Hello, my name is Pat and for the past 5 weeks, I have been suffering in silence over this. A nightmare scenario for any artist/creator, hell you don't even have to be an artist to relate.

Roughly 5 weeks ago, the hard drive that contains all of my musical work since June of 2021 stopped being recognized by my operating system. I didn't freak out immediately because I have always been able to get things to work in the past. Maybe that's why I so stupidly neglected to have consistent backups of my projects. I couldn't get the drive to function again so I took it to a local data recovery place. The local place was unable to extract my data, they told me they would have to send it to a lab and it would cost anywhere from $1,500 to $4,000 and there would be no guarantee of getting the data back. While the drive was at the local place I had been in communication with a place in Canada that told me it would be $700 plus parts if necessary. I figured cool, that's a bargain in comparison to the first place, I'm definitely going to send the drive to them.

This week I heard back from the data person in Canada, he had this to say "Hi Pat, I have some news. Good and bad. The good news is that your drive's data can most likely be recovered. The bad news is that it would not be a simple solution, but rather a long and hard process. We can build a translator for this device manually, but it will take 3-4 weeks of RND. This turns out to be a Phison PS5012 controller, which does not have support from any of the tools on the market that can assist with translator building. Price would be $2000-3000."

Saying that the loss of this data would be devastating to me is an understatement. I think most artists would be able to vouch for me. When I say that these creations are a part of us. There are literally hundreds and hundreds (maybe over a thousand hours) worth of music and effort on that drive. Personal projects, collaborative projects, things that I'll never be able to recreate in the way that I did at the time of doing it. I've even attempted some recreations to prepare myself for the possibility that I'll never get that stuff back, and I just end up feeling defeated while doing it because it just doesn't feel possible. Some things can only be captured in the moment and then after that, it's never the same.

I put everything I have into my music, emotionally and financially. Music gives me everything I need with the exception of one thing; Money. With future musical obligations already in place, I cannot afford to pay for this data recovery job so I'm here today asking for help. Help me by contributing to my GoFundMe campaign. I am grateful for any and every donation no matter what the amount.

Click here to hear just a fraction of some of my lost projects

Thank you so much for your support