Data Recovery (storage HD)
 

I have a Seagate 1TB HD that just stopped turning recently. I have back up for everything up until 2 years ago. A lot of the data (most) are videos that are on YT and many of the pics are elsewhere. However, there are a few that I could see trying to retrieve like a very nice pic of my wife enjoying a Margarita a year or so ago.

I can get that pic and the rest for anywhere from $200 to 350. I'm sure that pic can be found on my stepdaughter's FB or probably in her phone. So this is not vital, just curiosity to see what I am missing.

Anyone here want to take a crack at it? To be very honest, I'm only asking if there is hobby interest, I can pay for shipping each way, maybe buy a small PP gift cert.

To avoid attention, please PM. I'll let the discussion evolve around alternatives.

Oh, and a reminder to those of us that are not particularly diligent. Oh, it won't happen to me. Yes it does.

I've taken these apart before. It's been awhile. Can I access the disc and give it a nudge? I know dirt and dust is the issue, but one time deal and I'd immediately transfer to another external drive.

I have nothing to lose, literally.

It's been more than a while since I opened one up but I think it may be doable.
I'd 'nudge' from the side of the platter.

Stick it in the freezer for a while and then see if it'll fire up long enough to pull some stuff from it. Sometimes it'll unbind it for a bit at a time. A lot of them now won't fire up if opened, they have some sort of pressure switch, so I'd try the freezer trick first.

Thanks for the tips. I received a new 1T drive and with a little fuss got it formatted and moved some things from the C drive to try and free up some space. Didn't make a lot of difference but I'm timid what it comes to hitting [delete]. But I don't need Word docs on the C:, or videos. Only found a few things and did find the pic of my wife on the C. I must have known.

I'll do a back up today.

Freezing didn't work. I did the back up and a total factory reset. I got half my C drive back.

Something fishy was going on. I need a password for seeing the flash log? My computer, I'm the admin and the user. I've never set PW's on personal desktops. 1000's of files on SSDxflashlog.

Gone. I think a 3rd party was using my computer.

Wasn't me!

Glad you got it back to working, Milt.

Wont happen to me, but then my /home is a RAID-5 array. So while Ive lost a disk before Ive not lost the data ;)

That’s the only way to fly….same here.

I've lost a drive before, but if I knew how to setup a RAID-5 array I probably would do it.

Ignorance is bliss but deadly to data.

Two choices (maybe) - hardware RAID and software RAID

Hardware RAID is the best for Enterprise type stuff where you can spend the big bucks needed to have backup controllers, etc. Most home user hardware RAID - like that built into many motherboards or add-on SATA cards - is tied to that piece of hardware. Which means when you upgrade computers, or that controller card dies (or that motherboard dies) you loose the entire array.

Software RAID - done in ... software. For us Linux users and I think BSD users. Nice thing is that you can move the drives to various and sundry machines - they don't even need the same CPU architechture - and simply tell the system "hey, use the RAID device that is defined by the signatures on these however-many drives". Which means when the hardware dies as long as one disk (RAID-1) or two disks (RAID-5) survive, you'll get your data back.

If you aren't already running Linux or have a mixed environment to backup (and even if you are already running Linux on your desktop) you can build or buy a NAS type device. Personally I'd recommend building one from a generic whitebox desktop with a RAID-5 array and a hot spare drive, and install something like owncloud on it so you can backup phones, tablets, laptops and desktops to it.

Damm Milt that is a rough thing to have happen. I had a drive freeze up that was attached to my Roku box and the freeze trick didn't work either. I ended up with a program called "Disk Drill" that took control of the bad drive away from the PC operating system and it was able to manually control the drive and I recovered about 95% of the movies and music I had on there. It ran for a total of THREE days before stopping when there was nothing else it could recover.

I would suggest getting several external drives and an enclosure for them and never ever save anything to the "C" drive. I would suggest a couple of 8TB drives and they'll give you enough storage for a long time. I would also suggest making at least TWO emergency OS recovery thumb drives since as the saying goes "two = one and one = 0". Good luck getting everything back to normal.
John Rogers the oldracer

John, does it recognize the drive if it isn't spinning?