[X] My Assistant

[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.