My Hard Drive Died

[themadman]

Well... I turned on my computer today and I heard this clicking noise. Once my computer booted (it was clicking during the whole boot process) I realized that my 1TB storage drive did no longer register on my computer. My OS and program drives are fine (plus they are in RAID 1), but my storage drive is not back up.

Most of the stuff I don't really care about, but the past 4 years of personal photos are pretty much gone... Sigh... after getting quotes from different hard drive recovery places, it is gonna cost me atlest $590 to get an attempt at recovery.

I was originally gonna go job hunting so I can buy some neat lenses between school (currently applying to grad school)... but now I guess I'll have to save up to recover my hard drive =(

Big thumbs up if you read all that, I feel better after ranting a bit.

[Mark_Cohran]

If it's not a mechanical problem, i.e. it's a directory issue, you may be able to recover the files yourself with Disk Warrior or Data Rescue.

[gcflora]

If it's not a mechanical problem, i.e. it's a directory issue, you may be able to recover the files yourself with Disk Warrior or Data Rescue.

IMO, it's best for people not to try and recover stuff themselves unless they really know what they're doing. Done wrong it can make the problem worse

[Mark_Cohran]

IMO, it's best for people not to try and recover stuff themselves unless they really know what they're doing. Done wrong it can make the problem worse

Data Rescue and Disk Warriior can do a sector scan of the drive (if it's mechanically sound) and extract the files to another hard drive. There's nothing dangerous about that, it's just tedious.

[gcflora]

Data Rescue and Disk Warriior can do a sector scan of the drive (if it's mechanically sound) and extract the files to another hard drive. There's nothing dangerous about that, it's just tedious.

I agree. The dangerous part, though, might be plugging the hard drive in. What if temp files are being written to that drive by the OS?

[themadman]

I don't think software can retreive my files. The drive doesn't show in Windows, and the clicking makes me worried. I don't want to further damage a potentially recoverable drive. hopefully I'll make some money to get the drive recovered... hopefully.

I've recovered my friends hard drive before for him, but his showed up in Windows. I don't really remeber what software we used.

[joeseph]

ticking noises are terminal - usually there's either head damage or surface damage on the platters - job best left to professionals...
most useful thing you can do at this stage is unplug it.

[themadman]

ticking noises are terminal - usually there's either head damage or surface damage on the platters - job best left to professionals...
most useful thing you can do at this stage is unplug it.

Ya... the first thing I did was turn off my computer and unplug it.

[Becca]

I had the same thing happen recently. After I had resigned myself to losing everything on the drive, someone suggested that it may just be the case of the exterior drive that had failed rather than the drive itself. So I bought an external docking station for the hard drive, removed it from the case and plugged it in. I think the neighbors heard my WHOOHOO when everything showed up in my Windows Explorer. Might give that a try!

[themadman]

Becca > thanks for the suggestion, but it was an internal drive to begin with. It is always "in" my computer.

[neilwood32]

Sorry to hear about the problem and i hope you get your data recovered

Unfortunately its a bit late to say this but - ALWAYS BACKUP!

For the cost of drives these days, it saves the heartache and drama of a failed drive. Especially with the situtation that most of us dont make hard copies of anything these days.

[themadman]

I am kinda traumatized by this... I might be building a home backup server in the near future... I;ve been looking into it and home server is getting more affordable these days.

[ryant35]

I had a 1tb drive die on me a few months ago, most of the photos on there were backed up to DVD but some were not. The good thing is I don't remember what wasn't.;)

[lowrider]

As has been said - Always back up! To this end, I have four internal drives and one external drive. Two of my internals are unique, and the other two are clones of the first two, that I update once a week. The external contains important files from the internal drives, and doesn't get turned on, unless I'm backing it up.

Have I lost drives, your bet. Have I ever lost any data - NEVER! I have files that go back to the eighties.

Lou

[themadman]

I guess my problem was I don't have enough drives... =( I got a 500GB to back up my MB and MBP.
I got 2x 1TB backing up my anime...
I got another 500GB backing up... don't remeber what actually...
My OS drive and program install drives are RAID 1 soo... thats ok....
Unfortunatly that leaves around 6 PC's still not backed up...

My plan is to use a Norco home server rack, get 2 RAID cards, and RAID together 20 x 1.5TB Harddrives and make a giant home storage. Prolly gonna use RAID 6 to keep it all safe =)
Now all I need is around $2500... heh...

[GilesGuthrie]

Alternatively...

Buy a 5 year old PC for $50 (max) in the classifieds.
Clean it thoroughly with an air duster ($8)
Remove any internal drives and throw them away (in an environmentally responsible fashion!!!) ($0)
Install 2 new hard drives (2x $100)
Download any server flavour of Linux. I use Ubuntu ($0).
Install Linux, specifying software RAID 1 on the disks. ($0)
Use Google to find out how to configure Samba (file server), then do this ($0)
Use Google to find out how to configure SSH (remote administration), then do this ($0)
Download PuTTY (remote administration, Google this) ($0)
Find a synchronisation program, or use Windows Backup to copy your data. I use SmartSync ($45)

I have two of these in my garage. Repeat ad infinitum as your disk space requirements grow. The thing with Linux is that so many of the core requirements of users have been really well documented on the web, so you should be able to get it all going so long as you spend a few hours (maybe 4hrs) on it, and don't panic. Then they run forever. Seriously. Mine only go off when there's a power failure. Apart from the drives, the hardware requirements are virtually nil, so you can use any old rubbish you've got lying around. Since you're using it as storage, just replace the drives with new ones, to make it effectively a new box.

[themadman]

Giles > That would be a good suggestion for those who have the space. My tiny one bedroom apartment (whom I live at with my wife and two cats) already has 3 desktops, 1 shuttle (small desktop), and 4 laptops. If I had to build a backup comptuer for ebery other computer, I'd run out of room really quickly. Another problem is RAID 1 is extremely inefficient, and I'd be wasting hard drive space when I could be doing RAID 5 or 6.

I am also sort of a computer enthusiast, and this is a project I've been eyeing for a while. Again, thanks for the suggestion =)

[blackshadow]

Good luck with getting your data back Will.

I had a 1TB external drive fail that I was backing up to over the weekend. In an effort to try to resurrect it I tried reformatting. Thing is I accidentally reformatted my main working drive with all my photos back to 2005 on it.

I tried recovering the photos but all I could get back were corrupt files. The disk is now in with a data recovery specialist.

I don't have backups of the photos because the backup drive died midway through a backup. I'm pretty upset about it. The only saving grace is that most of my finished work is on SmugMug but only at a file size of 3000 pixels maximum side size.

[themadman]

O man, thats terrible. I wish you good luck with that data recovery!

[tim]

Sorry to hear about your troubles, good luck getting everything back.

I am kinda traumatized by this... I might be building a home backup server in the near future... I;ve been looking into it and home server is getting more affordable these days.

Then you'll complain that your house burned down and you lost everything

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=789337

[blackshadow]

O man, thats terrible. I wish you good luck with that data recovery!

Thanks.

[themadman]

Sorry to hear about your troubles, good luck getting everything back.



Then you'll complain that your house burned down and you lost everything

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=789337

Crap... now I gotta make a set of backup tapes and do weekly backups of my server and store them in a fireproof safe... ;)

[joove]

Other than repeating the fact that you must backup: well you must, consider this as well.

Buying a reliable ots NAS box is so much more trouble free. Each of us has some price sensitivity and it is a matter of degree, so choose something sensible and lookup customer service quality if you do go for an off the shelf NAS.

If you can build your own setup with
- graceful shutdowns when on UPS power
- RAID cards (and make sure you can find replacements if the card dies)
- Disk idling when not in use
- Backups of the NAS itself
- Keep track of patches to FreeNas or whatever you use
- Etc

go for it.

However, irrespective of what you buy, you should also keep a backup of the NAS itself :-). You might lose the second disk in a Raid 5 array when rebuilding the array for a failed drive. Then what ? The Hot spare in a Raid6 setup could be a faulty drive and you get unrecovered garbage. Stuff happens you know!

Stay away from Windows Home Server. Irrespective of what they say, that is for home folks that don't care much about their data. MS took a whole year to fix a data corruption bug. That kind of apathy is unconscionable.

I decided to spend my time on other priorities and got myself a Ready NAS Pioneer Pro and back it up to a Ready Nas NV+ (any simple NAS will do for the backup). I get dual GigE ports, an intel Dual core proc, RAID 6 capability with hot spare, built in backups across multiple protocols (rsync/nfs/cifs) and the ability to be my front line store as it saturates my GigE network. I don't keep any of my photo files on my desktop. It also has a built in DLNA server for my movies/photos/music and draws on 35W when using two 1TB drives. These have falled down in price recently and come with 3-5 year warranty.

I haven't researched other NAS's as much since I have been extremely happy with the ReadyNas stuff. There could be better stuff out there now, but this is a decent consideration (especially considering you were willing to spend 2k).

hth.

[neilwood32]

With regards to my post earlier, I also learned the hard way.

I lost everything on the system - not one thing was recoverable :(

Hence why i am now moderately paranoid - not to the extent of having 3 backups but I always make sure my back up is fairly current (approx 1 week).

If my house goes up - so be it! I would have more to worry about that photos!

Giles' idea sounds a goodone though - for a minimum of money.

[themadman]

joove > lol. Those are some pretty bad senarios. I would rather do my own over buying one for mainly two reasons reasons.

1. Cost, premade NAs are really overpriced
2. Fun. I enjoying doing comptuer astuff. I studiyed Electrical Engineering with a focus on parallel processor design in college

Now if my raid 5 or 6 fails... I'll take that chance I guess. I plan to buy hard drives from different manufacturers and different lines of drives to try avoid a whole bad bunch=)

[blackshadow]

I like the look of the Drobo stuff. The data recovery place has told me that there is a 95% chance they can recover all my photos; it's going to cost me the best part of $1,000. Bye bye pocketwizards, other lenses and a 1D Mark IV for a while.

[neilwood32]

I like the look of the Drobo stuff. The data recovery place has told me that there is a 95% chance they can recover all my photos; it's going to cost me the best part of $1,000. Bye bye pocketwizards, other lenses and a 1D Mark IV for a while.

Ouch! Redundant drives dont seem like a waste of time at that sort of figure!

[themadman]

I like the look of the Drobo stuff. The data recovery place has told me that there is a 95% chance they can recover all my photos; it's going to cost me the best part of $1,000. Bye bye pocketwizards, other lenses and a 1D Mark IV for a while.

I have a place quoting me $590 final price (won't change even if I wait)... I might take them up in a couple of months =)