Backup and save yourself

[Howdy]

Last week my hard drive died and took out the power supply too. So all my efforts to encourage others to share web links just might come in handy as I lost everything.  I need to rebuild all the links  for information and websites.  Years of research lost with a snap and puff of smoke!

I have heard the stories of backing up computers and always figured someday I really should get around to it myself. However someday never comes unless we force it or have it forced on us so now I have the chance to start afresh with an all new hard drive and files. Maybe I really should think about backing up my files. Anyone have a round-to-it laying around?

Back up and save yourself the excitement. 

Howdy "the lost"

[Tom]

Sorry to hear about the loss, but don't give up yet.  There are folks and software that might be able to recoup your drive.  Don't dispose of it until you hear from one.  We have some fellows on the forum that are quite savvy in that respect. 

[Warbird]

Howdy, uh, Howdy.  Sorry to hear of the loss.  Can you describe how you know for sure the hard drive is dead?  All hope may not yet be lost.

I'm going offline for the rest of the evening but will post more tomorrow.  As Tom mentioned, we have quite a few folks around who have knowledge in this area.

[Howdy]

If only that could be financialy worth it.  The computer shop says I have a dead short and the drive does not spin at all.  I called a data recovery place and they said if the drive does not spin, it would be a "clean room" repair for around $2500.00 or so. 

I replaced the power supply the dead drive killed, and purchased a new 500 G Western Digital drive.  The system is in the shop now getting Microsoft Media Center OS installed and if I can find the disks, I will try to recover as much of the programs I can.  Really hate losing several years of family pictures, music I have saved, and the games I bought for the grandkids off the net though. 

Any suggestions would be welcome as I am not an expert by anyone's opinion.

Howdy

[Norm]

The best hope is that it is a common maker of HD's and the I-O controller can be swapped to make the drive run again. I can't make any guarantees but if you want to go to the trouble of sending me your drive I'll have my son take a look and see if it can be saved. We would not charge for this as your a forum member.

Send me a PM if you want to try this.

[Gary_C]

I went thru this last year and was fortunate that my hard drive was still spinning and was readable. It still would not boot as the operating system was not functional. I got all my data and files back with the help of some very good people on this forum but had to reload or replace all the software that I was using.

[SPIKER]

We has a Maxor Drive die once.   It was taken out by a FAT virus that wipped the FAT files. the data is there but nothing left pointing it out. :(   Like others said it can be retrieved but cost ?  The Drive I have I could format it and probably RUN it but not worth the worry or cost in lost data in case there is/was soemthing really wrong with it.   We just the x-mas bought a 1 terabyte drive for 89 bucks, Western Digital cant beat the price...   She was doing backups with 2 software programs and messed it up...   now her 50Gig disk drive has added 600 gig of data onto it...  :( : >:(   SHE thinks I should have to fix it  lol...   and NO I dont let HER onto MY pc or Laptop...

;)

Mark

[sprucebunny]

Sorry to hear that, Howdy. I know how upsetting it can be.
I've had it happen and lost 1600 pictures ( which is how I remember things ! )

Now I have two external drives that I copy onto now and then..... must be time to do it again.....

[John Bartley]

Some time ago I had the same thing happen.....my drive stopped spinning. I looked carefully at it and saw an aluminum tape cover over a hole in the drive. I took off the tape, fired up the computer, and reached in thru' the hole with a pencil eraser to give the platter a spin ( a trick told to me by my computer geek brother...) and sure enough, away it went. It worked just long enough to back up the drive.......

cheers

John

[PineNut]

I have a backup procedure that I have used for about a year. Both computers in the house have two hard drives. One drive (C drive) has the operating system and programs on it. The other drive (D drive) has data on it. Anything important that I don't want to loose gets put on the D drive on both computers. Each week both computers get backed up to an external hard drive which is then stored off site. The next week everything gets backed up again and the hard drives are exchanged with the off site drives. This gives me six copies of my data, two of which are off site. The biggest problem is making sure that I do the backups.

[woodsteach]

All I can say is Carbonite! online backup has saved my bacon once and like most of you the pictures would have been the greatest loss.

woodsteach

[pineywoods]

Hey, backup is cheap. a second hard drive is good, but better yet is a backup to cd. A hard drive is still a mechanical device and all of them will eventually fail, even sitting on the shelf. I do a fair amount of computer work, at least 75 % of the dead ones are hard drive failures. I have a bunch of stuff on my computer, pics, sawmill records, bank statements, family history, etc. I do a backup to a second hard drive frequently, then copy off to a cd. Stay away from the re-writable cds, they will loose data over time. I buy the regular write-once cds in 100 packs for 10 cents each. they are permanent, normally can't be erased or written over.