MetallicaJunkie

Has anyone had any luck doing that, one of my hard drives took a crap on me. I had countless RC photos and videos of planes past and present that i will miss.

Springer

My Feedback: (1)

Try putting it in the freezer. I have read that it can get a drive working again for a short time. It depends on why it failed but I think it is worth a try. It won't cost you anything. Here is a link with instructions - http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/200...n-the-freezer/

TomCrump

I know that it can be done, but I don't know how.

After an unsuccessful attempt by my son in law, my wife took my hard drive to work, and one of the techs there retreived my pics for me.

MetallicaJunkie

thank you for the replies, i found a program called "Getdataback" by Runtime and i installed the trial version and it scanned my defective HDD and found all the files that i need back, its really worth the 80 buck it costs to restore them, as those pics/videos are priceless to me

NCBrit

Will you consider backup from this point forward?

Edwin

My Feedback: (2)

I use a Maxtor 500gb usb backup system. Think I paid about $130. Backs up automatically every night at 2 am. Set it up how you want, backs up only what you tell it and when you tell it. A few buddies use an online backup sytem for about $50 a year. The usb disk is only for backup. Too slow for general use. But once it has the first snapshot, it only backs up the changes. With todays pc's and media, you really should backup.
Edwin

daven

My Feedback: (1)

Check out www.tigerdirect.com they have all kinds of portable drives from 250g up to 1 tb very reasonably priced.

I've been keeping a dupe copy of all my pictures, music, and audiobooks on my 500g drive. Works good.

Deadeye

I'll put in my 2 cents as a computer tech and data recovery expert. Hard drives are the #1 point of failure in computers. My computer is on 12 to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I replace my hard drive every two years. If you replace when the drive is healthy, a clone can be perfromed, making an exact copy of the old drive to the new drive. Now, with that being said, out of the thousands of hard drives that I have seen fail, I have only seen 3 that were truly 'unreadable'.

Most times when you can't boot, or you think the hard drive 'crashed', it usually is just a matter of hooking up the bad drive to a healthy machine (or getting an external hard drive USB enclosure) and grabbing your stuff that way. Sometimes recovery software has to be used, but less than 5% of the time. Feel free to ask questions.

RCKen

My Feedback: (9)

As the owner/operator of a Computer Shop I totally agree with Deadeye. Probably the worst thing I ever do in my shop is having to tell people that their data is gone. It's a horrible look on their faces, however........ If the data is important they should have been backing it up. I can't stress this point enough. A hard drive is NOT a secure backup media, because drives to fail. Another point is to make backup and get it OFF SITE!!!! I have lots of clients the brag that they backup every day. I ask where the backups are stored. "Oh, right here next to the computer". I then ask, "What happens when the building burns down?" Usually get dead silence. Insurance will pay to replace computers, but not the data. So if your data is very important get it out of your house.

The way I have my setup is I have a Linux server setup where we save ALL of our important pictures, files, scanned documents, or anything else on in digital format. This server backs up to a second server at my office every night. This way all of our data is duplicated offsite. Now I know everybody can't have a second server like I do, but there are many places on the internet that offer offsite storage on their servers. The cost is usually pretty easy to handle. Another option is to backup your files to a DVD and take them to work with you to store them offsite.

You were lucky that your drive was still able to spin up so you could retrieve your data. I've seen drives that are totally frozen. Had one last summer where I was called in. The only option was to send the drive a data recovery company. The total cost to retrieve the data off of the drive was $4,000. But it was irreplaceable data so the client had no choice but to pay the recovery cost. But this goes back to what I said above, too many don't realize how important backups are until they have a drive failure.

Ken

KW_Counter

Ken,
You left out one very important step - make sure your backups are good.
I lost some data once because the data wasn't backing up the way I thought it was.
Periodically I try and open some data files from my B/U with the operating software, Quickbooks for example, to make sure the data is good.
I'm more comfortable now that I know the data is safe.
I also do a backup before a trip and take the data with me - offsite.
Have a Merry Christmas,
KW_Counter

MetallicaJunkie

most definitely


and i thank you, and everyone else for the good advice

Merry Christmas

bob_nj

My Feedback: (62)

I'm using DiscWizard and a Maxtor drive for my backups.

I guess the age old question is, what is the real difference between cloning and imaging, and which is best for getting information back when needed?



Thanks
Bob

khodges

My Feedback: (1)

My system went south last week, wouldn't come on at all. Just got it back online today found out the power supply had gone bad (was overloaded from adding stuff to the system. The guy who fixed it told me that all my peripherals added up to the exact max output of the supply, and whenever it was all running, and then something like an i-Pod got hooked up to charge, it just had too much load. Over the last couple of weeks it just started dying. The video card gave up, too, he said probably from chronic low voltage because of the marginal power supply. He put in a supply with twice the available output, said I could add whatever I wanted now, also upgraded my video card to the latest and greatest, and increased my RAM to 3 GB.

It doesn't use the tower's power, but I treated myself to a 1TB external drive for a backup system (on sale, cheaper than the 500GB drives were), and also bought a battery backup for the whole thing, it has a surge /lightning suppressor. My last computer got nuked by lightning, but Deadeye got my info back from the harddrive. Lots of irreplaceable pics, I don't want to go through that again. (Thanks again, Deadeye)

Deadeye

[sm=thumbs_up.gif] It was the least I could do for a for a man fighting for my freedom, my friend. 1 TB is HUGE! I put mine on an appliance timer of all things, and just coincide the timer with the time my automatic backups take place. That way the drive doesn't stay on all the time, prematurely wearing it out. Especially true with external drives, as those cases don't have much for airflow. Excessive heat = Excessive wear. I can't wait until these solid state (no moving parts, like your flash drives) drives come down in price. When those are perfected, hard drives physically failing will ALMOST be a thing of the past.

Deadeye

And I should add, power supplies are the #2 point of failure in a computer! I've replaced a pile of them lately because of bad weather, and brown outs, power outages, etc. PROTECT your new power supply with a battery backup. Get a cheapy, for 30 or 40 bucks. Unlike a surge protector, a battery backup will buffer both high and low voltage. Brown outs (low voltage) kills power supplies, and refigerators, and LCD TV's, and I could go on and on.

khodges

My Feedback: (1)

Randy, I like the idea of a timer on the external drive. The other thing I like about it is that it removes the possibility of power spikes killing it, too (if they make it through the surge suppressors) because it's effectively unplugged when the timer has it turned off. It was recommended to me that if I did manual backups to just unplug the drive when I was done, to isolate it. The timer would still do that and allow for automatic backup.

I really didn't need the 1TB capacity, but it was as cheap as the 250 and 500GB drives because it was on sale. It's a Seagate, same as my internal drive, which is "only" 160 GB. It's unreal how fast memories and drives are increasing in capacity. My daughter's new laptop has a 220 GB drive and 3 GB RAM. It hasn't been all that long ago that 3GB would have been a sizeable harddrive.

Question: Can my daughter connect (via USB port) to the external drive and use it to back up her system as well? The drive itself only has the one connection to my desktop, can she connect through one of those ports?

Deadeye

Ken,
You could configure hers to backup if you are on the same workgroup in your network. Your TB drive would have to be right clicked>and shared, etc., etc.. I can list detailed instructions if you would like.