Fair warning: Backup! Backup!

mdroth · December 10th, 2002, 10:10 AM

or suffer my fate.
Lost a 30 gig drive last night full of stuff tagged "to be backed up"

Always read those posts about backing up and thought ahh. never had a problem with losing data, I'll just toss everything on one HD and i'll be fine. Till this morn when I awoke to find that Windows no longer can detect my Hd. Just like that Gone.......

mike

Brainchild · December 10th, 2002, 10:37 AM

Ouch! Sorry man.Been there and done that

viztech · December 10th, 2002, 11:03 AM

I had a machine come in the other day with "my life on that hard drive"

Through a strange occurance, everything in the machine failed from the mobo to the CD Rom drive and floppy!

(Suspect high voltage got through the power supply)

I sold them a replacement computer, but the 7 gig hard drive sits on my shelf. Perhaps I can be a hero some day and figure out how to spin it up and recover the data for her.

The drive passes the shake test (platters intact) but you can see that a chip on the hard drive is blown. It is not detected by the BIOS and does not spin up.

It wasn't worth the big $$ to the owner to send it in to a data recovery outfit, so perhaps I can figure out how to repair it someday.

viz

Peter M · December 10th, 2002, 05:21 PM

You can attempt a circuit board from an exactly identical, working unit. But be aware, every potentially failed attempt at recovering it will make the chances even for professional recovery less likely.

**EvilRick** · December 10th, 2002, 05:43 PM

It's funny you should mention that Peter M. A guy at work tried that w/ his drive. Use the PCB off an identical drive and everything. It had a visibly burned chip. He attached it to the PC, booted went into the BIOS, still wouldn't show. Powered off, turned the drive over, the same exact chip that was fried on his, was now fried on this PCB. I laughed of course because I thought it was a bad idea to begin with. I asked him if he knew for sure the motor inside wasn't fried as well? Instead of one, he had to replace two drives. Tsk,tsk.

Peter M · December 11th, 2002, 04:51 AM

Well, these things might happen ... but on a power surge death, chances are higher that the drive assembly has survived and only the PCB is dead. If the drive died on its own behalf, zapping a chip, then I'd rather not try.

Bob The Great · December 11th, 2002, 04:58 AM

I always try to keep my two PC's almost identical with info, but obviously that would be a gigantic pain to keep everything the same as they are different PC's and so have different needs. What I try to do is keep all the files I download copied on each PC.

linux_guru · December 11th, 2002, 05:39 AM

Call me paranoid but ...............

I backup all my important stuff to my Linux server AND backup to DLT tape every couple of days.

Ming · December 11th, 2002, 12:10 PM

Sorry to hear about your bad luck. I had a similar experience, and yet after a day's time, I fired up the computer and the drive spun fine and worked. Well, I backed everything up immediately. 2 days later, it clicked and clicked and would not read. I don't think that I have learned anything because I didn't actually lose anything other than the hard-drive. While it cost a little money (an old 6 gig ata/66 5400 rpm Quantum) when I bought it, easily replaceable now. As far as important data, it was mostly saved games and maps for those games.

yeadon563 · December 11th, 2002, 12:45 PM

I know what you mean. I used Reg First Aid, and it messed my reg file up. Tried to system restore, but that did work either. Lucky that I didn't have to do a full restore. I had a backup on an old WD 8gig drive.

Still it was a bother to reformat and reload the programs that weren't on the backup H/D. I kept meaning to backup my reg file but always put it off. My advice. make regular backups of your reg files even if you have your drive backed up.

Yeadon563