Boom! Hard drives!
polycounter lvl 11
Back up your stuff! Yeah, we knew that already.
Except that, somehow, I had three drives die simultaneously. I have no idea how the hell that happened.
The one (500GB with my portfolio, freelance work and games) just doesn't get picked up at all. It spins up, but doesn't show up in the BIOS or anywhere). The second (1TB, a backup of my other two drives) is described as "garbled" by the tech dude who was trying to rescue it. And the third, my OS drive, is apparently recovered. So basically, I did backup, but that got destroyed too.
Next time, I'm backing everything up on Dropbox and stuff, but for now... any suggestions? The data recovery place here wants to charge R5,000-R10,000 to recover the portfolio drive. (That's around $600-$1,300.) I... can't afford that, especially after paying up to go to GDC and stuff. And I don't understand this stuff, but it feels like quite a rip-off.
Any suggestions? If there's some place around SF (near Moscone/GDC) that could help me out, I'll happily bring the drives along, depending on how long it takes.
[edit] Oh, and I did find the other threads about it. I'll try Recuva tonight when I get home, but I figured the tech dude would've tried stuff like that. Hoping for something local to SF that isn't going to charge a kidney. :P
Except that, somehow, I had three drives die simultaneously. I have no idea how the hell that happened.
The one (500GB with my portfolio, freelance work and games) just doesn't get picked up at all. It spins up, but doesn't show up in the BIOS or anywhere). The second (1TB, a backup of my other two drives) is described as "garbled" by the tech dude who was trying to rescue it. And the third, my OS drive, is apparently recovered. So basically, I did backup, but that got destroyed too.
Next time, I'm backing everything up on Dropbox and stuff, but for now... any suggestions? The data recovery place here wants to charge R5,000-R10,000 to recover the portfolio drive. (That's around $600-$1,300.) I... can't afford that, especially after paying up to go to GDC and stuff. And I don't understand this stuff, but it feels like quite a rip-off.
Any suggestions? If there's some place around SF (near Moscone/GDC) that could help me out, I'll happily bring the drives along, depending on how long it takes.
[edit] Oh, and I did find the other threads about it. I'll try Recuva tonight when I get home, but I figured the tech dude would've tried stuff like that. Hoping for something local to SF that isn't going to charge a kidney. :P
Replies
Have you tried these drives in other machines?
Take it to smoeone else - Hard Drive data is almost always recoverable (that includes if you smash it to pieces, burn it or stick magnets to it).
@ambershee: Thanks. I'll do that.
All dat pr0n.
The data recovery you are describing for damage you are describing would cost thousands lol.
Yes, I reccomend dropbox, its what I have, only thing I use it for really.
so with that setup, if a drive in your computer fails, just replace it, if both fail, replace them and get backup from nas
if a drive from the nas fails, data is still readable but you have to replace the drinve
if all drives from nas fail, you still have the type (takes very long to get the backup from tapes)
and if that fails, you can try older tapes and if that fails youre fucked like now
Sorry to hear about your three drives dying at the same time, sounds unreal. I have three externals and they've been fine for years. Truth is I only really keep one on while the other two remain off. Probably lasts longer that way.
It would, but thankfully he hasn't smashed, burnt and degaussed his drives (as far as I'm aware anyway..
It sounds like all 3 were in the same machine, which can be bad for backing up. Everything shares the same power source, which probably in your case, spiked the drives and killed them. A NAS is usually better for this, though it would still share the same power grid.
'The cloud' is a good source for backing up, since most/all places keep backups of their servers, and obviously, it's offsite and wouldn't get lost if your house/apartment burns down. The negative, is most have a monthly rate, if you store a lot of data. Also, it can take a long time to do your initial backup, or to restore all your data. Also, it requires an internet connection, which may not be an issue at the moment, but who knows what your situation may be down the road.
I would recommend, in the future, to get a NAS, and store to both it and a cloud service, like dropbox. You can get software to automatically backup a local folder, to multiple locations. At my previous job, I used Cobian Backup, but I'm sure there are many other options, including something that has dropbox built in.
+
put on the power supply with fuses reasonably scaled for your equipment
then its more likely that the power supply kills the fuse instead of the component
I learned this the hard way when I lost work from about a few years ago because the disc is packed with CRC errors now. Unfortunately it's even worse now because the quality of all writable media has declined massively.
Backing up to disc isn't a bad idea because they're portable and easily put someplace off-site for storage but the best solution is really to use a service like Dropbox and store your sensitive data in encrypted rars/volumes.
No matter where you're backing your stuff up though I suggest putting it in winrar archives and packing it with a recovery record, that way if your data does become corrupted winrar can rebuild it (depending on the extent of the damage.)
For the "house might burn down" contingency, I back up stuff online. If it's in the cloud, it can't catch fire.
Food for thought.
Still sucks you lost the data in the first place.
edit:
Dropbox uses AWS 3s for file storage so is;
Designed to provide 99.999999999% durability and 99.99% availability of objects over a given year.
Designed to sustain the concurrent loss of data in two facilities.
Then again I wouldn't use dropbox as primary backup unless you have a good and reliable internet connection without any crazy capping and unless you have no privacy concerns (i.e. don't put your plans how to take over the world there). As secondary backup, a la for the worst case, it's a pretty good solution though.
And if you're super serious about backup, rent a small deposit box in a bank vault and backup your data to magneto-optical storage, which has the longest shelf life of all backup media (hdd, tape, optical, etc). Or fed-ex it to your relatives. The chance that both your houses burn down/get nuked/sucked into an alien spaceship at the same time is rather slim.