My hard drive died!!
 

Well, last night my hard drive took a crap and died. Of course as luck would have it, I hadn't backed up any of my stuff. 7 years worth of work is on that bastard! Hopefully the hubby can get the repair guy to fix it ASAP! If not, I'm screwed. |cry|

Just a heads up, I can't review any sites for Click 4Sex Fun right now and I'm already about 2 weeks behind on reviews. I don't even have e-mail right now. I'm using the husbands computer to post this and I CAN review links for Sexy Smut Links so go ahead and keep those submissions coming in!

A valuable lesson has been learned; back up your hard drive no matter what!! |banghead|

there is a epidemic going around here it seems. Wonder if there is a vaccine for HD crashes. |angry|

Good luck in your recovery efforts!! Horrible thing to happen.

Oh damn...another one :(

Hope you're able to recover the data!

I hope I can recover the data also! If not, I really feel like throwing in the towel after all these years....

Damn it sucks...

If people tell you that it can't be repaired, take it and hit it kind of hard on the floor. And then when it start's working again, get it backed up quick.

I know it sounds stupid but, a lot of times it does work. It has worked for me 3 times so far. It most recently worked with my wife's ipod :)

One thing to consider, even if the HD is fried and nothing you do from your end can get it working enough to recover the data, is that there are several data recovery companies out there.
They are not cheap, especially if it's so bad they have to physically remove the platters to recover data off them.
Basically using those companies becomes a question of balance as to how much that data is worth to you. And even then there is a possibility they may not be able to recover it all.

One person that fried his drive a few years ago was my accountant...and though it cost 2 grand to recover his data it was well worth it to him.

We had discussed several times here on the boards about the necessity of having constant backups. I hope with your problems and the ones Red Cherry just had others will see this and get some kind of back up in place. Especially with how cheap and easy to implement all the methods are today.


I wish you the best of luck ladydesigner in getting your data back, you must be going through hell right now :(

All things made by Apple work better if you hit them a few times

It really does work. I had a pc when I had all the data from ultracash. That meant that I had a few thousand SSNs on the drive. The Dell repair guy came out with a nice new HD but wanted mine in replace of it. I called a data recovery place and was quoted over $5k for the job. I ended up taking the HD and slammed it on my carpet covered concrete floor and it worked long enough to transfer the data from that drive to the new one. I then let the dell guy have the empty drive.

Oh my God! Are you serious?! I'll try this for sure if it "can't" be repaired. Thanks Jim! |thumb

As a matter of fact, this is a Dell computer. I've had other problems in the past with it but nothing like this. Data recovery sounds very expensive. I won't be spending thousands of dollars to recover my e-mail, free sites and html/graphics for my link lists. However, I do mainstream design work for many small businesses in my community. That might be a problem if I can't recover my graphics for their sites. Oh well....

What is the best/fastes way to back up your data on a daily basis?

I just use windows backup every evening when I leave at 5:00. It takes me about an hour or so. I keep 2 days worth of backups and delete the 3rd daily.

Oh yeah, my backups are about 20 Gigs.

Yes he is serious, it worked for me once too. But it is not guaranteed to work, and it can cause even more damage, so only use it as a last resort. And if you do try this, install the backup drive FIRST because you may only get it to start once, it may not run for long, and it may die if the drive "parks" (which they do if the drive is not accessed in a set time- usually 15 minutes) so you have to make a copy immediately the drive boots up.

Also remember that you have to drop it hard enough to joggle the motor but not so hard as to break the platters (most are glass or ceramic). And obviously do not drop it on a nylon carpet or the static may fry your data.

This is what I use for a server
http://www.pcconnection.com/ProductDetail?Sku=5725449
The one I bought is just 1 terabyte and I see it on sale for about $850 now.

Crap
There it is for $739
http://www.pcconnection.com/ProductDetail?Sku=5634782

I use an external HD for backup .. but nothing as big as Jims ;-)

Maxtor has some "onetouch" external back up drives that are excellent for their simplicity, both in usb 2.0 and firewire models, including a terrabyte solution in their onetouch 3 turbo version that supports raid
http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...rnal%20Storage
Their personal versions may be all you need with capacities up to 250 gig, or the more robust series 2 or 3

Thanks MeatPounder. I'll check it out. I'm just so totally pissed at myself for not taking the proper steps in the first place to prevent something like this from wiping out my entire online business. |pcwins|

BTW, I don't even have a spell checker on this computer and can't get the one on the board to install. :-(

The personal version of the Maxtor is exactly what I have.. connects via a USB port .. so simple.. and cheap !!

All these hard drive crashes and system failures of late has gotten my attention.

I just ordered a 200GB Maxtor One-Touch External to back up my work station daily. I have twin drives installed in it, and ghost the master to the slave periodically, but if both drives got fried I'd be SOL.

Damn sorry to hear that ladydesigner that really sucks. But it's a Dell so not real surprised. I have three Dells here two pc's and one laptop. Nothing but problems with them except for the laptop (knock on wood)
Good luck and hope it all works out for you!

Something like 90% of hard drive crashes are caused by the bearings that the drives spin on siezing up. A good shock can often get a siezed bearing (in any application) to free up and spin again for just a little while.

Excellent tip :)

I recently had to replace a hard drive as well... it was getting more and more noisy and taking longer to seek and stuff. So I just slapped in a new (and larger) drive, and ran ghost. Clones it perfectly, I pull out the old drive, put the new drive in it's place, and no bother.

Listen to your system carefully. If you start to hear noises, if the system is slowing down, or if you are getting random reboots and errors, PAY ATTENTION and get it fixed.

It truly is hell if you lose stuff.

Alex

Yep, I know there are cheaper solutions than Ghost...but as Alex notes, Ghost makes it very easy to completely recover everything...operating system...settings...everything in one easy pass. It doesn't just backup your data...it creates an exact image of your drive |thumb

For me, this is one of those situations like hosting (recently learned that one...lol)...where cost is not as much a factor as ease and speed of a full recovery. Actually, my WD external drive also has a one step backup button. I bought and use Ghost instead for the quick seemless recovery it provides.

Excessive heat will get it too. My laptop drive wont come up after Vegas. Being in forensic data recovery I already know Jims trick of slamming it to get it to spin up.

Has worked for me all the way back to that 10 meg Rodime drive I had.

Sorry to hear, hope it works out. My site/work stuff is on a seperate drive, course does'nt mean it cant fail.

ronnie

MrYum, the other thing about ghost I really like is it's ability to handle larger drives... you can take your old 80 meg drive and ghost it onto a nice new 250 meg drive, and it handles making all the extra space available without any data loses on the way. It is actually fast enough that I would consider it an acceptable way to back up a full hard drive to another drive on a regular basis (rather than disks or tape).

Good luck to anyone with hard drive problems, I know it's a pain.

Alex

Macs…

Drag your home folder to another drive like a firewire drive and all your documents, bookmarks, cookies, settings, everything is backed up except your applications and system.

Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your whole drive to another drive, like a firewire drive, that you can even boot from and it everything will be just the was it was at the time of cloning including your account with all its documents, bookmarks, cookies, settings, applications, system, etc.

Yup, I run mirrored 120 gig drives in my main system...about 40% used...my other machine here has 3 drives of varying sizes. All are 'ghosted' to a single 120 gig external usb drive with room to spare |thumb

Agreed, best of luck to anyone with drive problems. And whatever you do...once you get up and running again...put some kind of seemless backup system in place. We rely on these machines too much to do otherwise. Personally, for the cost/benefits...I'm a big fan of Ghost :)

I'm glad this post was a wakeup call to some others. Yesterday I spent the day backing all my data on DVD's (I think 14 of them) then I deleted what I didn't need and moved everything to one of my SATA drives, and formatted the other.

I have norton ghost now set up to do a complete backup of my data drive to the backup drive every morning at 3am and iterm backups every 3 hours.

Once I'm done installing programs, I will be doing restore disks with Norton Ghost that has windows, service packs, and all my programs stored so if my primary drive ever fries, I can restore all that from a bootable disk. Plus I'm having ghost make backups of my primary drive onto the storage drive too.

This is the first time I've ever had a set routine on my computer of doing backups. I guess if all 3 drives fried I'd be screwed, but the chances of that happening, hopefully, is small.

I am totally diggin this new operating system too, I never thought a 2.8 AMD Semptron chip would be faster than a pentium 4 3.4 chip, but it is, quite a bit faster. My anti virus program started its complete scan this morning, and before when it was doing that, i'd slow me down so much on everything else, I'd shut it off. I didn't notice any slowdown at all this morning, and I was installing programs, printer drives, checking email, and checking stats all at once while it was going, lol. Also I use ACDSee alot, and when I open a file full of content, it generates the thumbs a lot faster too.

This has been a huge hassle, and cost me a few $$$, but in the long run my data is much safer, and i have a better system.

**************
What fried my system?


It looks like when I hot plugged in the card reader for my camera into the front USB port, I had static which shorted through the piece of SHIT case I had. We think that was the final spark that took down the mother board, which took down the processor, power supply, and my trackball mouse (go figure) but NOT the drives, printers, keyboard, or the video card thankfully. Since I have previously fried a power supply in this computer, he feels the motherboard was falty from the get go, and I tend to agree with him.

He suggesed one of those hubs that you have that plugged into your usb port, then if you hot plug, plug into the hub, a LOT less chance of that happening. Another thing to consider if you are like me and hot plug stuff into your usb drives alot. |thumb

Only if at least one drive is located in a different building. Otherwise the odds on fire/theft/flood/hurricane/etc destroying all three is too high for you to feel "safe". If these happen insurance will cover the cost of your equipment (hopefully), but will not cover the cost and hardship of data loss. As a spot of "overkill" one of my backups is in a different country!

A cavet on my computer being faster...except for video editing. We just ran a head to head test using Vegas Video, and the pentium 4 won hands down. But since I don't render video on my machine, and i'm more of a multi-tasking fool, it works for me. :)

No, my backups are all in the same building, and you are right, fire and theft could be issues, although I live in a cinder block home, so fire isn't as much as a possiblity as it would otherwise be, we thankfully have no hurricanes or tornadoes either here. One of the reasons I love Nevada. |thumb

Oh fine...veeeeery nice...throw that whole rough weather thing is our faces again. So, we get a little wind sometimes |hurricane

Glad you got yourself a backup system in place V...it really is cheap peace of mind. I don't keep a copy offsite either and probably should. But figure if I ever do have to bail outta here in a hurry...that usb drive and the Ghost startup disk are being tossed in a bag as I run out the door |hurricane

I actually love using that smilie :D

Been there, done that...learned the hard way. I have backups of my backups now. You can never be too safe.

Well, it looks like it's going to cost around $2800 to recover the data on my hard drive. |cry|

With that being said, I now have 2 new hard drives with one running as the mirror. While I do occasionally worry about fire/flooding/etc., I have to have both machines in the same building. I guess I'll take my chances...

All day has been spent reinstalling programs I have the cd's for, searching on line for others, redoing my settings to make my desktop "comfy" and starting to download a massive about of stuff off my server to my hard drive. Fun-Fun!

Maybe I'll be able to start doing some reviews for Click 4Sex Fun sometime in this decade. BTW, for all you submitters that sent me your free sites for Click 4Sex Fun in the last two weeks, they're all gone! Please feel free to resubmit. Sorry!

Ouch! That IS pricey |shocking|

Glad you're getting things settled in again...good luck on all the tweaking. Guess the upside is you'll have a nice fast clean system again when it's all done :)

Yes, it's WAY to pricey for me but seeing as how my kid's digital pictures where all on that hard drive, I'll have to eventually fork over the money to recover it all. |sad|

... and yes, my new hard drive is super fast! :)

good luck
 

http://quetek.com/ go here you can use this utility to recover all that data off your hard drive

Thanks bater! I'll go check it out. |thumb