why did I not heed the warning? I knew the hard drive was on its way out.....let this be a warning

by SnakesInTheTower 12 Replies latest jw friends

  • SnakesInTheTower
    SnakesInTheTower

    I heard the tell tale clattering noises....

    yet...did I bother to back anything up...noooooo

    did I go to the store and buy that external hard drive with the automatic back up software?.....noooooo

    so what happens? yep...hard drive crashed....data unrecoverable (probably is recoverable but for what cost?.. I will have to save the drive and spend the $200 to recover the data at another date...mostly some pictures... and some documents and spreadsheets...mostly I lost a ton of favorites links...tons of emails... I lost almost everyone's email addys..

    so ..... damn it ...back up your hard drive....get a external drive.... they are less than $100....and set it to back up every night......

    I have my new drive...I am $300 poorer for the drive and labor.... a couple hundred more I should have bought a new PC....

    I have my external drive on order....

    Snakes (Rich )

  • leavingwt
    leavingwt

    (1) Often, they don't give ANY warning signs. They just die.

    (2) The estimate for recovery services will cost more than $100 from OnTrack. There are situations in which they cannot recover anything. You'll need to budget way more than $200 for it.

    Sorry you lost your stuff.

    I recommend Acronis True Image Home as a backup software. It's an inexpensive, full-featured solution. Lots of great options, or you can use a its simple, one-click method.

  • cameo-d
    cameo-d

    Clattering noise?

  • PEC
    PEC

    I guess I have been lucky, my HD failures have been electronics.

    They would work when cold and stop after they warm up.

    The last drive I had to put in the freezer, run the cables to the PC no top of the fridge.

    I was able to copy everything off of it, 5 minutes at a time. That is right it only ran for 5 minutes in the freezer, before it was too hot to work.

    Dry ice in a cooler might have worked better.

    Now I have a USB drive that I keep all of my files on and back up my laptop once a week.

    Philip

  • Sam Whiskey
    Sam Whiskey
  • fokyc
    fokyc

    I use Memeo, everything is automatically backed up immediately to a Buffalo network drive, this has parallel hard drives; I should be OK - BUT I still back up important files regularly to Boxnet.

    I also lost everything a few years ago because I thought I knew better

    fokyc

  • The Scotsman
    The Scotsman

    Take your hard drive and put it into the freezer - thats right - in the freezer.

    Let is get covered in frosty ice particles.

    Then take it out and plug it straight back in to a PC/Laptop or via a USB interface cable. It wont give you long but perhaps long enough to recover some data.

    The cold makes the Hard Drives platters contract slightly allowing the reader to do its job - as its heats up they start to expand again and the reader starts to touch the platters - which is almost certainly the problem with your drive - the reader should never actually have physical contact with the platters.

    The scotsman

  • Chalam
    Chalam

    Hi,

    I worked in IT support for 10 years and say numerous hard drives fail. The vast majority of corporate PCs are backed up, as for home PCs I guess the majority aren't.

    Mine died on the MacBook here this year. No warning, just died one day whilst using Safari :(

    2.5" laptop drives are far more likely to fail than 3.5" desktop drives.

    Luckily, TimeMachine saved my bacon with a fairly recent backup.

    Backup regularly unless you don't mind loosing your data. Those new to the idea, have a read Backup

    Which reminds me, I need to plug in my backup drive today!

    Blessings,

    Stephen

  • SnakesInTheTower
    SnakesInTheTower

    I have kept the drive....I had heard of the freezer idea before...I will try it one of these days when I get some time. I wish I would have had time to install my own hard drive....labor was twice the cost of the drive....at least the shop I use (and the fellow who owns it and the place before that) is reliable and honest...they cap the labor at $195 no matter how much time they spend. Only once have I ever hit the cap (today was that day).

    I had to reinstall some apps last night so I could work this morning. I am keeping my email online instead of on the drive from now on. Printing out important docs and photos.... saving stuff to a external drive and a dvd.

    A few years ago I lost 10 years worth of financial data in Microsoft Money....no prob...I had 2 recent backups....yep...both failed.....

    One thing is certain....starting from scratch makes things a bit simpler..and I want to keep it that way.

    Snakes (Rich )

  • WTWizard
    WTWizard

    That is why I bought another hard drive. Because all I have are music files (on an iPod, too), a few videos, and password cookies, there is nothing that is absolutely critical on my hard drive. Time consuming to restore, yes. But not critical--for my purposes, a full backup followed by differential backups periodically will suffice.

    However, if you use your hard drive for business or have lots of photos of personal nature on them, I do recommend frequent backups. But, a full backup every day is likely to be like shooting a mosquito with an elephant gun. Better a differential backup every day, and full backups at longer intervals (and for sure at the first sign your hard drive is giving you trouble).

Share this

Google+
Pinterest
Reddit