[X] My Assistant

[tedstryk]

Well, it looks like I am out of business, at least for the time being. My computer suffered a catastrophic crash. I am a bit better prepared than when this happened a few years ago - more backups - but not everything is backed up (recent stuff). And I have no machine to work on. We had a big power outage today. When I rebooted, the hard drive acted funny, and then, at about 7:00 tonight, died. The recovery software I have is showing it as empty and partitioned (which is odd - my hard drive is not partitioned. I am working on some last ditch efforts before taking it to data recovery experts, but, assuming these efforts fail, I am without a functional computer. What I really hate is that my archive of family, friends, and landscape photography is mostly totally lost if I can't recover the data from the drive, as well as e-mails dating back to 1993. Ironically, I had ordered a 260 Gigabyte external drive to forever end my backup problems, and it shipped two days ago...It should be here any day now, and would have prevented loss of personal data in this. Ughhhh....

[deglr6328]

You might have some luck trying the freezer trick..... Or if it is the drive electronics that you suspect have been damaged you can order another hardrive of the EXACT same make and model and just swap the PCBs (its easy). I recently did this with a HD that didn't even spin up and to my utter shock it acutally worked.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

I already suffered this problem twice, so I understand your feeling.

So I insist upon everybody to make backups of everything they want to keep, even if it is a really tedious task (especially for emails, which have to be saved one per one, as Outlook Express seems unable to recover emails from a backup of its own files, even in the very improbable case we are able to locate these files). I do a backup every month, and it now requires two CDs. I also have an old hard drive that I use as a backup more frequently, so that even if my main drive is dead, I still have this one.

When my mother bought a computer (she knows nothing about it) I strongly recommended her to have windows and softs on the C: partition, and her files on the D: partition (even if most softs alway try to save data files each in the most improbable place such as in c:\program files). She also installed a CD burner, but seldom used it. When she had a software crash, she had no way but reinstalling windows in the C: partition, but she recovered all her data intact from the D: partition.

Once I had a window crash (thanks to a virus) and I had to reinstall windows, but I was able to boot on my windows installation disk and make a complete back up before reinstalling windows. But this is not possible on several laptop PCs which have "special" installation disks!!! The only problem I had was when reinstalling programs, as I did not saved the downloaded file! I had to beg for a CD of this program. So when you buy an (expensive) soft, alway: 1) have a CD backup 2)write the installation key on this CD!!

In your case tedstryk it seems that there was a survoltage or other power problem which broke your drive. It is very difficult to protect from this, and also from lightning. The only protection against lightning is to completelly disconnect the computer from both power line and phone line as soon as we hear thunder. There are some power protections which can be efficient, but only at a certain point: when lightning is close enough to make the power plugs spark, I think nothing can do.

But also it happens that Windows cannot bear a power cut. Once I lost a file like that, and had to run scandisk to purge any false entry. But bad softs too can play tricks, such as softs written in C:. This language can use indexes on the whole drive, so in case of any bad functionning it can write anywhere (anywhere will be in most case on the famous FAT, which index is near zero) and I had my first big crash like that. There is no protection against this, except... making backups.

To avoid any window problem, I tried Linux... but there are OTHERS problems there and I quickly prefered to come back to Windows!

[Bill Harris]

Ye golden rule: backup, and backup often. Nowadays, with CD r/w drives, that is so easy. As recently as 10 years ago, a data backup on a 250mB QIC tape took a couple of hours and was a major PITA.

That having been admonished, I don't recall the last time I backed up and need to do that ASAP.

Sorry for your loss...

--Bill

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Backing up with CDs can be tedious too, especially if we have much data (I have two CDs)
Today we have USB keys with flash memory, so it is very easy to backup data, so long as it don't exceed about 245-512 Mo. Hope the capacity of USB keys will increase.

[Nix]

Sorry to hear that man, that sucks. I hope you can recover your data. I also recently lost some things, some mosaics and such but not that much. I managed to do that while copying data to a new disk to prevent problems, just like you.

Nico

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

O.K. Backup is really necessary ... but for total systems You should not only back-up but also try a restore from time to time!

[RNeuhaus]

It is bad that your computer had run problems. I use two backup methods:

1) I have two computers, I put anything that is not related to OS in a user directory so that I can do a FTP all contents from this computer to the other computer, every between two and four weeks.
2) The other, the smaller ones, I plug an USB memory to backup the most recent information in less than one week.

These are the fastest backup methods. If you have the Ethernet of 1 GB, the backup will fly!. The USB are even faster than CD and easier since it does not need to reformat.

Understand your feeling but the next fix computer, start to use the backup.

Rodolfo

[ljk4-1]

Very sorry about what happened, Ted. Perhaps some of the images and data you need are saved on this forum?

One of the two things I am always wary about with computers - their crashing and losing data and their components becoming obsolete and unreadable. Books may be "primitive", but you can still read a book that's a thousand years old without any special equipment (barring language barriers, of course).

[um3k]

I have 36gb worth of photographs, and about a third of them aren't backed up.

I'm going to back those up today.

[Chmee]

Yes, Always backup! I have a DVD burner and now I am up to 2 DVD's just to backup my files. Its my pictures and email that take up the most of it. 5GB's of pictures and 2GB of email (going back to 1993).

Anyway, Here is another tip. After you make a CD/DVD backup of your files, send a copy of it to a relative or friend in another location. That way if you have a fire/earthquake/hurricane at home which destroys BOTH your computer and disks, you still have that to fall back on. My "remote location" is my mothers house about 300 miles away and I give a copy maybe once every 6 months.

I have thousands of photos that are irreplaceable, so I am a little paranoid!

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Yes, Always backup!  I have a DVD burner and now I am up to 2 DVD's just to backup my files.  Its my pictures and email that take up the most of it.  5GB's of pictures and 2GB of email (going back to 1993).

Anyway, Here is another tip.  After you make a CD/DVD backup of your files, send a copy of it to a relative or friend in another location. That way if you have a fire/earthquake/hurricane at home which destroys BOTH your computer and disks, you still have that to fall back on.  My "remote location" is my mothers house about 300 miles away and I give a copy maybe once every 6 months. 

I have thousands of photos that are irreplaceable, so I am a little paranoid!

Not paranoïd enough: DON'T TELL where is your copy.

[ilbasso]

I got a relatively inexpensive but blazingly fast 120 GB external hard drive. I have Restrospect Express set up to automatically do a complete backup of the laptop every week and incremental backups every evening after I have gone to bed. Added bonus - I have all my iTunes music stored on it rather than my laptop's hard drive. I also back up important files to CDs, which I store in a fireproof safe that's rated for storing computer media.

[lyford]

Sorry to hear about your problems - good luck with the recovery!

[Phil Stooke]

Good luck, Ted. I'm paranoid about this, like everybody else. My book stuff is backed up all over the place.

Phil

[Bob Shaw]

Ted:

That's rotten news.

I'd like to echo the Wise Words regarding backups - I always tell my clients (I fix PCs etc for a living, despite that mundane task being prettified up for the custards) that backup is a religious experience in most cases. People obey certain rules, and carry out various rituals, in the hope that they will be saved from eternal torture AKA data loss. But in most cases these efforts are never put to the test - it's all a promise! Backup regimes which don't involve recovery demonstrations are almost worthless (now, as for the comparison with religions...). The only *real* backup is one that can be recovered from - everything else is just storage. As a compromise, proper off-site storage and a couple of hard disks will do in most cases. And something to sort out the power surges, and...

As regards the failed HDU - I suggest you pull it out of the machine it is currently in, and have a look at it with another one. Don't do anything which alters the files on the disk, and beware of tools which mess with your partitions. Depending on the age and the disk format (Fat-16, Fat-32, NTFS, whatever) there may be backups (plural) of the disk's File Allocation Table and Master Boot Record and these *can* be recovered, thus allowing access to your data. If the disk had power removed while it was reading or writing to these files then it is possible that they are indeed trashed, and the disk surface may also be damaged. BUT, the data is still on the platters - just the record of where it is has gone - and, as I said, there may be copies of that record. But don't go trying to fix the things yourself with some shareware cure-all - a professional data recovery company will make a copy of your drive to start with, then apply tools to the copy, thus keeping the data safe. I can't point you at one, you'll need to find them yourself.

Again, sorry to hear of your woes - may they happen to Hoaxland!


Bob Shaw

http://www.itsupportglasgow.com/

[tedstryk]

Backing up with CDs can be tedious too, especially if we have much data (I have two CDs)
Today we have USB keys with flash memory, so it is very easy to backup data, so long as it don't exceed about 245-512 Mo. Hope the capacity of USB keys will increase.

Ironically, I had just ordered a system to do this, which shipped the day before the crash!

[tedstryk]

Ironically, I had just ordered a system to do this, which shipped the day before the crash!

Thank you all for your kind words. I am currently getting messages of either the hard drive being "unmountable" and other failure messages. Yuck (I am currently using my wife's computer, which, being a Macintosh, is something I know nothing about).

[tedstryk]

I already suffered this problem twice, so I understand your feeling.

So I insist upon everybody to make backups of everything they want to keep, even if it is a really tedious task (especially for emails, which have to be saved one per one, as Outlook Express seems unable to recover emails from a backup of its own files, even in the very improbable case we are able to locate these files). I do a backup every month, and it now requires two CDs. I also have an old hard drive that I use as a backup more frequently, so that even if my main drive is dead, I still have this one.

When my mother bought a computer (she knows nothing about it) I strongly recommended her to have windows and softs on the C: partition, and her files on the D: partition (even if most softs alway try to save data files each in the most  improbable place such as in c:\program files). She also installed a CD burner, but seldom used it. When she had a software crash, she had no way but reinstalling windows in the C: partition, but she recovered all her data intact from the D: partition.

Once I had a window crash (thanks to a virus) and I had to reinstall windows, but I was able to boot on my windows installation disk and make a complete back up before reinstalling windows. But this is not possible on several laptop PCs which have "special" installation disks!!! The only problem I had was when reinstalling programs, as I did not saved the downloaded file! I had to beg for a CD of this program. So when you buy an (expensive) soft, alway: 1) have a CD backup 2)write the installation key on this CD!!

In your case tedstryk it seems that there was a survoltage or other power problem which broke your drive. It is very difficult to protect from this, and also from lightning. The only protection against lightning is to completelly disconnect the computer from both power line and phone line as soon as we hear thunder.  There are some power protections which can be efficient, but only at a certain point: when lightning is close enough to make the power plugs spark, I think nothing can do.

But also it happens that Windows cannot bear a power cut. Once I lost a file like that, and had to run scandisk to purge any false entry. But bad softs too can play tricks, such as softs written in C:. This language can use indexes on the whole drive, so in case of any bad functionning it can write anywhere (anywhere will be in most case on the famous FAT, which index is near zero) and I had my first big crash like that. There is no protection against this, except... making backups.

To avoid any window problem, I tried Linux... but there are OTHERS problems there and I quickly prefered to come back to Windows!

I have confirmed from others who lost electronics that we had a power surge. But it was during a nice sunny day, not a storm, so I had no way to predict it.

[deglr6328]

I have confirmed from others who lost electronics that we had a power surge.  But it was during a nice sunny day, not a storm, so I had no way to predict it.

If the drive spins up and you hear the heads clicking away you might have luck with the PCB replacement thing. Cheaper than the 500-1000$ you're likely to spend on sending it away for repair.

[Jeff7]

I've got a SATA removable hard drive bay, and I use a program called Second Copy 2000. At least once a week, I pop the drive in, and fire up Second Copy. It doesn't make a full system backup, but it does back up everything important to me. I figure that if I have a catastrophic system failure, I'll need a new motherboard or other major components, which would likely need a reinstallation of Windows anyway.
I also run RAID 5, so if I lose one drive, my data's still safe.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

I have confirmed from others who lost electronics that we had a power surge.  But it was during a nice sunny day, not a storm, so I had no way to predict it.

Alas these surges have industrial or accident origin, they are unpredictable. The only protection is a battery or converter. and to DISCONNECT THE BACKUP SYSTEM WHEN NOT IN USE, otherwise it will break up too!!

Power problems can be voltage spikes, overvoltage or undervoltage, or, in remote or undevelopped places, frequency shifts or more vicious things such as switching from a power source to another with a different phase. Usually this will result in an overvoltage applied to the electronics. In extreme cases, everythings burns, but more viciously only some parts will break up leading to odd behaviours.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

But in most cases these efforts are never put to the test -

Two times I had a big crash, and backups were my only data. But back ups are also very useful, only yesterday I unawarely crushed a file with another, and I was happy tu reover if from a bach up I did only some hours before...

... backup is a religious experience in most cases. People obey certain rules, and carry out various rituals, in the hope that they will be saved from eternal torture AKA data loss. But in most cases these efforts are never put to the test - it's all a promise! Backup regimes which don't involve recovery demonstrations are almost worthless (now, as for the comparison with religions...).

religion is a back up of our soul... for when the BIG CRASH will come.

[lyford]

Thank you all for your kind words.  I am currently getting messages of either the hard drive being "unmountable" and other failure messages.  Yuck (I am currently using my wife's computer, which, being a Macintosh, is something I know nothing about).

As a last resort, you might try pulling the drive and putting it into a cheap USB external case and see if the Mac will mount it on the desktop through USB.... I have had success with this in the past with disks that can't be mounted by Windows but the Mac (if it's a recent one using OS X) can still access. But I would try this after your usual suspects....

[RNeuhaus]

I got a relatively inexpensive but blazingly fast 120 GB external hard drive.  I have Restrospect Express set up to automatically do a complete backup of the laptop every week and incremental backups every evening after I have gone to bed.  Added bonus - I have all my iTunes music stored on it rather than my laptop's hard drive.  I also back up important files to CDs, which I store in a fireproof safe that's rated for storing computer media.

I like your detail. It is very practical to have a hand free for that tedious backup.

Rodolfo

[RNeuhaus]

Ted,

I have enclosed a URL where you can select some useful software to recover data from the damaged HD. Hope you might find some useful tool.

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_desc...id,20880,00.asp

There are some that are free (shareware)

Rodolfo

[RNeuhaus]

I have confirmed from others who lost electronics that we had a power surge.  But it was during a nice sunny day, not a storm, so I had no way to predict it.

Yes, I think if you buy a external power supply with voltage regulator and spike suspressor might protect your PC. Always buy it to protect all sensitive electronic instrument.

Rodolfo

[ElkGroveDan]

Well Ted your loss has been a reminder to us all. I realized how lax I've been and took this opportunity to run a full backup onto my alternate utility drive and schedule regular weekly backups. I've also gone and ordered a stand alone backup drive. When I think of the years of work I have on here, and like you I have saved every email (from home and work) going back to 1995. There's too much at stake to let it all go poof because I was lazy or foolishly frugal over a couple hundred dollars of equipment.

Let us know how it goes (Too bad you weren't committing crimes. I am told that the FBI can retrieve data from darn near any loss or damage situation including full formatting)

[jamescanvin]

Well I now know what I'm going to do right after catching up on UMSF, I hate to think about how much I've done since my last backup.

[tedstryk]

Well, I am slowly recovering. My wife and I are off to Las Vegas in a few minutes, and when I get back on Monday, I am going to try to get everything back one more time before sending the disk to a clean room.

[Nix]

Have a nice trip tedstryk. Good luck on the recovery!

Nico

[tedstryk]

Bad news....


"Dear Mr. Stryk
Unfortunately we are not going to be able to recover your data because one of the heads inside was broken and it damage the surface of the platter so there is nothing we can do. There is no charge and we will ship y"ou back your drive on Monday 1-30-06
Thank you for your kind attention."

Ughhhh.....I have a few other options, but it looks bad.

[deglr6328]

eughh horrible. sorry to hear it! I am curious to know the next step though....broken head clanking around in there would certainly be my dead end! Contact the NSA?

[tedstryk]

eughh  horrible. sorry to hear it! I am curious to know the next step though....broken head clanking around in there would certainly be my dead end! Contact the NSA? 

I am going to send it to a few other places that might be a bit more sophisticated...hopfully they can get something.

[djellison]

So sad - it's a lesson we all go thru at some point, I genuinely feel your pain -it's horrid.

Doug

[Bob Shaw]

If push comes to shove, buy a duplicate drive off eBay and start pootering about yourself. You might get lucky.

All in all, though, a sad loss!

Bob Shaw

[tedstryk]

So sad - it's a lesson we all go thru at some point, I genuinely feel your pain -it's horrid.

Doug

The biggest lesson I have learned from this is to not be lazy about leaving backup drives plugged in to the main machine.

[ljk4-1]

Hey - does THIS Web site have proper backups? Too much important information and images to lose here.

On a related note, a warning about the short lifetimes of burned CDs:

http://msn.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,...00.asp?GT1=7645

[nprev]

There are some nice USB-connected backup HDs on the market now; I gotta get one myself, and soon. Saw a 120 GB advertised for $99.00...

[djellison]

Hey - does THIS Web site have proper backups? 

Nahh - I thought I'd just let it crash and loose everything at some point - I didn't think anyone would mind or notice.

In actual fact, database ( i.e. the text content, forums, members etc ) backups are taken daily, and stored on my laptop, my desktop machine, and ftp'd to a machine at a geographically distant site.

The attachments are downloaded weekly, and again, copies are held here at home, and elsewhere and regularly dumped to CD-R (soon to be DVD-R given the volume)

Doug

[tedstryk]

One thing I have done is dug through all my old posts to dig up images.

[ljk4-1]

Nahh - I thought I'd just let it crash and loose everything at some point - I didn't think anyone would mind or notice.

In actual fact, database ( i.e. the text content, forums, members etc ) backups are taken daily, and stored on my laptop, my desktop machine, and ftp'd to a machine at a geographically distant site.

The attachments are downloaded weekly, and again, copies are held here at home, and elsewhere and regularly dumped to CD-R (soon to be DVD-R given the volume)

Doug

All very nice, but have you stored them in a titanium-lined bomb shelter buried fifty meters underground to survive any apocalypse for future generations when civilization is rebuilt?

If you put all this info on DVD, you should consider selling it. I am sure there are many space buffs and professionals who would like a copy in one or two neat packages for their libraries.

Hey, was that sarcasm?!

[deglr6328]

Whilst you may not appreciate this in your current state of loss, this Gizmodo post about a musical competition using actual sounds from crashing hard hard drives (which have been generously supplied by Hitachi themselves) is immensely amusing. Some of them are really quite creative.

[ugordan]

Sorry to bring out an age old thread, but I wanted to share another bad experience with you. Not that you particularly want to hear about it, think of it more as a warning to what could also easily happen to you. Also, sorry for the longish post.

Basically, two days ago the crappy power supply of my machine went. Not so much in a blow-up way, but stank the whole place up with a charming smell of burned electronics. Just before bedtime, too (how's that for a good night wish...). So naturally, I buy a better less crappy one the next day and plug everything in. Sure enough, the machine won't boot. Not a beep out of it. My worst fears seemed to be coming true -- the PSU dragged everything down with it!
I didn't so much care about hardware, you can always replace that stuff. It's all the data and code and images I had sitting on my hard drive and working on these past months. I know what you're all thinking: how can you be such a dumbass not to do regular backups and the sort. Basically, once you NOT do it in a while, the amount of stuff to backup becomes overwhelming, even when using DVDs. So it kills the slightest urge in you to actually DO the backup. You always have that thought in the back of your head that the next moment you could lose everything, period. You just tell yourself you can't be that unlucky. Failures happen to other people, after all.

Unlike Ted's hard drive disaster, however, I consider myself very lucky with the outcome. While it's now obvious that either the MBO or CPU bought the farm (or both, or even the VGA and RAM), I'm breathing again. I've checked the hard drive on my roommate's machine (am actually writing this off his rig) and IT'S ALIVE! All the data seems to be safe and sound. Phew...

Next comes assessing the total damage and doing repair. You can bet my first order of business once I'm back up will be dumping whatever I hold dear onto whatever amount of DVDs it takes.

Now, I'm not a naive person to think this experience will change me in the long run... I'm way too lazy a person for that. I'm bound to get burned in the future, too.
Maybe, though, this story will help a few of you that just needed that last, small push to do the right thing and BACKUP your data. Trust me, the inconvenience of losing an hour or so backuping is nothing compared to the sour taste of losing everything down the drain.

[tedstryk]

Ouch...glad you retrieved your data. I back my data up onto a 250 GB external drive. Same process as before, except I no longer keep it attached to the main machine.

[nprev]

Thanks for the cautionary note, UGordan. I got 3 years worth of work on my poor old beat-up laptop plus my master's thesis outline, and I haven't backed up a thing. I'm gonna go out tomorrow @ buy one of those external USB drives...anything else is not an option!