Always Back-Up

[Kinger]

Well I know this isn't exactly an EOS topic, but I thought I would remind everyone to please back-up your data. Today my hard drive decided to stop spinning, all I get is loud screach, and the computer beeping. I have been meaning to pick up a DVD drive, and back everything up, but I have been putting it off because I have some other things going on, but now it is too late. I have most likely lost all of my work from Nov. 2003 till present. The only good news is I just got an estimate from a Data recovery service and they sound quite optimistic about getting my data back, and I told them I just want the contents of "my documents" back. So they say it will cost me anywhere from $500-$1200 for their services including a $200 nonrefundable "attempt fee."

To make a long story short I hope that everyone learns from my mistake, and BACK-UP.

[Salleke]

Well I know this isn't exactly an EOS topic, but I thought I would remind everyone to please back-up your data. Today my hard drive decided to stop spinning, all I get is loud screach, and the computer beeping. I have been meaning to pick up a DVD drive, and back everything up, but I have been putting it off because I have some other things going on, but now it is too late. I have most likely lost all of my work from Nov. 2003 till present. The only good news is I just got an estimate from a Data recovery service and they sound quite optimistic about getting my data back, and I told them I just want the contents of "my documents" back. So they say it will cost me anywhere from $500-$1200 for their services including a $200 nonrefundable "attempt fee."

To make a long story short I hope that everyone learns from my mistake, and BACK-UP.

There are 2 things you can try to recover your data:

1) Put your harddrive in a other computer as second drive and try to spin it up and make your backup on the c: drive.

2) Before you connect your hardrive to a other computer put it in a plastic zip bag and put it in a refrigirator for 24 hours. At about 3 or 4 degree Celcius. Then take it out the bag and connect it to the pc and now you have a good chance that it will spin up, giving you the chance to make your backup.

Good luck.

[Kinger]

Thanks I will give it a shot tonight, and let you know how it works.

[cmM]

that sucks big time... DVD backups are pretty practical, and a DVD writer is pretty cheap these days.
I hope you get your data back.

[mdr]

My backup policy:
1. Have RAID(1) hard drives in my PC, i.e. automatically a copy of every file on another hard drive.
2. Have an external hard drive for backup of RAW files, which I make directly after uploading them from my CF or FlashTrax.
3. Have just purchased a DVD RW, to replace my weekly backup on CD to DVD.
Is this overkill? Don't think so!

[PhotosGuy]

Is this overkill? Don't think so! Right. I have a 160GB 2nd drive ($60) & back it up to a external drive & CDs. The CDs go to my mother's house & the external drive goes to a place in my house far away from the computer.

[Jim_T]

Yes.. Security goes far beyond simple hard drive failure..

All homes (and the computers within) face external perils. floods, fires, storms, break and enter theft etc.. Lightning hits have taken out more than their fair share of computers and electronic equimpent. Even a non direct lightning strike on a power line, or phone line or cable line a block away can fry devices in your home. If you have home insurance, then you must agree that these perils exist :)

I don't have RAID, but I do have a removable hard drive that I back up to once a week. I also have a DVD burner . I keep my DVD disks in my garage which is 50 feet from the house just as an extra safety measure.

Actually, external hard drive backup is the most convenient.. Just make sure the hard drive doesn't stay in the same computer.

[patrickpkt]

I'm of the RAID and DVD approach (just wrote an incremental backup script to make it even easier for me). My basic policy is to always have the data in at least two places, on the camera and on my workstation, or on the RAID array in my server. I'd also recommend checking your DVD or CD backups periodically. I have one- and two-year-old DVDs that I've burned, fortunately not anything important, that are already failing to read occasionally. If you want to be really paranoid, use a checksumming program to verify the contents of the files on the disks (by checksumming them before burning, and including the results file on the disk itself).

[PhotosGuy]

We get a LOT of micro (2-3 sec) power outages here, and the CyberPower battery back-up has saved my *ss several times when the hard drive was writing.

[elbirth]

There are 2 things you can try to recover your data:

1) Put your harddrive in a other computer as second drive and try to spin it up and make your backup on the c: drive.

2) Before you connect your hardrive to a other computer put it in a plastic zip bag and put it in a refrigirator for 24 hours. At about 3 or 4 degree Celcius. Then take it out the bag and connect it to the pc and now you have a good chance that it will spin up, giving you the chance to make your backup.

Good luck.

I was going to suggest this, but see I was too late seeing this thread. Definitely give this a try before you go and spend almost $1000 on a data recovery place. I've had great past experiences recovering data on dying drives using this method. You have to be patient, though, the drive will most likely be much slower reading your data than it normally would. One of my drives stopped spinning on me that had over 150gigs of a variety of things that I really didn't want to lose, and it took a few hours to copy all of that off to a new drive. Luckily I didn't lose anything using this freezer method.
Depending on how hot the drive gets, it may start failing again during this process. If it does, try putting it back in the freezer for a while before giving up... it may just need to get cold again to loosen it back up.
And be sure to use a zip loc bag and be SURE that it's closed. You don't want condensation to build up on the drive and short it out

[Kinger]

Well
I have a new hard drive on order, so I will give the freezer trick a try once I rebuild my system. It just figures my hard drive goes 3 days after my monitor goes. (Thank God for a Dual Monitor setup) Time to work some overtime.

[Kinger]

Well the nightmare is all over. After some brainstorming during work, and investigation when
I got home this morning it turns out the problem and noise I heard was from the fan on top of the heat sink. My motherboard must have picked up on the problem and wouldn't allow the the system to boot. So I have just ordered a new fan, and a still plan on keeping the hard drive coming (backup). But thank you all for your suggestions, and I have definitly learned my leason.

[Todd Jacobsen]

Go RAID 5.

RAID 1 (Mirror) is a very expensive approach.

Of course, RAID 5 requires 3 HDs, but you get to use 2/3 of the space.

RAID 1, you only use 1/2 of available HD space.

I have 4HDs and with RAID 5, I only lose 25% of my space (instead of half).

[Rob612]

Hi all, just joined this great forum. A few words about me: 44, M, born and raised in Rome, Italy where I still live. Lots of interests, most of them shared with my wife Barbara, among these photography and videography (as of today, fully digital - see signature - but I do come from the old and lovely chemical stuff, worked for 3 years in Eastman Kodak and cannot forget what silver and triacetate can really do), IPSC/IDPA shooting, Scuba difing and - of course, UW photography (not yet UW video, the housings/lightning are definitely too espensive for a decent setup, but maybe sooner or later...).

Backup IS more than important. No matter if you are a simple hobbyst or a pro, your data are always extremely valuable. Yeah, if its your work as in my case (I work in the IT business and all my work is in digital form) you can really go paranoid. But nobody has ever been hurt for being paranoid about backups. So, go RAID 1 or RAID 5 with your HDDs but MORE IMPORTANT always have a scheduled backup (i.e. weekly or more frequently if its the case) on a different media.

Personally, I have adopted a highly redundant strategy that makes me feel quite safe:

1) RAID 1 Data disk
2) Daily backup (Full on Sunday, incremental every day) on and external 300 GB HD with firewire connection
3) Weekly raw copy on a network attached storage system (in other words, another disk drive that is always on - this allows me to access my data remotely if necessary via the Internet without the need for an always on PC)
4) Monthly dump on DVD-R disc (no need to use the DVD-RW, I trust more the normal DVD-R and the cost is so low thatt I do not care to dump 4 or 5 of them every month, it won't hurt my budget anyway :) ).

I can imagine that this may sound a little excessive but when your annual income depends on what you have on your PC, trust me... it makes sense :) .

Plus, I use a lot of disk space for video stuff (easily 100/200 GB per project) so I have added 3 x 300 GB in RAID0 (striped) configuration that gives me 900 GB for video space. This is neither redundant nor backed up, of course, but its just raw video and I always keep the original tapes so its not a problem.

Glad to have found this forum !

Roberto

[aam1234]

Been looking for external DVD-R for backup purposes. Searched PCmag but the info there were a bit dated. So was wondering if anybody know a good external DVD-R or a place I can research for one. Thanks.

Roberto, welcome to the forum.

[Rob612]

Been looking for external DVD-R for backup purposes. Searched PCmag but the info there were a bit dated. So was wondering if anybody know a good external DVD-R or a place I can research for one. Thanks.

Roberto, welcome to the forum.

Im ny personal experience, any Plextor will do the job. The new PX-716 (i think) is dual layer also. Great stuff. As far as the external unit, just grab any external case (just make sure it has both Firewire and USB2 connections, to mantain the maximum compatibility) and fit a Plextor into it. Takes 5 minutes and you are always well sure of what's in it. Otherwise, I do believe that plextor has some external models.

As of today, I have 6 Plexies (several models) running on different machines and they never missed a shot.

Thanks for the welcome.

[aam1234]

And thanks for the info.

[Dante King]

Welcome Roberto!

Anyone know of suedo raid software for the mac, where I can mimic this type of setup? A long shot I know.

[elbirth]

Welcome Roberto!

Anyone know of suedo raid software for the mac, where I can mimic this type of setup? A long shot I know.

I don't use Mac, so I can't be but so much help... however I think the new Macs have a software RAID capability built in... however, here's what is said to be a good solution to RAID for the Mac
http://www.softraid.com/

[Rob612]

Anyone know of suedo raid software for the mac, where I can mimic this type of setup? A long shot I know.

I am not too much into the Macs so I cannot help you out on this. But I'll tell you, being in the IT business since I don't even remember when, that software RAID solutions are not the best choice if you really want to be safe.

Here my opinion on pros and cons of a software solution:

Pros:

- Relatively cheap - if not completely free (Windows has software RAID built-in)
- Does not need specialized hardware, thus does not use either a slot on your mainoboard and HW resources

Cons:

- Reliability depends only on the software. We all know that sw (no matter if win or mac) can be a pain "you know where" if something goes the wrong way (i.e. a virus or a misconfiguration)

- Uses some system resources (CPU, memory etc) that can be better used in other ways

- All the redundancy work is left to the operating system, in other words all the data transfer must pass trough the kernel routines that manages the I/O


I'd rather take a look at the various Serial-ATA (or Parallel-ATA - whatever you like the best) RAID controllers (I use with full satisfaction several Adaptec 1200 controllers with P-ATA interface). They cost a fraction of their SCSI counterpart and nowadays the performances of the P or S ATA HDDs are extremely satisfying at a fraction of the cost (and in bigger sizes) than their SCSI counterpart. I am almost sure that there is stuff for the Macs.

Here some useful links:

http://www.gen-x-pc.com/more_raid.htm

http://www.clubmac.com/clubmac/shop/detail~dpno~438804.asp
http://www.barefeats.com/hard19.html
http://www.barefeats.com/hard42.html


Hope this helps.

Roberto

[Jesper]

There are 2 things you can try to recover your data:

1) Put your harddrive in a other computer as second drive and try to spin it up and make your backup on the c: drive.

2) Before you connect your hardrive to a other computer put it in a plastic zip bag and put it in a refrigirator for 24 hours. At about 3 or 4 degree Celcius. Then take it out the bag and connect it to the pc and now you have a good chance that it will spin up, giving you the chance to make your backup.

Good luck.If the data is really important, I wouldn't try things like putting it in the refridgerator - it's probably better to leave the data recovery to the experts and not mess with the drive yourself, which might just make their job more difficult...

I backup my photos on an external 160 GB harddrive and also on DVD's.

[elbirth]

If the data is really important, I wouldn't try things like putting it in the refridgerator - it's probably better to leave the data recovery to the experts and not mess with the drive yourself, which might just make their job more difficult...

I backup my photos on an external 160 GB harddrive and also on DVD's.

I see your point with that, however if you put the drive in a zip loc bag and close it up well so no air can get inside, you run no risk to the drive. While it sounds like an extreme thing to do, it actually is quite commonly done and has saved a lot of people's data.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to find out if that's something the data recovery places might try themselves.

[Salleke]

I see your point with that, however if you put the drive in a zip loc bag and close it up well so no air can get inside, you run no risk to the drive. While it sounds like an extreme thing to do, it actually is quite commonly done and has saved a lot of people's data.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to find out if that's something the data recovery places might try themselves.

They do it before doing anything else with a drive when it won't start anymore.
In my 20 year computer experience it has saved my customers and me many times for a disaster. Don't forget that recovery companies are very expensive and indeed you don't put the harddrive on risk. Does it works? Fine and you save your data and your money. Does it not work? You don't loose anything and can send your drive to a data recovery company.
Very important is to that if it works you loose one day or so. But if you send your drive in you miss your data for weeks.

[MarkH]

There are always things to try when a HDD wont work and you want the data from it. The best trick is to copy the data to another device now, before the HDD fails.

I copy my pics from the CF card or portable HDD to my PC, then I copy the data through my network to another PC (data on 2 diff drives on 2 diff PCs). When I get around to it (and there is enough data) I burn a copy of the data onto a DVD.

I like having my important data in at least 2 different places. I could still lose my pics, but that is a lot less likely than if I only had the data on one HDD (or only on DVDs).

RAID is not the only way to protect yourself from HDD failure, in fact many events can lose you the data from all drive in the RAID array at once. You can copy the data to 2 drives on the one system, but there is a risk that data from both could be lost at once.

One option is to have 2 external HDD enclosures (with HDDs obviously) - connect one and backup your data to it, then disconnect it and turn it off, put it somewhere more secure. Next backup should be done the same way, but with the other HDD enclosure.

Another option is to burn your data to DVDs. Make 2 copies and store one set of DVDs somewhere else (friends place or relatives place or safety deposit box or whatever).

These solutions don't cost much and are totally worth it to protect your pics. You could pay for the cost of your backups with a very small percentage of the savings that you are making by not paying for film and processing.

Remember to consider how safe your important data is in the event of: fire, burglary, hardware failure, brainfade (accidental deletion), power surge (causing multiple hardware failure), unknown causes.