Hard Drive takes a dump

[Boerrancher]

Well all,

My Laptop hard drive decided it was going to take a dump on me so I have to use the wife's computer when I can. I really didn't loose any thing of real value on the hard drive other than all of my photos from Afghanistan. I will still be around though not as much for the next couple weeks while my puter is being fixed.

Best wishes from the Boer Ranch

Joe

[Leadforbrains]

One thing about computers is that they are to me unreliable and not worth the aggravation until you have to depend on them. They have a tendency to crap out on you when you need them the most. The only enjoyment I get out of the puter I have is being able to lurk around this site for all the good info and chatting with the fine folks here. If it weren't for that I believe I would put a boolit through mine. I hope they will be able to save all your important stuff when they fix yours.
Good luck on getting yours repaired.

[Bill*]

There are companies who specialize in retrieving data from effed hard drives. Unless you have removed it already, contact whoever is doing the repair and make sure you get the old one back. This is assuming the pictures are important to you (as I should think they would be). Then hunt around for the best $ and they can burn the files to CD/DVD for you. I actually read of a case where they got most files back from a drive that had been literally flattened by a truck!!! Hope this helps....Bill

[Lee]

1.Keep the bad drive.
2. Get a buddy who can obtain a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter and hook the drive up to a regular desk computer, as a slave drive. (adapter is cheap, a jumper on the drive can change from master to slave drive)
3. Put the dead drive in a plastic bag, then in the freezer for 24 hours.
4. Take it out and hook it up quick.
5. Start the computer, the dead drive may very well start.
6. Transfer all the data until you are done, or the drive warms up.
7. Repeat 3-6 if needed.

Dont laugh. I just recovered over 300Meg of data from a "dead" hard drive this way. If you have a computer savvy buddy ask if he would do this for you.
Even the local Radio Shack geek might be able to help..................

[acemedic13]

Sorry to hear about the pics dude. Good luck with it.

[scrapcan]

lee's post above is right give it a thought. if the drive has not been wiped or destroyed it may be easy to recover most if not all files. If it has been wiped (different than formatted) it could be harder and more $$$$.

[Boerrancher]

Thanks for all the info. I will make sure I request the old HD back when I send it off to be replaced.

Best wishes from the Boer ranch,

Joe

[10-x]

What's that company Rush advertises? Carbonite? or something like it......supose to "back up" all your data off site for $50.00 a year?

[Old Ironsights]

Meh... Back up your Important stuff/Pics to DVD-RW as regularly as possible...

I'm re-ghosting my drive right now...

[Scrounger]

Joe, when the hard drive crashed on my first computer, an employee at a Best Buy in SoCal repaired it for me. I bought a new hard drive and CD-R at the store and then paid him to install them for me. He retrieved whatever data he could from the old one, transferred it to the new one, and re-installed the old one as a second hard drive. Frequently parts of the drives can be used again after cleaning up the damaged part. You might want to have whoever repairs yours to put the old one back in as a second or backup drive.

[Dale53]

This can NOT be emphasized enough:

BACK UP EVERYTHING at ALL TIMES! Yep, I am shouting.

You may think that you don't have anything important to back up. Not true for any of us. That particular picture of your grand daughter, of your mother before she passed on, your favorite pet... All of these things are INVALUABLE!

I'm a photographer and I back up every image TWICE. That's right, TWICE. I even back up rebates.

External hard drives are now affordable and they can be set up to back up automatically. Or you can have your favorite computer feller set up a redundant internal hard drive to mirror everything. Every computer book out there describes the several different ways you can do it. Just DO IT!

Now there, my rant is over. I need a drink (of water, of course)...

Dale53

[Reloader06]

Cd-r's have a longer "shelflife" than cd-rw's. A buddy of mine that worked in the Whitehouse as a computer security expert saw cd-rw's on my desk and really got on my case for it. He said something to the effect of "We back up everything on CD-r's or DVD-r's because RW's will lose bits after as short as a year. R's will last at least 10 years." Remember that either media is heating the foil layer extremely quickly and the chance for error is higher in reuseable media.

My half nickle.

Matt

[rhead]

I use a western digitial portable hard drive as a backup. 260 gig fior $98. Works out a little cheaper than disk, data retrieval and writing is quicker, it takes up less space. Shirt pocket size.
Good luck on the data salvage.

[C1PNR]

A BIG Plus 1 for the external drive used ONLY as your backup!

I'm not very smart, but I can learn, and when my hard drive crashed with data that was so valuable to me that it HAD to be retrieved, I paid $1,300 to get the data back.

It didn't take long to figure out that a $150 external 500 GB hard drive was a real bargain by comparison. And it's only purpose in life is for backups, which I probably should do more often.

[JIMinPHX]

Every few months I do a complete drive clone. That backs up my data, my applications, My OS & everything. I use Apricorn EZ-GigII software, which works great. It doesn't give me any of the problems that I had with Ghost or Drive Image. After I clone the HD, I put the original in a safe place & run off the clone to be sure that there is nothing strange with it. To date, there never has been. If my HD takes a dump on me, I just pull it out of the computer & replace it with the last one that worked. Everything except for the new files since the last clone are then good to go. If I then plug the dead drive into the expansion bay as a slave, I can sometimes still mount the drive & pull off the new data. Big Gigantic hard drives are less than $100 now. A terabyte HD can be had for well under $200. Backups are cheap insurance if you ask me.

[454PB]

All good advice, just remember Murphy's law. External hard drives, thumb drives, CD's, DVD's, and even Carbonite can and will fail. Multiple back-up is the way to go, and print valuable pictures and documents on archival paper.

[Old Ironsights]

All good advice, just remember Murphy's law. External hard drives, thumb drives, CD's, DVD's, and even Carbonite can and will fail. Multiple back-up is the way to go, and print valuable pictures and documents on archival paper.

+1.

I have two 500gb drives that I do daily incrementals on, a 1 TB drive in one Safety Deposit box and a stack of DVDs in another.

[Bill*]

WOW....I have an envelope full of post-its with all my critical stuff on them. Maybe it's time I join the 20th century ( the 21st will have to wait a bit)
Funny though, reloader06 above mentions that the CD/DVD-RW's lose data in a year, and the CD/DVD-R's should be good for ten years. I have notes from 1970 in that envelope!

[BD]

How long does a CD with data last? Can "proper" storage conditions increase the shelf life?

BD

[Old Ironsights]

How long does a CD with data last? Can "proper" storage conditions increase the shelf life?

BD

Depends (a LOT) on the CD. There are gold substrate "Archival Quality" CDs that last a LONG time.

Then there are the Big Box Office Store Bulk Packs that last a couple of years if you are lucky....

Edit: FWIR, the mylar substrates can be degraded by bacterial action inside the mylar itself, so "proper storage" is not really possible...