I've been feeling a lot of ups and downs about the recovery process. Originally, they thought that most of the drive would be recovered, i.e. something around 95%. In the end, it was 92% recovered, but the damage is time-specific with the most recent files the most damaged, which of course are the ones that are top of mind and the ones that are most painful that they haven't been recovered...
Anyway, I paid the (very high) fee and received a detailed report on what was recovered entirely and what was damaged. I guess I'll start with the bad news. There was a folder called Xmas2025 that had all the pictures and videos from my cell phone from pretty much all of Dec. None of this was recovered at all. This means that a couple of jazz shows at the Rex are just gone, including a 2 guitar show featuring Lorne Lofsky and probably a Dave Young show. I believe the most recent Mike Murley show is still on my phone, though it cut off a bit early for some absurd reason. Either I could have left the files on the phone longer (as storage space isn't quite as serious a problem as before) or I could have left the entire folder Xmas2025 on the laptop longer, and I remember debating copying vs. moving the files at the time. I bitterly regret not copying that folder over, but how was I to know that a nearly brand new drive would fail so badly... Never again. I can't really remember the photos I took, though this includes a recent trip to the AGO. So I can go again and replicate a lot of those, though not the couple of photos I took of my son in front of some of the art. Sigh. I didn't really care for the art at my last trip to the Power Plant, but I might take a few replacement photos of the art in the plaza just north of the Power Plant. I probably am also missing a few photos of my last trip to 401 Richmond, but hopefully I have the visits prior to that, though I will have to probe once I have the data sent back.
However, most of the other folders (with phone pictures and videos) seem to have survived, including several shows out at Budweiser Stage and 54-40 at Danforth Music Hall. I was freaking out a bit because there were two or three shows that I had started transferring over from phone video to mp3 (a somewhat tedious process). It turns out that the entire Lowest of the Low show files survived and all but one or two of the GoGo Penguin files, so that was unexpected good news (I mean relative to the fact I had thought I had lost it all...).
Now some PDFs (of art monographs) were completely corrupted, but in a freak positive twist, I had copied these over so my son could take a look, and I was able to copy them back. Too bad I hadn't also copied over a few more of the photos of our trip to the AGO... Some poetry books survived, though these are ones I could have reconstructed from files still in my mailbox's deleted folder (which I hadn't emptied yet). I'm sure it helps that the file size is an order of magnitude smaller than the art monographs.
A large number of wav files from material I recorded off the internet are also gone. In many cases, I can just record this again, so annoying and time-consuming, but not "fatal." However, there were two shows of Robyn Hitchcock performed at home (called Live from Tubby's House), and these are time-limited and cannot be replayed now. Two other shows that I thought were lost were actually copied over to a different hard drive, so that's positive. I only wish I had had more free space on the other hard drives (that didn't fail), but that just wasn't the case. I asked them to copy over bad wav files, just in case portions can still be read, but I am not sure if they will do that. I guess I'll find out in a couple of days.
So there are probably something on the order of 10 shows (either at the Rex or over the internet including two Hitchcock shows) that are just completely gone and the photos documenting my last trip to the AGO and 401 Richmond, but I believe most other files have been recovered, so I will try to focus on that rather than the loss. (I mean 92% is very good just not quite as high as I would have liked...) It's hard, however, as it is just not in my nature to focus on positives, particularly given I am in pretty constant low-level pain from my back. But I'll try in this case.
Edit (9 pm): So the recovery technician said he had copied it all over to a blank drive, even the damaged files, so I'll see if any of the damaged wav files have usable chunks, and I guess I'll do the same for a few mp4 files. He also said he was going to take one more stab at recovering some of the data a different way, which is cool unless he charges me another huge fee, and I told him just to focus on the Xmas2025 folder and a small handful of damaged wav files and just let the rest go. No point holding out any hope here, but it would be terrific if something does emerge out of this. I'm actually pretty excited about listening to the Lowest of the Low show and the GoGo Penguin show, which I had assumed were completely lost but were recovered. It should just be another day or two before this drive shows up.
Edit (01-14): When I got back from seeing Mulholland Drive at the Paradise (I got in after all -- what a strange, strange movie!), there was a package on the doorstep. It was the drive back from Recovery Force. As feared, nothing in the Xmas2025 folder is recoverable at all. Some of the damaged wav files are readable, though it is very hit or miss. I have about 30 minutes from one of the Live at Tubby's House shows, but not the other ones, which is really too bad. (With a little more digging, it turns out that I do still have the Dec. 17 show that kicked off with "Goodnight Oslo," but not the next one which was a mini-tribute to Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding album. Honestly, I would rather have Dec. 17, so that sort of worked out. And of course I've love to get back the rest of their New Year's Eve show.) Maybe this guy will manage to recover a few more files, but I'm not going to lose any more sleep over this.
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