The other day our hard drive died, we lost everything. all my unicycling videos, pictures, pictures of our great grandmother, all our programmes, everything.
The computer people said we might be able to retrieve our files, but it would cost over $1000, so we obviously cant do that unless we will the lotto.
We are so angry.
Has this happened to anyone else?
Did you spend the money to get your files back?
Oh well, at least we learnt our lesson. We are going to back up all of our files on a disk now.
Reef
Yes I’ve had atleast one hard drive junk on me, however I had a warranty that covered data retrieval so it was no big deal. These days my house network has an external harddrive attached, they’ve become so cheap that it’s well worth considering.
Ouch! That does hurt.
There are two kinds of people; Those who have lost irreplaceable data and those who backup.
I’ve been fortunate and fallen into the backup category. I’ve lost data, but nothing important. The important stuff is backed up. I’m not perfect though. I’ve been very lax lately about keeping a backup off-site. If I had a devastating fire that toasted everything I’d lose the computer and the backups on the external HD and the DVD-Rs.
In what way did the hard drive die?
Did it suddenly make clicks and funny noises? That would indicate a physical failure of the drive head. A head crash. The read/write head is literally scraping the surface of the disk. This is the kind of failure that is the most expensive to recover and requires data recovery experts in a clean room with specialized equipment.
Did the drive just stop working for no obvious reason? That can be due to the drive controller circuit board on the HD failing. Can be fixed by finding an identical drive with the same model and version number and revision level and swapping the circuit board. The hard part is finding the exact same drive with the exact same revision level.
Does the drive still spin but just refuse to recognize that the drive exists? This can be due to an important sector of the disk getting fubared. Recover at this point depends on software that can read raw data from the disk and make educated guesses about where the files are and attempt recovery.
Wow JC, I was about to post on this matter but then I read your post and realised that you too know a lot of information on hdd’s. I obviously don’t know you well enough, you are some sort of IT guy I assume?
Anyways, back to the topic on hand, as JC has mentioned there is a multiude of reasons that a HDD could fail. The solution obviously depends on the cause. If you need to recover data from a drive then spinrite may be one software solution, and does not cost $1000.
Basically what I am saying, is that if you fix your drive (by a circuit board swap if required) yourself, it wont cost you three arms and three legs, just a single arm and half a leg.
i dont really know what happened to it. my brother was on and the computer just turned off from what i’ve heard. then we tried turning it on but it gave us options but none would work.
Mum said they just died every few years or something
Thats only true in the case of Western Digital 
I have had the worst run of luck with those things, they seem to die all the time 
Question: When you turn on your computer, does the HDD spin up? Does it make any funny noises? Is it recognized by the bios?
Well, if it’s just one or a few bad sectors, you can save the rest of your stuff. Seeing how you’re offered some options, I assume you’re running Windows?
Try this:
From one of your friend’s computer, download this program called Knoppix. It’s Linux-based and is bootable from your CD drive. Enter your computer’s bios and find the options to boot from your CD drive. If your comp continues to work, you’d be able to save everything to cds/dvds.
this has just happened to my other friend at school aswell…
must be some sorta hardware killing bug going around because it usually shouldnt just stop working
and so which computer are you using now?
it wasnt the one in your lounge that crashed was it?
i think he’d need a bit of help with that one…
Plug the drive in to one of the power connectors on the power supply. You just want to see if it will spin up and what kinds of sounds it makes.
First get familiar with what a normal drive sounds like as it is spinning. Then listen to the broken drive. If you hear a strange skating skish skish skish sound then that’s bad. That’s the read/write head skating on the surface of the disk. What’s known as a head crash. I have had two drives at home die in that manner. It is a very sad sound to hear. It’s a case where the professional and expensive data recovery is the only way to get the data back.
If the drive isn’t spinning up at all then it might be the circuit board on the drive that is damaged. Maybe something got shorted. It may be possible to get the circuit board repaired. Or sometimes removing the circuit board and reseating it can get it working.
Once you know a little more about the state of the drive we can figure out possibilities and options.
Spinrite is one of the possible options. It’s not really a data recovery tool. It’s sort of a disk sector testing and relocating tool. I actually have spinrite. Tried it on a drive that was failing. Didn’t help in that case and the drive died anyways. Spinrite isn’t a miracle tool, but can work miracles in some cases.
You should have a computer tech look at the drive if you’re not comfortable with that kind of stuff. He’ll be able to tell you what is the failure and whether the drive can even spin up any more. I know when I was looking at my failed drives my hands would be sweating cause it was my data on the drive and I had personal attachment to it. It’s not good to be that emotionally involved when making technical decisions that could prove to be destructive. That’s a case where it would be better to have a tech do the work.
Another thing to look at before thinking the worst is to check the power connector to the drive. Sometimes the power connector can work loose and the drive will get no power. Try pushing the power connector to reseat it and/or try a different plug from the power supply.
The important thing at this point is to avoid doing things that will alter the disk till you know what is going on. Don’t run a checkdisk yet. Be careful if mounting the drive in Linux that you only have read access and no write access. You don’t want to alter or write anything on the drive till you know what is going on.
Holy Jebus Christ!?
Did you just like type this all in a couple of minutes?
This is like an essay!
oi Jack why don’t you try helping Reef you might be able to fix it you fixed mines
Evan
Of course! You are angry because you have no backups, but you’ve heard advice to do so. That’s why JC said there are people who’ve lost data and people who back up. But I’ll offer an edit to that one:
There are people who can recover their data, and people who are tempting disaster. Even the ones who back up have lost data, that’s why they’re better at backing up now! 
I have only recently gotten into a “solid” backup regime. I bought an external HD that’s the same size as the one in my computer, and use a (Mac) program called SuperDuper to run a backup every few days. I’m thinking of setting it to run every night. Once the intial copy was done, the “sync” backups only take a few minutes. The software keeps the external drive identical to what’s on my computer. I can even boot from it.
That system works, but it’s not the ultimate solution. This HD is right next to my computer. It’s vulnerable to the same possible power surges (the line is protected), fire or other disaster, or theft. Ultimately you want to keep copies of your most important data in at least one other location, preferrably not in the same building or house as your computer. A third HD, that you keep off-site, is the easiest way to do this, but not cheap. Actually maybe it is cheap. USB hard drives are incredibly cheap now, and the prices continue to drop. My computer has a 750GB drive, so it was a bit more pricey, especially with the Fireware 800 connectivity I wanted…
I also back up my photos onto DVDs every once in a while. Be wary of CD and DVD backups. Test them every once in a while to make sure your computer can still read them. Same with any HD-based backup system. If you don’t do tests to make sure the stuff is recoverable, it may not help you in your time of need.
Remember, computer users, hard drives die. When they do, it’s usually for good so make sure your important data is protected now! Don’t wait to see how long your system will hold up. I’ve been there. Mostly I’ve been lucky, but I have lost whole hard drives in the past. Most recently it was my trusty Microdrive, which was the main storage device in my digital camera from 2001-2004. I tried to use it the other day and all it did was click-click-click. 
Dead. If you’re not backing up now, considering whether that will be a problem for you or not.
Great advice for Mars.Volta by the way. There’s still a possibility that your HD can read a little, depending on the nature of the problem. Good luck!
ah data loss… been there done that got MANY tshirts…
i think everyone has, i’ve had the regular hard drive fail, i’m probably on two or three a year… and of course i’ve swapped tactics to the only solution… backups…
Of course i’ve also deleted my own files, repartitioned hard drives that had files i wanted on them… but most of the time i managed to recover all of that and all the data i have lost has never really had much worth.
But for about 3 yrs now, I run a Scsi Raid 5 on my fileserver, so theres 36Gb (4x18gb drives) of pretty safe space. This space is also backed up on a DLT with a DAT tape, (got off ebay real cheap) and so i dont really think this can be much safer.
Unfortunately 36Gb is not nearly enough for all my files, so i also have a Raid 1 on two 200Gb SATA drives for pictures. Of course septics say raid 1 isnt perfect, and i am part of these people, so i burn dvd’s and print the pictures i like. But tbh i’ve been slacking on the dvd side recently… i always do a SMART check to see how the drives are with a script every night and so far so good.
Of course the external hard drive is always good but its no fun is it… 
As for USB drives man i’ve had so many die that i pretty much could use them as disposable keyrings… dont ever put data on there you want to see again, save it to another hard drive as well…
On another note if u ever do something silly, like delete some of your paritions or all ur files… Hiren’s boot cd can be really helpful. Of course i have no idea where you get this CD or wots on it, this little alien told me it was good.
As for data recovery… i’ve actually recovered some files off two hard drives with this method. Put ur drive in a sealable plastic bag, and shove it in the freezer (no need to leave it long 30mins will do just great). (sounds crazy but it can work - on one occasion it did nothing…) then get the drive out and try run it, sometimes when cold hard drives do funny things, like in my case work for 8 hrs straight… although the other only worked for 30 mins… enough for me to recover some stuff…
Also running a live Linux distro can sometimes mean u can get a few small files if u can mount the drive in RO (read only mode) although this has only worked for me once and it was the partition not the drive that had been corrupted…
and again DVD / CD backups are worth very little. Buy quality cd’s… like Verbatim (NOT SONY THEY DONT COUNT AS QUALITY CD, i have like 20 dud ones) but dont expect more than a year. Also burn slower = more chance of living longer.
i think thats it from me. I feel for you
just to mention
although a very nice system, imagine u corrupt your entire collection of photos, and dont realise, turn ur pc off, you boot and ur backup and ur hard drive now have the same problem… although this method saves you from complete hard drive failure, if one drive starts dying badly without u realising then your backup will go bye bye. lol i’ve had it done to me and its very very annoying.
My additions to the conversation.
A simple free way of backing up critical documents, is to email them to yourself at your gmail/yahoo/hotmail. They give you tons of free storage now. Not ideal, but if you don’t have funds to buy hardware, it can help.
Regarding backing up to an external hard disk: Consider disconnecting once the backup is complete. If your computer loses data via a virus, power surge or user error, your external drive can be wiped out too.
To the person using RAID 5. You still need to back up (it sounds like you are). I’ve lost data on RAID 5 arrays (controller/backplane issue). I’m wondering how you get the DAT tape to fit in the DLT drive 
If the failed HD is not bootable, you may be able to read it by connecting it as a secondary HD to another computer. Obviously won’t work if the drive is completely dead. Also, i’ve been able to recover data using tools like DiskInternalsNTFS recovery or FATrecovery (www.diskinternals.com). You can download trial versions that will tell you if your data is recoverable before you buy the product. Again, these won’t help if your hardware is toast.
yeah i know, i still back up my raids…
and as for the DAT tape, i dont actually use them no more, got it mixed up, a sticker mix up LOL, anyways i always call the tapes DAT and the DLT is the drive…
but i use a Sun DLT with an external scsi connector ad for the tapes GK i dont understand i’ve never seen one fail, the ones i’m using i think are guaranteed something stupid like 25yrs… Lets be honest i think its reliable enough for my files ehehe.
as for the gmail idea its a very good one, there is xmail hard drive or sommit i tried it for a while but it was a bit annoying…
Hmmmm the same happened to me, but I got the data recovery for £60 (UK) I wonder why yours is so expensive? 
dang unlucky
cough cough???
I think he means does the startup when you first turn on the pc reconise the drive