. It's just that it takes less time to do the backup.

[Epaphroditus]

Sorry, amazon prime unlimited cloud storage is only for photos - I presumed this thread was primarily about photography related computer stuff.

FYI a hack is to encrypt your docs (not photo) and give the encrypted file a jpg extension then you can use Amazon's cloud storage for anything - encrypted of course.

[6foot8]

@madjack956

Do you have your windows 7 disk? If so, try booting to that and run the repair feature or the system restore feature. Maybe you can repair it, or restore it to a date before the PC crashed?

[Zamsung]

As long as you don't format it,you won't loss your data from your computer.Good luck.

[Flyliner]

This is all going to depend on how you had Lightroom setup on the old machine.

Where did you have Lightroom store the photos when imported?
Where did you have Lightroom store the catalog (.lcat file)?
Did you have Lightroom do the backing up?
Did you back up the actual photos or just the .lcat catalog?