musicmind
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Very sorry to hear about your music loss Tyson, I can imagine it was an awesome collection. I hope somehow one of your disks can be recovered, at least even partially.
In the Blink of an Eye - entire music library gone!
- Thread starter Tyson
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Headphoneus Supremus
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Dude! You should absolutely check out SpinRite. This is a truly one-of-a-kind piece of sofware written by a genius in the field. (Security researcher Steve Gibson. I absolutely adore listening to his podcast -- Security Now -- on the twit.tv netcast network.)
Unless you have actual failing electronics (which is quite rare), there's a VERY good chance -- much more often than not -- that SpinRite will recover all your data and return your drive to its original, working state! It does this by employing all sorts of tricks like spinning the platter at different speeds and approaching the damaged sector with the head at different speeds from different angles. It's magic, I tell you!
So next time someone you know is devistated by has a dead hard drive, suggest SpinRite!
(Oh, and you're supposed to also run it every few months to keep those bad sectors flagged so you don't run into these issues in the first place.)
GRC*|*SpinRite 5.0 to 6.0**
It's $90, but that's a bargain compared to the hundreds or thousands you'd pay to a professional shop.
Good luck!
Unless you have actual failing electronics (which is quite rare), there's a VERY good chance -- much more often than not -- that SpinRite will recover all your data and return your drive to its original, working state! It does this by employing all sorts of tricks like spinning the platter at different speeds and approaching the damaged sector with the head at different speeds from different angles. It's magic, I tell you!
So next time someone you know is devistated by has a dead hard drive, suggest SpinRite!
(Oh, and you're supposed to also run it every few months to keep those bad sectors flagged so you don't run into these issues in the first place.)
GRC*|*SpinRite 5.0 to 6.0**
It's $90, but that's a bargain compared to the hundreds or thousands you'd pay to a professional shop.
Good luck!
ozz
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As another poster said with that large of a collection at least get a 2nd
opinion.
opinion.
olblueyez
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Can you take your laptop to the library and start ripping? There is a record of your donation yes?
sdheda
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This has really gotten me to rethink about the time frame of building my backup server.
Hard drives are cheap now a days, and luckily music files don't take up that much space. You should consider keeping an offsite backup as well. For example, at your relatives house, safety deposit box, etc.
Hard drives are cheap now a days, and luckily music files don't take up that much space. You should consider keeping an offsite backup as well. For example, at your relatives house, safety deposit box, etc.
bungle
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Quote:
Did you do an MD5 sum of the contents of the disc so that you can test the disc at regular intervals? DVDs are good, but sometimes they fail/degrade, and if you don't test you'll never know. EDIT: I didn't mean to single you out - that goes for all backups/media.
I still have all my physical CDs, but I also have an external drive I keep at work that has a copy of all my files that are on the main computer. Not only do I get to listen to everything at work, it also serves as an off-site backup.
Quote:
I have had a spreadsheet for as long as I can remember collecting CDs - glad I'm not the only one. I don't even know why I started, since at the time I was young and probably didn't think of things like insurance. I have the price I paid for every CD on there and the order I bought them (which is also the order I store them in), and more recently the date purchased. I've also started marking which I have gone back and re-ripped as FLAC. Not entirely useful, but that doesn't stop me.
| Originally Posted by HipHopScribe /img/forum/go_quote.gif I completely agree about back-ups, though I'll say that I prefer DVD-R backups, hard drives are too iffy. |
Did you do an MD5 sum of the contents of the disc so that you can test the disc at regular intervals? DVDs are good, but sometimes they fail/degrade, and if you don't test you'll never know. EDIT: I didn't mean to single you out - that goes for all backups/media.
I still have all my physical CDs, but I also have an external drive I keep at work that has a copy of all my files that are on the main computer. Not only do I get to listen to everything at work, it also serves as an off-site backup.
Quote:
| Originally Posted by JayG /img/forum/go_quote.gif I just finished making an Excel spreadsheet of my entire collection just for this purpose, so that if anything happened to the CDs, I would have a list for insurance purposes and so that I could remember what all I had. |
I have had a spreadsheet for as long as I can remember collecting CDs - glad I'm not the only one. I don't even know why I started, since at the time I was young and probably didn't think of things like insurance. I have the price I paid for every CD on there and the order I bought them (which is also the order I store them in), and more recently the date purchased. I've also started marking which I have gone back and re-ripped as FLAC. Not entirely useful, but that doesn't stop me.
Bunnyears
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Tyson, I know how you are suffering over this. I also have a substantial collection of cds, although I doubt it is as comprehensive or vast as yours was.
While I know that there is no way to replace something that has so much time and effort invested in it, perhaps this might be the perfect time for you to start a new core collection of top notch performances recorded in the best sound possible. The new collection may not be as big, but it can be something equally fine and satisfying.
In the end, a collection of cds is only as important as the music and the music is still out there just waiting for you to find it.
While I know that there is no way to replace something that has so much time and effort invested in it, perhaps this might be the perfect time for you to start a new core collection of top notch performances recorded in the best sound possible. The new collection may not be as big, but it can be something equally fine and satisfying.
In the end, a collection of cds is only as important as the music and the music is still out there just waiting for you to find it.
apatN
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You gave your CDs to a library!
Sorry bro, I guess you had this coming.
fatcat28037
Headphoneus Supremus
Quote:
This is a big deal Tyson, I wouldn't take the word of just one "specialist". Check the internet for HD recovery specialists. What ever you spend recovering data will be far less than buying the music.
| Originally Posted by Tyson /img/forum/go_quote.gif I tried taking it to a specialist already and it was (in his words), "toast". |
This is a big deal Tyson, I wouldn't take the word of just one "specialist". Check the internet for HD recovery specialists. What ever you spend recovering data will be far less than buying the music.
JayG
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Quote:
That's pretty callous considering he was trying to do an incredibly generous thing for his community, which I admit that I could never bring myself to do. You obviously couldn't either. I wonder if you could explain why donating thousands of CDs filled with the music that we enjoy so much so that others can discover it and enjoy it as well, regardless of whether they can afford it or not, entitles him to a heartbreaking loss of something he cares so much about and spent so much time, effort, and money on.
| Originally Posted by apatN /img/forum/go_quote.gif You gave your CDs to a library!
|
That's pretty callous considering he was trying to do an incredibly generous thing for his community, which I admit that I could never bring myself to do. You obviously couldn't either. I wonder if you could explain why donating thousands of CDs filled with the music that we enjoy so much so that others can discover it and enjoy it as well, regardless of whether they can afford it or not, entitles him to a heartbreaking loss of something he cares so much about and spent so much time, effort, and money on.
bungle
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Quote:
Not to also be callous, but that makes me think: wouldn't one's fair-use rights to have digital copies end when the physical CD is sold or given away?
| Originally Posted by JayG /img/forum/go_quote.gif That's pretty callous considering he was trying to do an incredibly generous thing for his community |
Not to also be callous, but that makes me think: wouldn't one's fair-use rights to have digital copies end when the physical CD is sold or given away?
ezkcdude
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Quote:
As another poster said, as long as the disc itself is physically intact, you should be able to recover the data. It may cost $1000, but it can be done. Saying the disc is "toast" is something a non-expert like myself would say. He should have been more specific about the problem. Go get a 2nd, 3rd opinion, if necessary. You have nothing to lose at this point.
| Originally Posted by Tyson /img/forum/go_quote.gif I tried taking it to a specialist already and it was (in his words), "toast". |
As another poster said, as long as the disc itself is physically intact, you should be able to recover the data. It may cost $1000, but it can be done. Saying the disc is "toast" is something a non-expert like myself would say. He should have been more specific about the problem. Go get a 2nd, 3rd opinion, if necessary. You have nothing to lose at this point.
Duggeh
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I'd defo take the drive, and the backup drive to another tech for a second opinion. There has to be some very very serious formatting and physical drive damage before data is really unrecoverable, these places might charge a pretty penny, but it'll be less than the cost of new CDs and far less than the cost of the pain and inconvenience you're suffering. If the place you've gone to so far is just your local computer shop or a friend who knows about computers, then level up and find someone who is in the business of data recovery, there's guys who do drives that have been in house fires and low level format recoveries for the police when looking for evidence.
My commiserations to you though. I'd hate for something like this to happen to me.
My commiserations to you though. I'd hate for something like this to happen to me.
zumaro
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Sorry to hear about this loss too - I have all my CDs still, and just the thought of reripping them would be awful, let alone not even having that option.
We had to try and recover a hard disk a couple of months ago at work. After quoting us a price close to $6000 (and a few thousand even to just attempt to salvage data off the disk with no results guaranteed), the specialists still couldn't do anything about it, even after we decided to spend the big bucks. Interesting what the next step would have to be, as the forensics people tell us that the data on these things is hard to destroy, short of melting the disks down.
We had to try and recover a hard disk a couple of months ago at work. After quoting us a price close to $6000 (and a few thousand even to just attempt to salvage data off the disk with no results guaranteed), the specialists still couldn't do anything about it, even after we decided to spend the big bucks. Interesting what the next step would have to be, as the forensics people tell us that the data on these things is hard to destroy, short of melting the disks down.
jsaliga
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