[m0ofassa]

toss it in the freezer, rip everything from it. Throw it in the bin.

 

[gadgetman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by iriverdude /img/forum/go_quote.gif Unfortuantly you've found out the hard way and 5 years of data is quite a lot. I would learn from this perhaps go on a computer course (not how to use Windows, but actually what's in the computer case).

Or she can move to a mac, and get a free and immediately usable incremental offline backup app that can be turned on by a single-click in the OS
And spend her life living 'normally'.

Disclaimer: This is coming from an ex-overclocking Windows gamer, that has administered various *Nix and BSD variants in enterprise environments. Yep, I'm an Apple fanboy now cause the users that I've converted to Apple have become happier, more productive AND MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, THEY'VE BECOME LESS OF A PROBLEM FOR ME TO SUPPORT

 

[krmathis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tigress /img/forum/go_quote.gif as far as krmathis please you dont have to be that heartless...it is not as if I jumped on purpose on the disk to make it crash

Yeah, I know its a bit harsh/heartless. But I stand by what I said...
Everyone using a computer should be aware that they are not built to last forever, and most often fail when you least want it to. Hence backup is crucial.

But I guess you know so by now!

 

[Gamerphile]

Very resent files have backup on a 16GB key i always carry with me - even the latest albums I ripped to FLAC. Very old files are on old drives which are stored another place. Important files are both offline and online stored. Most files are both on the houses main desktop which has a 1TB drive and ether of the houses laptops. The digital cameras pictures are often backup to the key and desktop while still keeping them on the camera memory. Email and Gmail is often used - especially the gmail document system for sharing in groups. All campus files are stored/backuped via an online system which has backup and can be acessed from via the Internet also. Usually both laptop and memory key copies are made of campus files several time a day.

Considering having a huge backup media center system in the basement:

1. All system should have access to this 24/7.
2. Access from the PS3 via media software
3. Online access and monitoring remotely.
4. Both wireless and wired connection to LAN network and internet.
5. Most data should be stored, automated backup of all the houses data carriers.
6. Including one psychical enterprise quality drive which has permanent online mirror for documents and fotos etc.
7. Replacing all desktops and laptops harddrives with SSD's to quite them down and speed them up.
8. Anti-theft and anti-flood houseing etc. with separate backup power system for powerspike protection and less risk of drive failures.
9. For all out solution it would also have mobile network connection, GPS and motion sensors etc. for intrusion and theft detection.
10. Also data could be encrypted but that would take speed and possibly give problems with recovery after drive failure etc.

How ever an solution with an offsite backup provider which constantly backup via fast internet connection could be a cheaper solution long term.

 

[boomy3555]

Quote:

Originally Posted by azncookiecutter /img/forum/go_quote.gif Toss it in the freezer for the night, then try to plug it in again.

If you do the Freezer trick be sure to put it in a ziplock and suck out all the air with a straw in the corner as you zip it,. This will help prevent Ice crystals from forming on the boards. ( Very Bad)
I recovered over 300 gb with this trick. I Know it's hard to take and a B^&*ch of a learning experience. I have 3 external hard drives that do automatic b/u's every night.

 

[olblueyez]

I hope you find a solution.

 

[T_K]

Sorry to hear that... that's why I see every PC with a single HDD as crippled... my current PC has 4 identical HDDs in RAID 0+1 and I still realise I should do backups every now and then...

 

[jsaliga]

Quote:

Originally Posted by iriverdude /img/forum/go_quote.gif If you've ever worked in IT you just know how stupid users are.

Perhaps, but rubbing someone's nose in their own ignorance and misery in a time of crisis is not especially helpful and borders on cruelty. If you can't offer any helpful suggestions then you should just remain silent.

I am an IT professional as well as a consultant with 30 years of technical experience. I cannot tell you how often I find compromised backups (or no backups at all) in corporate environments. So if there are businesses out there getting it wrong and putting themselves at risk then it is easy to understand how a home user with no knowledge of IT might not be implementing best practices in how they manage and use their computer. Calling them stupid just hangs a bad rap on IT people and gives the impression that they lack compassion and are interested only in blaming users for all the world's technology woes.

To the OP, it would seem that all of the helpful advice that can be offered has already been given. Best of luck to you.

--Jerome

 

[gadgetman]

I completely agree.. to make such insensitive comments about her predicament is a blatant show off of IT Mastery and failure to understand a basic social skill.

 

[boomy3555]

One more thing. I thought the hard drive has crashed on my Emachines desktop. I took is to the local computer repais shop and they diagnosed it for free. ( Just a few minutes for a true geek). It turned out to be the power supply. even though it looked like it was getting power to all of the compnents it did not. It fried the mortherboard but the HD was till ok. They put the HD into an external HD box and it''s now plugged into my other computer as an external 200 gb HD. Some times we just need to think outside the box and not assume that it's the hard drive. there are so many other things that can mimmic a hard drive crash.

45.00 for the box and 20 for labor Can't beat that if it works.

 

[saintalfonzo]

This is why I keep no less than 2 external backups of everything... Oh, and the IT nerds are lucky to have jobs sitting around doing nothing all day. I swear, out of all the hospitals I've worked at I've never seen so many people in a department who get paid for doing almost nothing all day. The bankers' hours must be nice too.

 

[boomy3555]

Recovery suggestions please. I think her royal Tigress has beat herself up enough about, shoulda, woulda, couldas.

 

[jsaliga]

I think that ground has been pretty thoroughly covered. Here is a video on Youtube that discusses the "Click of Death" hard drive failure and liklihood of recovery.

+ YouTube Video​

ERROR: If you can see this, then YouTube is down or you don't have Flash installed.

There are scores of data recovery firms out there, and some are better than others. If you are going to entrust the recovery job to a firm specializing in this kind of work then ask up front what their success rate is on click of death recoveries. If they beat around the bush and are reluctant to give you their success rate then hang up the phone and move on to another company. The chances of success are very small in these cases and the cost is very high. A corporation wouldn't give spending a few thousand dollars or more on disk recovery a second thought even when the probability of success is very small. The alternative is permanent data loss.

Forget about the idea that software can help you. It cannot recover data from a disk that has failed in this way, and any advertising of a software product to the contrary is false.

Now that the OP knows that backups are important because a hard disk can fail, it is important to find backup software and media that is reliable and trustworthy so this problem doesn't happen again in the future. I can't really give you specific recommendations because even on my home network I use an enterprise class backup solution with bare metal restore capabilities and this is not something a non-technical person would find easy to deploy and use. Do your homework. I know Acronis True Image is a popular product among home users, but I can't speak to its efficacy. Most software vendors will let you try their products for up to a month. Whatever you end up using do not make the mistake of setting your backup schedule and then never checking your backup status. Backup solutions can break too. A customer I was doing an independent IT infrastructure assessment for was recently horrified when I told them that their big SQL Server database has not had a successfull backup in several months. It would also be advisable to regularly test your ability to restore from your backups. Most backup software can perform redirection of restores. So if the original data was located on D:\Data you can do a test restore of that to a different disk, such as E:\Data or a different path such as D:\TestRestore so you don't overwrite your data. The time to find out that your backups are not good isn't when you need to restore after a disaster.

--Jerome

 

[jsaliga]

Quote:

Originally Posted by T_K /img/forum/go_quote.gif Sorry to hear that... that's why I see every PC with a single HDD as crippled... my current PC has 4 identical HDDs in RAID 0+1 and I still realise I should do backups every now and then...

You are absolutely correct. RAID is no substitute for a backup. I have seen disk arrays and SANs fail before and loose all of their data. A fault tolerant RAID will not protect you from accidential file deletions or file corruption that can occur from many causes.

--Jerome

 

[iriverdude]

So what's the point of RAID then? Both of my NAS's plus desktops have RAID support never used it properly. Did try RAID0 for speed checks.