Lost Hard Drive - How much is data worth?

VaSteve · 11-15-2006, 09:39 AM

F***. My hard drive just crashed and all of our photos were on it. Only some were backed up or have been printed. We have an 18 month old baby.

What are photos worth to you?

johnco · 11-15-2006, 09:51 AM

PC Inspector Smart Recovery free software. I just recovered photos that were deleted long ago from my laptop and camera disks. worth a try.

stevepaa · 11-15-2006, 09:51 AM

What are the symptoms? Is this a secondary drive?

Moneyguy1 · 11-15-2006, 09:54 AM

Another argument for backup on CDs or DVDs or even paper. I NEVER trust the hard drive alone. My experience, especially with Compaq is a buttload of problems with both software and hardware, resulting in inadvertent shutdowns. Thank goodness my neighbor is a PC technician.

VaSteve · 11-15-2006, 09:56 AM

No it's the main drive. It crashed while my wife was uploading stuff to the web. The machine won't come on even in safe mode (just hangs up) and the Best Buy "techs" (term used loosely) said that the drive was dead. We live near DC, so we're taking it to a pro for further analysis.

stevepaa · 11-15-2006, 10:07 AM

Don't trust what those techs tell you

You could take the drive out and set it up as a secondary drive and probably get everything off.

Does it still sound alive, does it still hum, seek, etc?

asphaltgambler · 11-15-2006, 10:29 AM

.........the answer is....."priceless"

Hardware can always be replaced, but data is most often ireplaceable

id10t · 11-15-2006, 10:34 AM

Got another computer? download an ubuntu cd (www.ubuntu.com) and you shoudl be able to grab the photos and move them somewhere...

VaSteve · 11-15-2006, 10:46 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by id10t
Got another computer? download an ubuntu cd (www.ubuntu.com) and you shoudl be able to grab the photos and move them somewhere...

I appreciate it, but I didn't even UNDERSTAND this! I'm not sure how it would work if the HD in the dead machine isn't.

It's at the data rocevry place now, they boast a 97% recovery rate and that includes computers that have been in the ocean and in Katrina's aftermath.

VaSteve · 11-15-2006, 10:50 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by stevepaa
Don't trust what those techs tell you

You could take the drive out and set it up as a secondary drive and probably get everything off.

Does it still sound alive, does it still hum, seek, etc?

*I* don't know enough about it to say and it's not with my presently to try again. I got the BSOD and it seemed to do something, though it wouldn't boot in safe mode (hung on a file, which I read this morning on the google that other PCs had hung on)

I figure that assessing if it's working or not is within the purview of their base level of competance. However, I have been wrong on that kind of thing before. LOL

slodave · slodave's Garage

Is the drive making funny sounds? What do you mean by "hangs up"? If you want the pictures, I would not try to spin up the drive until you have someone look at it.

Dave

930addict · 930addict's Garage

If the drive still spins up you can probably recover the date yourself as stevepaa said. If not you will need to take it to a data recovery place.

I consider my data priceless. I have a 1 terrabyte hot-swappable RAID 5 NAS appliance to which all my home network clients attach (2 MACs, 1 Windows, and 1 Linux). Everything is on the NAS. My photos, which goes back 6 years, my MP3 collection, my software repository, and my video projects. The NAS has its own APC UPS that will last 4 hours before shutting down gracefully. The NAS backs up to an external hard drive.

I sleep pretty well at night.

azasadny · azasadny's Garage

Quote:

Originally posted by stevepaa
Don't trust what those techs tell you

You could take the drive out and set it up as a secondary drive and probably get everything off.

Does it still sound alive, does it still hum, seek, etc?

Yep! Give this suggestion a try, it will most likely work for you!

stevepaa · 10:56 AM

Probably good for now, but if you want to "fool" around a little with computers and the hard drives, ask to have the hard drive back. I suspect they will install a new hard drive in the machine for you as part of the deal? If not it is easy to do, and then connect the "bad" hard drive up as secondary and see what you can see.

After my hard drive crashed at work, the techs were going to throw it away. I went in and saved most of my data. Only the system had crashed and they really did not know what to do.

Even when the hard drive is failing, it is possible to recover pieces. I had one that would last about a minute before stopping, so I just let it cool down and then started up again. I got everything off.

VaSteve · 11:46 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by slodave
Is the drive making funny sounds? What do you mean by "hangs up"? If you want the pictures, I would not try to spin up the drive until you have someone look at it.

Dave

My wife said before it crashed, she got some "Virtual Memory" Error. She was loading a bunch of files to snapfish and had d/led some Flash update.

When I try to boot in Normal mode, I get the BSOD.
http://www.tweaksforgeeks.com/IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.html

When I try to boot in safe mode, I get as far as AGP440.sys and it just sits there. I could hear the HD running when it did this; it sounded normal.
http://www.computing.net/windows2000/wwwboard/forum/21602.html

I don't understand most of what I have read above. Bios and all that.

And I realize that I should have tried booting with the backup disk, I didn't even think about it. BUT, you would figure that BB would have some limited competency..now I'm worried that it's some easy software issue that the 18 year old couldn't handle. Then again, neither could I, but I'm an end user.

Thanks for the lessons learned, I will certainly place a lot more emphasis in backing this thing up in the future.

930addict · 930addict's Garage

If the drive is spinning try booting from your original windows XP or windows 2000 installation CD and choose the option to recover. This has worked for me on several occasions. It only takes a few minutes to try.

VaSteve · 11-15-2006, 12:17 PM

In haste/panic, after finding that the drive was "Dead" per the "tech" we took it to a data recovery place (the whole machine). I'll post the results, but recent searching makes me think it's not a HD, but a different hardware (video card?) issue. I'll post the results.

VincentVega · 11-15-2006, 12:19 PM

It might be as simple as putting the drive in another PC, let me know if you need some help.

930addict · 930addict's Garage

Hey Wayne. You should look into the NAS appliance from Infrant. It costs about $970 and sits on your network. All of your clients can connect to it via several protocols(NFS, HTTP, FTP etc) - I use NFS. You can simply setup drive mappings for each share for your computers. It's completely seamless. Plus it acts as a print server for USB printers. With this you don't have to worry about syncing anything or leaving computers on (I used to do that too) as the NAS appliance is always on. It's about the size of a large loaf of bread so it will sit under your desk out of the way. Also it will integrate with AD security if you're using that. I've only had this for about a month and I love it.

svandamme · svandamme's Garage

when you say it stopped midoperation , i'm thinking print board gone south... if you know anyone with an identical disk drive.. it is possible to switch the boards and give it a try... if that still doesn't help... you'll be needing data recovery services.. which is to much $$$ for private data...