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@donpower
This is What Recovery Looks Like My external hard drive crashed this week. 10 years of pictures and email — from when my kids were born to present day — all gone.

No, I did not have a backup.

It’s hit the family hard, and we’re all pretty shaken up. Sadness, frustration, anger, loss, uncertainty, loneliness, are just some of the emotions we’ve been feeling over the past 24 hours.

A visit to Future Shop, where I bought the failed iPro Drive led to a small reassurance from the computer repair guy, who said their success rate in recovering failed hard disks is pretty high. So is the price tag — $1600. And there’s no guarantee that the data can even be recovered.

With a mortgage, a family to support and a municipal tax bill to pay next month, this type of unexpected expense could not have come at a worse time. (Well really – is there ever going to be a better time for such a thing?).

In any event, I’m not looking for money or donations to help me pay for the recovery. Since I’m a professional blogger, a social media advocate and a believer in the power of positive thinking, I’m approaching this problem in a way that I know best. I’m putting it out to the universe (and Twitter and Facebook, too, of course!) in hopes that it (and perhaps you) may provide a solution that results in the recovery of my family’s pictures without having to sacrifice an arm a leg (financially speaking) to do so.

Maybe one of you knows the CEO of a data recovery company who could use some great PR in return for a called in favour. Or maybe, you need some social media training or a keynote speech for your event — I’ll provide it in kind for the successful recovery of my hard drive.

Perhaps you’re a PR or media person who can use this story as fodder for one of your segments. Perhaps someone with the connections mentioned above will see it and offer to resolve the problem.

It’s a longshot, of course. And if it doesn’t work, well I’ll shift some things around and do what needs to be done to try and get my family’s memories back, intact. In the meantime, I’ll send a copy of this post to Samtack – the maker of iPro Drive – in hopes that they’ll realize the PR potential of offering to cover the cost of recovery of one their failed hard drives.

I’m also going to investigate if there are more affordable alternatives. The trouble is, in order to provide an estimate of recovery costs, most of these recovery companies require you to courier the drive to them first. Not only is this expensive and time-consuming, it also puts the recoverable data on the drive further at risk, every time the drive is jostled and bumped.

So, I have to find a definitive, affordable, and effective solution the first time out.

If there’s any way you can help — in a non-monetary way — I thank you in advance. You can also email me (don @ donpower.com) or tweet me, of Facebook me about any of this via the social media icons in the sidebar of this blog.

Breathe in. Breath out. Breathe in. Breathe out. And let go…

Thank you universe.

- Don

UPDATE 1

The story was picked up by the Postmedia Network (via the Nanaimo Daily News). Thanks Matt Gauk! I hope your article prompts people to go back up their drives so they don’t have to go through what I’m going through right now.

UPDATE 2

After exploring a few possible options (unsuccessfully), I was contacted by Brett Callow – Director of Public Relations for ioSafe. I know Brett from having connected with him on Twitter a while back. Brett personally recommended their critical data recovery partner – DriveSavers – to help with the critical data recovery of the drive.

I spoke to the folks at DriveSavers, including Bob and Chris, and we’ve all agreed that getting the drive to them for a full, professional evaluatuion is my best course of action at this time. I have my fingers (and all my ten toes) crossed in hopes that they can recover my kids’ pictures and other critical data on that drive.

I’ll keep you all posted of continued progress. Thanks to everyone for all the support you’ve given me so far!

- Don

Connect with Don

Don Power is a Social Media Consultant, Professional Speaker, and Managing Editor of Sprout Social Insights. Don shows businesses how to use Social Media to build their brand, generate leads, and close sales.

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