Hard drive crashed...You better make a back-up

I had to learn a painful lesson last week, I have zero backups and my hard drive crashed, I lost everything.
Ive had my HP about 3 and a half years and it never gave me a problem. Then it started getting sluggish, then I lost some windows drivers. So basically I worked on my computer for a few days before I realized my hard drive was failing.
I always thought when a hard drive crashes its instant. Not true, mine died a slow and painful death and I thought it was some freaky virus the whole time.
Finally figured it out after spending 130 bucks for a new hard drive. My computer works perfect now.
Word of warning, back-up your coumputer asap. I lost things that I havent even realized are gone yet, and thats scary.

hmmmmmmmm For you my friend, I have two words.

Time Machine.

Love me Love my mac

MonKey



P.S. I also have a PC errrr just gunna pop home and back it up, last time I did that was........

MonKey

Well I would think a mech. failure in a hard drive is bad enough even a mac couldnt help.
When the little elect. motor quits working doesnt matter what operating sytem you have.

those two words would be more like "External Drive".
i can take everything i have with me anywhere, anytime.

Here's a little tip for you.

Now that you have another hard drive going, take your old crashed hard drive, put it in a freezer baggie. Put it in the freezer for 30-45 minutes.

Quickly hook it up as a slave drive (secondary). Use dos to browse to it, and copy everything you can before the bearing gets hot and seizes up again. (external USB hookup is better).

I can't even count how many executives butts I've managed to salvage like this, without the need for a $3k clean room reconstruction.

Best of luck
makeitso

Not that it's guaranteed, but I would follow makeitso's advice. I, too, have frozen a drive or ten and am typically able to resurrect them long enough to retrieve required data.

makeitso

[edit: to add]
I've left them in the freezer for upwards of 2-3 hours, if that's what it takes.

[edit on 2-11-2007 by 12m8keall2c]

Originally posted by earth2
Well I would think a mech. failure in a hard drive is bad enough even a mac couldnt help.
When the little elect. motor quits working doesnt matter what operating sytem you have.

Totally agree, sometime the SHTF, but if have an auto back-up system, you don't lose the said S.

With the freezer trick, does it work with wives as well, cos mine has a huge memory issue?

MonKey



P.S. Hope you can get all ya bits back!

Not much you can do with a mechanical problem with what happen like you said, but I agree about the extrenal drive.

Obviously back up is the best solution, but you can waste alot of time constantly backing everything up. Even the one-touch systems take thirty minutes and are you going to do that everyday. Not many do, and they get tired and stop backing up all together.

This is what I do.....

I have a laptop that I only use. No desktop, but the same process can be done with both.

I have three harddrives. One in my laptop, the one in my external usb drive.

Those two are identical too eachother. I set one up and clone the other with Norton Ghost.

The one that is in my computer is set up with Deepfreeze a software that encryps the directory and loads that image everytime you boot up. So if anything happens like malware attack or power failure, 99 percent of the time you are good to go when you boot up because the computer can't be changed.

Well, if your computer can't be changed how do you save your work and downloads? That is what the third harddrive is for. You are always working on your external harddrive and that is the one that gets all the mechanical wear and tear. So make it a cheap one not too large, just large enough for you to work and download stuff for a month and then transfer the data you wanna archive on the other harddrives.

Works for me. I was at the library and everyones laptop majorly crashed and couldn't boot up a year ago. I booted right back up like nothing ever happend!

Many people thought that I was the one that did something malicious, which got me alittle nervous.

Good luck with your new setup no matter what you decide to do.



[edit on 2-11-2007 by MrMysticism]

Dude, I can 110% sympathize with you. I had the same thing happen to me about a month or so ago. I had both HD's (60 and 120bg drives) seize up on me one day, and I was basically up SHTs creek unless I wanted to pay 1700 for the Geek Squad to give me back my 6 years of data. Whatev Geek Squad. That seemed like a total rip off, but then again my drives were virtually unsalvageable.

Needless to say I have plans to buy a backup drive whenever I get a new PC, but fear not man. Live and learn. I honestly felt like I had lost a longtime pet or friend when it all crashed, but its not like babies are dying. That stuff can all be replaced...hopefully.

I feel your pain bro. If you need moral support, I got your back.

Well, now that you have a new hard-drive, I have one word for you:

SMART

Most computers, I do not know why, do not have the SMART feature enabled on the BIOS. This feature reads some counters from the disk and reports a coming failure if some of those counters reach pre-determined (by the manufacturer) values.

As soon as the BIOS warns about an upcoming failure, backup everything and replace the disk, I have never seen a disk that shows a SMART warning last more than a week.