total loss

B

Bushman5

Joined
Oct 31, 2007
Messages
9,833
complete and utter mechanical failure of my computer HD. Lost over 160,000 Hi Def nature, landscape and outdoor gear photos i took.

running my computer right now with no HD, i have Linux flashed to RAM.

and the irony is, today I was going to go buy a USB hard drive to back up my photos.

ARGH! :(
 
Well, depending on if it is worth it to you, you can always send it to a hard drive recovery service.
 
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mapper66 said:
Well, depending on if it is worth it to you, you can always send it to a hard drive recovery service.
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+1

I've had really good luck with these services. It's not cheap, but then it sounds like you have a sizeable investment in the HD contents that would justify it.

- Mark
 
yea it aint cheap...its gonna have to wait, i still haven't gotten any pay from December.....
 
Man that realy S, is hard. I learnt from my days of doing a thesis when the varsity machine kept eating my floppies (virus) and resulted in me submitting a year later having retyped it and had to tackle new data. Did me well but with the advent of CDs I cut2disk weekly. My pics have all been stored separately. My accounts is backed up on flash and cut to cd weekly. Why Cd? cus there are idiots and power fluctuations that toast your electronics (june 2008 my machine was totalled with flash and mp3). It usually interesting trying to find the latest but it is there.
 
Did the drive stop spinning completely? Or did it just stop working? Depending, I may have a solution.
 
If the drive still powers up, you may have luck installing an OS on a new hard drive, plugging in the old failed drive and using data recovery software. Its a lot cheaper than sending it to a service and really not that complicated.

Also, trying this you may be lucky enough- at least if its an issue with os data corruption- that the pc would just recognize the drive and allow you to recover and backup without software or further complication.

But, since you're operating with Linux flashed to ram, I'm guessing you already know all of this. :p
 
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Even though it won't boot, can you access the hard drive from Linux running on a flash drive or CD?

I fixed a computer for some folks yesterday. Windows wouldn't boot, a missing config file. And the entire Windows installation was a mess anyway. These peoples' primary concern was recovering their photos that weren't backed up. I probably could have fixed the Windows booting issue, but it 100X easier to just rescue the photo files and reinstall Windows from scratch.

With Linux running from a CD, it was simple to copy the files from the hard drive to a flash drive, and then use another computer to burn them off the flash drive to a blank DVD.
 
In college there were posters hanging all over the computer labs that said "SAVE AND SAVE OFTEN." Take away from this experience: Back up, and back up often.

It really sucks, but like others have said, a recovery service may be able to help depending on the condition of the drive.

I had this happen about five years ago. I'm a writer and had well over 1,000 pages of material on my hard drive. At one point it started making a grinding noise and every logical cell in my body said "just take ten minutes and make a back up disc so nothing happens." I didn't listen. Turns out the harddrive had a bad bearing and finally ground itself to a halt and wouldn't spin. I couldn't get anything back. Fortunately I had some backups of earlier stages of some of my stuff, but not enough. I'd say I lost well over 500 pages of hard work.

That forced me into a system. Every month I get out a little CD case that contains several DVDs and a few re-writable CDs. On the DVDs I add any pictures that I've taken, one of them contains every revision of any writing (I figure DVDs hold so much I might as well keep them all). The CDRWs have updated program install files and only the latest version of any writing. I keep these CDs in a safe place with other computer software.

It takes time, but well worth it.

Good luck.
 
That forced me into a system...
It takes time, but well worth it.
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Something that might be better for you, cheaper and easier: Install two hard drives in a mirrored RAID configuration. Everything written to the computer is duplicated exactly and instantly on two hard drives.

--------------------------

Of course these are the sorts of things to consider before suffering a catastrophic hard drive failure. :p
 
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If the drive does not spin up and makes a "pweiuoo" kind of noise when it tries, try banging on it lightly with the butt of a screwdriver or something when its trying to spin up (ie. makes that noise). Ghetto method, but might just work.

Used that when customers had those kinds of problems with servers in my first job. Just had to make them look away when you bang their $2000 harddrive (this was 10 years ago) into the table ;)
 
Bob W said:
Of course these are the sorts of things to consider before suffering a catastrophic hard drive failure. :p
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Right.

I've actually got two hard drives installed on this machine now for that very reason. I still back up to CDs though for my peace of mind.
 
well, went for a walk tonight, found an old computer someone had thrown out, scavenged the 20GB HD, took it home, plugged it in and prepared for new install.

its amazing the amount of personal info people leave on their HD, including pics that i cannot post here :eek:

fat girl had sure had some fun :eek: :thumbup:

anyways, reformatted the used drive, installed PCLINUXOS and back in the game with some (FREE) storage. Going to try and recover the photos from my 200GB drive the next few days....
 
That was a BBC comment recently. People getting rid of machines with out really deep cleaning their kit. Criminals buy 2nd hand machines and sift recycling dumps for much of their information. Then they bitch about fraud. Internet hacking can't do 1/3 of what can be found on old machines, id, bank accounts and ID, personal picks the whole kaboodle for a thief to pick and copy to a similar person doing the cc purchases.
 
Any computer that leaves my possession (giving away, selling, whatever) has the hard drive removed and physically destroyed (after a DBAN run). I mean I really go to town on the damn thing. That is assuming, of course, that I can't use the old hard drive for something.

I'm pretty sure the only people with a chance in hell of getting any data off of the tiny slivers I leave behind would be in some alphabet soup agency (and even they would have a hell of a time). Since I have nothing that would interest them in any way, I don't worry too much about it and toss the confetti (that used to be a hard drive) into the trash).

If I'm donating the computer to someone or some group who can't put in their own hard drive, I'll buy a new, cheap one and put it in for them.

The only time I've ever violated this policy was when I had a HDD that was failing early in its lifespan: it would work for 20 mins at a time then fail. I wanted to send it in for warranty replacement but obviously wasn't thrilled since it contained data. The only content on the HDD was personal photos (nothing compromising) but I still am very paranoid about any kind of infosec. I kept the HDD extra cooled (even stuck it in the freezer at one point) so that it would stay alive long enough for me to do a multi-pass wipe on it. Even then I didn't feel great about sending it in.

Am I overly cautious? Probably. Paranoid? Maybe.

And yea, I try to be just as vigilant about back-ups. I slack off from time to time for brief periods, but then I kick myself in the butt. I'm not so great about backing up the state of my OS and its programs (although I will do a full disk image from time to time), but I'm pretty good about backing up my photos and other irreplaceable data.
 
All you really need to do is boot from your operating system disk and remove the partitions on the hard drive. That's not the same as formatting a drive. A lot of data can be taken from a drive that is formatted if you use the right program. But if you remove the partitions from a drive and then restart the computer from your operating system disk again and create new partitions, you can format the drive and sell it with the computer or give it away or whatever. You don't have to physically destroy the drive.
 
You don't have to physically destroy the drive.
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That's especially important if trying to give away an old computer. The recipient will have to buy a new hard drive, which will probably cost more than the value of the computer.
 
jerrinfla said:
You don't have to physically destroy the drive.
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I don't have to: I just prefer to. It's peace of mind for me.

Bob W said:
That's especially important if trying to give away an old computer. The recipient will have to buy a new hard drive, which will probably cost more than the value of the computer.
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ThinkOfTheChildren said:
...If I'm donating the computer to someone or some group who can't put in their own hard drive, I'll buy a new, cheap one and put it in for them...
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I don't go through computers often and I don't give them away often, so it's not like I'm doing this on a constant basis.
 
I don't go through computers often and I don't give them away often, so it's not like I'm doing this on a constant basis.
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I pick up used computers all the time, restore them, and pass them on to someone who wants/needs one. I've done maybe a dozen this year, 8 since August.

First off, I'm confident that the previous owners of these computer have nothing of value on the hard drives.
Second, if I reformat the hard drive and reinstall the operating system (or even if I just delete the questionable files) I'm confident that the computer recipients cannot recover any of the old data.
Third, they weren't mine anyway. ;)
 
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