Computers suck

That happened to me!!!

It's not your friends fault you didn't back up your ENTIRE PORTFOLIO. Important data should be saved a minimum of 3 places if you don't want to lose it. LEARN YOUR LESSON. BACK UP YOUR SHIT.

Start uploading to shutterfly. When you register with them you get the first 30 picture printouts free. Print favorites out and keep rest in online photo album.

Your fault for not backing it up.

How the hell do you have two terabytes worth of pictures? A big file for a pic is maybe 100 kb.

Why didn't you have it backed up some place else?

In his defense, two terrabytes is a TON of memory and using up too much memory makes your computer slow. That's why you should've followed the example of every photographer from before computers were widely used and keep your portfolio in a book. And you also should've asked him what he was going to do and tell him "My portfolio is on there and it's not backed up, don't mess with that". To him, all he saw was the computer screen saying "You are using a lot of memory and this can slow down your computer". He probably assumed, after five years, you've had the sense to back up your files. If you can somehow recover your pictures, print them out and put them in a binder, or at least back them up on several flash drives or CDs.

your data is still on the hard drive(s) and can be recovered, but continual use of the pc may over write them so you need to act immediately. stop using the pc immediately and purchase an external hard drive. download photorec (from another computer!) and burn it to a DVD. photorec runs from the CD and will write to your external. it should pull your data, although you might not get back everything and going through 2+gb of photos will be fun. gl

All photographers know to back things onto DVDs and externals for this exact reason. Sorry for your loss, though. No picture can ever be duplicated.