Hard drive broke down, Lost my whole new product. Need motivation!

14 years ago

And you did not have a back up external drive with all your files on? Crikey, I suggest you learn "backup 101" before turning on your PC again.

A very hard lessson learned. Don't be lazy again, and make sure you channel your anger into being better.

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TheGraduate

14 years ago

Originally Posted by jazbo

And you did not have a back up external drive with all your files on? Crikey, I suggest you learn "backup 101" before turning on your PC again.

A very hard lessson learned. Don't be lazy again, and make sure you channel your anger into being better.

I have a flash-drive, but I never backup anything to it, I just trusted my computer not to go bad on me. Like you just said: live and learn.

Thanks

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Don Schenk

14 years ago

Oooo sorry to hear you lost all that work. I know there are data recovery companies that can recover most data. I have no idea of the price, but if you need the data, you need the data.

Before you get motivated again (and don't worry, you will) buy an external USB hardrive. Hard drives do die. It's a fact in computerdom. Even your "new" hard drive will fail some day.

Some people use automatic back up software, I don't. I just copy my work and all folders to external drives - yes, that is plural.

In the long run, losing your data will help you to become a backup fanatic. Rewriting your product will actually give you a better product.

Another backup safety technique is to keep a flash memory card (jump drive or camera card) plugged into your computer. Do quick backups here when necessary... especially of any products you develop.

:-Don

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TheGraduate

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Don Schenk

Oooo sorry to hear you lost all that work. I know there are data recovery companies that can recover most data. I have no idea of the price, but if you need the data, you need the data.

Before you get motivated again (and don't worry, you will) buy an external USB hardrive. Hard drives do die. It's a fact in computerdom. Even your "new" hard drive will fail some day.

Some people use automatic back up software, I don't. I just copy my work and all folders to external drives - yes, that is plural.

In the long run, losing your data will help you to become a backup fanatic. Rewriting your product will actually give you a better product.

Another backup safety technique is to keep a flash memory card (jump drive or camera card) plugged into your computer. Do quick backups here when necessary... especially of any products you develop.

:-Don

Thanks a lot. You are right when you say that I will become a backup fanatic, Yes sir

Thanks

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Janice Sperry

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Don Schenk

Rewriting your product will actually give you a better product.

:-Don

Now that is a great way to put a positive spin on a crisis to give someone motivation! You are right too - he will end up with a better product.

On another note: In 1999 I had a laptop hard drive crash. A geek friend put the HD in the freezer for about 10 minutes and it booted up. I backed everything up and later transferred it to my new HD. Life was good again.

Thanks
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thumperhartley

14 years ago

Same thing happened to me TWICE last year. Luckily on one occassion got the data back by taking HD to shop. This is what I do now.

Favorites/Bookmarks - all online with delicious.com

Files & Folders -Realtime online backup: I use Carbonite for this as it works in the background backing up as you make changes

For belt and braces all my products daa I work in dropbox as in dropbox.com (invaluable if you want to access laptop data from anywhere and your iphone)

lastly I have a usb powered flash drive for family pics etc.

Might seem like overkill but I now sleep at night

Thanks
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Jay Rhome

14 years ago

Originally Posted by thumperhartley

Same thing happened to me TWICE last year. Luckily on one occassion got the data back by taking HD to shop. This is what I do now.

Favorites/Bookmarks - all online with delicious.com

Files & Folders -Realtime online backup: I use Carbonite for this as it works in the background backing up as you make changes

For belt and braces all my products daa I work in dropbox as in dropbox.com (invaluable if you want to access laptop data from anywhere and your iphone)

lastly I have a usb powered flash drive for family pics etc.

Might seem like overkill but I now sleep at night

Great post. Last night I was browsing the forum to see what the good folks of the WF recommended for backups.

Carbonite ($55 a year) and Dropbox (free for the first 2Meg) came up time after time.

Thanks

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Big Fly 14 years ago

My business partner used to sell encryption software for a very large German data security company. He says that 99% of data on any hard disk can be recovered unless properly wiped using DoD level formatting or encrypted with AES256 bit encryption or actually shot with a bullet from a gun (many police depts around the world do this to ensure hard disks are unrecoverable!).

He also says that these days you can purchase some very strong recovery software online instead of having to go to expensive recovery services.

Good luck with it!
- Thanks
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brandonwinters

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Don Schenk

Oooo sorry to hear you lost all that work. I know there are data recovery companies that can recover most data. I have no idea of the price, but if you need the data, you need the data.

Before you get motivated again (and don't worry, you will) buy an external USB hardrive. Hard drives do die. It's a fact in computerdom. Even your "new" hard drive will fail some day.

Some people use automatic back up software, I don't. I just copy my work and all folders to external drives - yes, that is plural.

In the long run, losing your data will help you to become a backup fanatic. Rewriting your product will actually give you a better product.

Another backup safety technique is to keep a flash memory card (jump drive or camera card) plugged into your computer. Do quick backups here when necessary... especially of any products you develop.

:-Don

Good points Don.

-Rewriting your product will actually give you a better product. Backup fanatic is not bad. And using this "failure" as motivation to cover your bases, identify the important details, refine your craft and move on need only be the next steps you take.

I'm curious how the drive died, or how you lost the data? Have the reformatted it? When I was doing computer tech support for the state we used to be able to put the failed drives in the freezer, pull it out after a few hours and manage to recover files that were on the drive. We weren't able to boot it up, but could explore it as an extended drive and recover them. I'm not sure if you've tried it or it's possible in your scenario, but given you lost 4 months of your project, it might be worth looking into at this point.

Good luck man, and better luck for the future!

Thanks

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Daniel Deegan

14 years ago

All might not be lost. If you look online there is a method that involves wrapping the hard drive it self up in a special way and then putting it in the freezer for abit. After a ceratin amount of time you'll be able to plug the drive back in and copy the data to a thumb drive.

This does work in many situations, it just may not give you much time to actually copy the files off the drive. It all depends how bad the drive is damaged. If done this my self. The drive worked for about 15 minutes which was enough time to get super critical stuff off the drive.

Just make sure you wrap the drive properly because you don't want it to develop any condensation inside the drive case. (this happed once to me to as as well)

Thanks
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Blase

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Gorilla Writer

All might not be lost. If you look online there is a method that involves wrapping the hard drive it self up in a special way and then putting it in the freezer for abit. After a ceratin amount of time you'll be able to plug the drive back in and copy the data to a thumb drive.

This does work in many situations, it just may not give you much time to actually copy the files off the drive. It all depends how bad the drive is damaged. If done this my self. The drive worked for about 15 minutes which was enough time to get super critical stuff off the drive.

Just make sure you wrap the drive properly because you don't want it to develop any condensation inside the drive case. (this happed once to me to as as well)

DO NOT put your hard drive in the freezer.

I used to sell hard drives and now do a lot of work
online for a guy that sells them.

You will cause condensation that will
freeze then when you take it out
you have water, very bad

Depending on what happened to your drive
there are two things you can do.

If what you have on it is worth a lot to you
there are many data recovery companies
online, but it's not cheap.

Many times the drive is fine, but the
controller board went bad. This is the pc
board mounted on the drive.

They can be easily changed.
But you have to fine the exact controller
board for your drive. All of the information
you need is printed on the label of your
drive.

There are also a few companies online that
sell controller boards and they will walk
you through the process.

Good luck.

Thanks
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TheGraduate

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Blase

DO NOT put your hard drive in the freezer.

I used to sell hard drives and now do a lot of work
online for a guy that sells them.

You will cause condensation that will
freeze then when you take it out
you have water, very bad

Depending on what happened to your drive
there are two things you can do.

If what you have on it is worth a lot to you
there are many data recovery companies
online, but it's not cheap.

Many times the drive is fine, but the
controller board went bad. This is the pc
board mounted on the drive.

They can be easily changed.
But you have to fine the exact controller
board for your drive. All of the information
you need is printed on the label of your
drive.

There are also a few companies online that
sell controller boards and they will walk
you through the process.

Good luck.

Thanks a lot

No it wasn't the controller, the shop I took the PC to was able to get the computer back up and running just by replacing the old hard-drive with a new one, my problem now is to get the data I need from the broken hard-drive, I looked at local data recovery company already, I think they might be able to get the job done.

Thanks to everybody for the replies

Thanks
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Blase

14 years ago

Originally Posted by TheGraduate

Thanks a lot

No it wasn't the controller, the shop I took the PC to was able to get the computer back up and running just by replacing the old hard-drive with a new one, my problem now is to get the data I need from the broken hard-drive, I looked at local data recovery company already, I think they might be able to get the job done.

Thanks to everybody for the replies

I am not talking about the mother board in your computer.

I am talking about the circuit board on your disk drive.
That is called the hard drive controller board.

Thanks
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TheGraduate

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Blase

I am not talking about the mother board in your computer.

I am talking about the circuit board on your disk drive.
That is called the hard drive controller board.

Oh okay, my bad for the misunderstanding

Thanks again

Thanks

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davewebsmith

14 years ago

If it makes you feel any better you are not the only one, I have had that before. I do daily backup via ftp to a backup NAS service - google them not to expensive - pay for the service and you win the in the end

Another positive is that its weekend and the World Cup is on so that sound be a bit of a boost

Thanks

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David Louis Monk

14 years ago

If you still have the old drive you have to weigh up the cost of recovering the data versus your time repeating the work you have done. The computer shop you used might not have been able to recover the data, but there are companies out there which can do it no matter how bad the hard drive might seem.

I do not have a complete backup/copy of my hard drive right now which makes me think I should go out and buy a couple of equal size hard drives and clone my hard-drives in case of failure.

At the moment I have backups of many of my important files, but I have lots of smaller files that might not be backed up.

I could not get to open up Outlook a couple of days ago and I thought I might have lost all my emails again (yes I had lost them all in the past). However, I did a search on Google this time and found out through a Fix It type site what to do to recover the situation.

Good luck, in whatever you have to do.

Thanks

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Daniel Deegan

14 years ago

Obviously if your going to pay for recovery then there is no need to risk putting the drive in the freezer. But if your not going to do any professional recovery and just let the drive rot then the freezer trick might be worth the effort.

I'm an ex IT guy, the method works. Look online, it's an old trick tech heads have been doing for years. yes you can develop condensation if you do it wrong, but if you read up on the process you should be fine. There is no grantee that the method will work in every case but it does work in many situations.

Thanks

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raydp

14 years ago

I'm so sorry to hear of your plight, like so many others, I back up to an external hard drive.

But guess what? Out of curiosity I fired up my spare computer only to find a loud clicking noise coming from what I presume is the hard drive! I'll take a look to see if it's the fan, but I'm not usually that lucky.

Ray

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pearlydean

14 years ago

Ouch that is a painful lesson!

I have all of my important work backed up on two external hard drives but also use Amazon AWS as an online storage for video's, ebooks and reports I have written and also our family photo's.

My wife dropped her external hard drive last year and we lost a lot of photos and music so it prompted us to store important stuff online as well as externally.

Just rewrite your product now but better! I'm sure you will remember most of it.

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Profolegy

14 years ago

Thats a good lesson for me
Id better start doing my back ups again - been lazy.
That won't happen to me attitude.

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Fernando Veloso

14 years ago

You don't need motivation: you need action to recover it while you have it fresh in your memory.

As for the rest, we've all been there before

Thanks

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mattlaclear

14 years ago

If you're looking for motivation from others you'll just lose it again when something else negative happens to your business. Next time upload your product to your hosting account (which is where it should of been anyways) and if your cpu ever takes a nosedive again you will still have your product and web pages in tact.

I once lost my entire database of prospects 3 weeks before Christmas because of a HD failure. It was a pipeline I had been building for three and a half years and I was sick over losing it.

We live and learn.

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jrafique

14 years ago

Really feel sorry for this. That's way backups are necessary. And you should make backups from now to save your future work.

Thanks

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schu31

14 years ago

Sometimes life will just had us a challenge to see if we can handle it. Just take one day at a time and begin to build, one day you will look back and not believe you have done it. You may even end up with a better product then the original. Just take it for what it is a set back. Grab an External Hard Drive and Keep Backing Up. It is a lesson we should all learn. I am sorry to hear about the loss of some really valuable items and Thankyou for reminding me how important backing up is.

Thanks

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smallbusinessseotoday

14 years ago

I am sorry to hear about your hard drive problem. I have a suggestion that might help you.

When you take a computer to a local computer shop with a hard drive problem. The technicians that work on the computer will almost always state that the hard drive is bad and suggest you install a new hard drive. The main reason is because it saves the technician time and usually they do not have the time, experience or tools to work on hard drives that are bad.

However, you can send the bad hard drive to a company that specializes in repairing/retrieving bad hard drives. The companies may or may not be able to retrieve all the data on the bad hard drive; but some data is better than losing everything.

The cost for this type of service can be very costly; but using this type of service depends on how important retrieving the data off the bad hard drive is to you.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

Thanks

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bionictortoise

14 years ago

Well one good thing is, you only make that mistake once.

I would also consider online backups too. An external hard drive won't necessarily help in the event of a house fire or burglary.

Carbonite.com will let you backup encrypted data online for $54 a year no matter how much data! - This is VERY cheap compared to other online backup services.

As your product may not take up that much space, another option would be to upload it to unlisted pages on your site. It won't be breaking any storage rules, as it will eventually be available online anyway.

Thanks

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Diondeville

14 years ago

If the drive still partially functions you might be able to access it with the aid of a Linux Live Disk (such as Kubuntu). Boot your machine with the Live Disk, when it has loaded to a desktop type "sudo mount -a" to mount all drives then open a file manager and see whether you can browse the drive that's "broken".

Sometimes it helps to connect the broken drive to your motherboard after your computer (and operating system) has loaded. Retype "sudo mount -a" after connecting it if you do that.

Only stick the HD in the freezer if you think its mechanisms (bearings etc...) have ceased - freezing causes the materials to contract. You can usually tell whether it is ceased up by placing the (disconnected) drive next to your ear and slowly rotating it - you should be able to hear movement. I've done this several times without problems, even to mp3 players.

Thanks

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Quentin

14 years ago

Next time back up to the cloud and it will never be a problem again.

Quentin

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Hard drive broke down, Lost my whole new product. Need motivation!

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