Today I said the word "Fuck" quite possibly 200 times. Shit probably another 100 times. Combinations of the 2 in colorful variations another 100. It's not every day you accidentally delete 360 gigs of irreplacable media.
Yes. Accidentally. Delete.
Some of you might remember
this incident and think, hah, nothing accidental about it! But I assure you. I only wanted to delete Render Files, not the Capture Scratch. NOT THE CAPTURE SCRATCH. But oh fuck, I hit the keyboard shortcut to empty trash and despite it being 360 gigs, it emptied far too quickly. Far too quickly for my slow ass, yet caffeinated brain to really figure out what I had just done. Far too quickly for me to really think about what I had done, what the mac had done. Until I noticed that suddenly, the drive I was working on had 360 gigs free instead of just 6, and surely the render files couldn't possibly be THAT big.
And then I opened the Final Cut file and saw red. You know what that's like of course. You furrow your brow, frown, grumble, hit reconnect media. And then the swearing commences because it's ALL POINTING AT THE FUCKING FOLDER YOU JUST TRASHED. AHHHHHHHH. But I relax somewhat. It looks like video footage. Which we have on tape.
So I wander down the hall, perturbed, but find out where the tapes are. I regard them with calmer assurance. If data recovery doesn't work, the tapes are right there! Easy cheese! My ass is saved!
Did I mention that I have never done data recovery before? I may have left that out.
Details details...The google gods quickly tell me what program I should use to recover and my roommate has no suggestions, so I fiddle around with software binders in the cabinets until, duh, I see that the application is ON the computer I'm working on. Riiiight. I am a master of the obvious just not on the day that I accidentally delete 360gigs. Tends to frizzle the mind, that deleting business.
The software is seemingly obvious on how to operate it, so I operate and wait. Wait 2 hours. 2 excruciating hours during which I left, went to Dunkin Donuts, took someone else's bagel, returned someone else's bagel, got mine, drank coffee, ate my sinful lemon donut and finally told the producer at work what I had done. He left to get lunch. I left to go stare at my monitor and finish some other projects.
At the end of 2 hours there is media to be recovered! But only 70 gigs. Hmm. And in that 70 gigs, it's mostly crap. Only 1 file is a file I need. And then I figure out that what I've deleted isn't media on tape, which I can re-digitize, oh no! It's screen captures. Which are done straight to hard drive. And have no backup. This would be the point where I started to panic. I was in a fine state of agitation before to be sure, hence the bagel bumbling, but now, oh yeah, the shits and fucks started flying.
I start tracking down if there is in fact a backup of said crucial files and there is none, naturally. Storage doesn't grow on trees! The editor who really knows the project who comes in and dashed any remaining hope I might have for sekrit backup files. I start to really panic. I mean, shit, this project isn't DONE, it's not DONE, this is a major CLIENT and there's no way to get THESE FILES BACK. FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK.
I think you get the idea. And then I had to tell my boss who's travelling. Can't tell you how much I dreaded that. It's like telling your mom you broke her crystal vase (uh, which I've done twice and one was a Waterford). You just do NOT want to do it. You look for excuses not to. But when the other producer asks if the boss knows yet, and you cringe, well, dude, buck up or suck up.
Thankfully he didn't flip and had helpful suggestions. Which I did, then came home to eat, wait, then go back to see if it had succeeded, which it did. I thanked many deities.
For the record, Data Rescue 2 is amazing. I highly recommend it. Should you do something inanely stupid like I did, you should do the following:
1- Stop everything.
2- If you deleted stuff off your internal hard drive, hook up an external hard drive.
3- Run Data Rescue.
Do not move files anywhere. Don't do anything other than what I said. And you should be able to get your media back. You shouldn't save your media to the drive that's missing the media, hence the external hard drive or other internal drive.
Learn from my muy stupido mistakes! Or laugh. Either way is fine by me.
