[X] My Assistant

[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.