Never Say Never: How Data Recovery Allowed the Show to Go On

Matt Campagna and his brother Jeff were well versed in the independent filmmakers creed, “anything that can go wrong during filming, will go wrong during filming.” And they had more than their fair share of difficulties. Like any true guerilla filmmakers, they persevered on their miniscule budget, with a skeleton crew, to finish filming their first feature “Six Reasons Why,” the new Canadian Western starring Colm Feore. It was now onto the editing room.

The digital film was transferred to a MacBook Pro, so Matt and Jeff could begin editing. About half way through the editing process, the computer started making odd noises and within 10 seconds...the hard drive failed. Their entire film was gone and though having been called crazy by many friends, they had no backup copy. They had to say it out loud to themselves, “our film is gone.” Both thought of the time it took to write the script, the year they spent convincing well-known Canadian actor Colm Feore to take a role specifically written for him, the thousands of dollars of their own money thet had spent to produce the film,... all of this was down the drain.

Believing their film was gone they called Apple to see if there were any options. Apple recommended Kroll Ontrack and its industry-leading Ontrack Data Recovery services.

Neither Matt or Jeff had any idea whether it would be successful, but it was certainly worth trying. Matt contacted Kroll Ontrack via phone. When he found out that their Canadian headquarters was right in downtown Toronto, he literally jumped into the car and drove the drive to their facility to wait there for the diagnosis. Kroll Ontrack found that the drive was damaged internally but were confident they could recover all of the data.

Still Matt was worried. He called his brother to let him know that Ontrack Data Recovery engineers believed they could retrieve their film. Matt headed back home where he waited for the call. In a few days his phone rang. They were able to recover everything!

Because the data recovery process was a success, this small independent film that cost $12,000 to produce transpired into a completed film, which was recently purchased for a quarter of a million dollars and is now available internationally on DVD.

Never assume that data is unrecoverable, no matter what it’s been through. Additionally it doesn’t matter the type of data; it could be music files, sentimental family photos, a college thesis, text files, and even digital film... all are recoverable.