Harddrive crashed on cpu LOST EVERYTHING!!!

[bphillips330]

Yeah!!!!! Although there is one bright spot, For some reason last week, I went through and backed all of my raw images to dvd!! I do keep secondary backup on my old computer and through my network copy stuff over. I have been real bad recently with transferring stuff over there. So long story short. I lost everything else on my other drives Yeah, i am rather annoyed. This Seagate drive is only 6 months old

2 questions:

1) anybody now of any way to get information off of the drive. It is SATA and i can't even get the computer to recognize the drive. It is a Seagate barracuda 250 gig drive. I have to ship the computer back to hp so they can bench test the computer. Seems kind of ridiculous to me ( i am VERY familiar with computers) they could have shipped me the drive and i could install it. But every time i talk to there "tech" support it is a joke. I am not even going to get started there.

2) What is a good back up software. I am looking for something that i can tell it to back up certain directories every week, or certain time. Then either have it back it up to dvd ( i realize that i will have to be there to change disks) or to my other computer with multiple hard drives in there.

also with this back up program. i am going to get the computer back with new disk image on it. Is there a good program (i have used Norton ghost) to take an Image of the install. I usually reinstall my computer every 3-6 months. I will put in hp disks to re image then install photoshop, office, dvd programs, etc... which can take a very long time. What i want to do is install everything. then make an image of that so i can just re image and have everything good to go from that point.

[20droger]

Contact immediately a good data recovery company. Most likely, you'll have to ship them the drive.

[bphillips330]

yeah, but how much does that cost?

[Sp00ks]

yeah, but how much does that cost?

It's very expensive from my experience.

[JimAskew]

Hi,

I had a similar crash two years ago. My solution was to buy a second HD and then use Acronis backup s/w to back up the main drive weekly. During the week I backup individual new photo folders manually to a third HD as a temp measure.

Another good thing with Acronis is that you can make a CD "recovery" disk and if you main drive fails then you can boot from the CD and use the backup files to run things. When you replace the failed main drive you can restore all your files and s/w using the Acronis utilities.

Acronis was recommended by my company's IT folks and it is the s/w we use at the office. Here is a link:

http://www.acronis.com/

[Dan-o]

I believe it is 1 to 2K.

[steved110]

That acronis link is interesting, but that is serious money for a home PC user - is there any software available for backups that is more suited to a home user?

I back my photoshop files up, on DVD and onto an nexternal hard drive. what I'd really like to do is make a carbon copy of my C drive and put it onto the external hard drive, but it won't drag and drop that way - some files copy, others won't and the whole process just stops.

[timbernet]

That acronis link is interesting, but that is serious money for a home PC user - is there any software available for backups that is more suited to a home user?

I back my photoshop files up, on DVD and onto an nexternal hard drive. what I'd really like to do is make a carbon copy of my C drive and put it onto the external hard drive, but it won't drag and drop that way - some files copy, others won't and the whole process just stops.

This is free and works quite well: http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm

Compresses stuff into ZIP files, will split the ZIP into mutliple files of your size (CD, DVD, etc) - can upload via FTP to a server... Very cool!

[EOS_JD]

Send the hard drive to a data recovery company. DO NOT send to HP as theyll more than likely try to reformat it!!

Sending it to a data recovery company though is VERY expensive!!! I was quoted around £300 (US $600) but the US may be slightly cheaper.

If you can't get the info off it, I'd send the drive back to Seagate directly. Check their website as it's probably still under warranty by them and you should be able to ship and get a new drive back pretty quickly.

(My experience was with a maxtor disk and they actually send a bigger drive out to you before you return the old one.)

Search the web for backup software there's lots. I use the software that came with my seagate external drive (BounceBack).

Sorry to hear of your problem but it does happen. I've lost 2 drives and now regularly backup everything - I nolw have 1.55Tb of space over 6 hard drives ranging from 200Gb-400Gb each.

[EOS_JD]

check this

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=Serial_ATA_(SATA)_Troubleshooter&vgnextoid=85a34a3cdde5c010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

[Quad]

You might look at Retrospect from Dantz. I got it with a Maxtor one touch drive a long time ago and a newer copy with the Western Digital class action lawsuit. But I think it retails in the $100 range. It is a bit strange in its setting up and it will not log onto my network from its auto setting (I probably have something set wrong as it will do it if I tell it to run the script from a shortcut or menu). It makes recovery disks as well but Ghost is probably the best program for doing that.

You could try to put the seagate into a external harddrive box to see if you can read it. Recovery services have come down in price, a few months ago a friend had his jpegs extracted from a dead drive and he paid $500. Still not cheap.


Just noticed the Cobian link that looks like something to check out. Heck i am going to get the code as well give the kid something to do since exams are almost over.

[Quad]

Oh can you RAID 1 on your motherboard or get a software controller that has monitoring software with it and use that. Drives are cheap these days and most boards now have some soft raid facilities, I even recently got a board that has a hardware raid chip (no drivers needed yeah). A little late an all but if you have it maybe the mojo of just having it will prevent you from ever needing it.

[cosworth]

I sent a dell HD to a reocvery firm back east after encountering some insane turbulence over the Great Lakes. Luckily it was a dead motor, still cost $1400. Got my HDD back with a couple DVDs of data.

Luckily this was on the (former) company dime, not mine.