Aaaauugh!

[Jourdy288]

I've run into something of a disaster; I've dropped my external HDD. The expensive silver one. The one I put all my important info on! When it spins up, there's a little bouncing noise after a couple seconds. It's not being detected by my computer. Is there any hope, or is this... the end

?

 

[Iorgy77]

I've run into something of a disaster; I've dropped my external HDD. The expensive silver one. The one I put all my important info on! When it spins up, there's a little bouncing noise after a couple seconds. It's not being detected by my computer. Is there any hope, or is this... the end

?

How much porn did you lose?

 

[Jan-Nik]

It's the end.

Happened to me once. Worst day of my life.

 

[Nova]

If you need to get your docs off, I hear putting it in the freezer for an hour works.

 

[sam fisher]

External HDDs are not a good backup solution . For that reason I keep important data in my dropbox account.

 

[Jourdy288]

@Nova How long will I have before the freezer solution stops working? Will it be possible to leave the HDD running in the freezer by running a couple wires? I know it sounds crazy stupid, but I'm so frustrated I'm willing to try anything...
@Peter R I have a Dropbox, and I was transferring files from my very bloated Windows PC to my Mac (slightly less bloated) to my external HDD, which wasn't bloated at all D:
@Jan-Nik I thought I was already having a bad day when THIS happens...

I'll probably buy a 500 GB flash drive instead... Stupid antiquated spinning media...
Thanks for the help so far.

Also, I was using not only to back up my stuff, but to back up some stuff from the file archive. I had files for my Pandora ready and waiting for it's arrival *BEGINS CRYING*, and I had just downloaded all the programs on Skeezix's website too, for my Palm! So. Much. Pain. So. Much. Lost. Bandwidth.
The bouncing noise sounds like a marble, if that helps.

 

[Nova]

http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/freeze-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data.html

You might get 20 mins if you're lucky.

 

[Jourdy288]

http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/freeze-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data.html

You might get 20 mins if you're lucky.

Oi... How many times can this be repeated?

 

[Nova]

http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/freeze-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data.html

You might get 20 mins if you're lucky.

Oi... How many times can this be repeated?

As many as possible I believe. However if I were you, I'd do it like so.

1. Put in a ziplock bag
2. Place in freezer
3. Leave for 24 hours
4. open ziplock bag and run a cable from hdd (still in freezer) to the computer
5. Keep freezer shut as much as possible
6. Transfer data

I say this because the logic is that the cold causes the metal to contract, making connections where maybe connections have been lost. If you leave it in the freezer while you're transferring, chances are it won't heat up as fast.

 

[Mr B]

After dropping a drive, putting it in the freezer ain't likely to work. You've probably smashed the heads, and there simply aren't anything left to read whats on the drive. If thats the case, you got microscopic shards of the heads bouncing around in the drive as well as the damage where the heads hit the disc(s) and restarting the drive over and over might make it worse. Try the freezer trick once, after that you have to make a decision. Buy a identical drive, and rip both drives in pieces, salvage the head assembly from the new working drive, and put it in the broken one, without letting them hit each other, or anything else, and you should, if your able to do the work careful enough, be able to grab your data... (Or whats left of it anyway) Then throw the two drives away. They are now both compromised by dust, and cant ever be seen as reliable.

The "freezer" trick was something came up with during IBM's "Deathstar" issues. It works for a large number of drives that die of "natural causes".
Best of luck.
B!

 

[u9i]

There are data recovery companies that specialize in recovering files from fubar drives. But i imagine it is quite expensive, so decide how important the data was.

Here you go: http://www.dtidata.com/quote_request.htm

 

[Nintendo]

I lost over 700GB of gay pr0n once when my external HDD fried.

 

[craigix]

Yeah, plenty of companies can recover that disk for you within a few hours. You will just have to pay them many times the value of the HDD first

 

[WizardStan]

Freezing the drive only helps when things get worn out. The cold shrinks them just enough to give you a few minutes of use. You are well beyond "kinda worn out" and into "things are rattling around".
Before sending off for an expensive recovery, I would suggest trying a different enclosure. If it's not being detected at all, maybe the USB controller is busted and the drive itself still has some life in it. I wouldn't count on it, but if you're desperate that's about the only thing you can do.

 

[fishybawb]

Yeah, plenty of companies can recover that disk for you within a few hours. You will just have to pay them many times the value of the HDD first

Not sure what the value of the HDD has to do with it, they recover data, not the drive

If it's just stuff that can be downloaded/done again, I'd just chalk it up to a learning experience and start again. If you're a dumbass like me, it shouldn't take more than 3 or 4 such experiences to come up with a decent backup solution

 

[Jourdy288]

After dropping a drive, putting it in the freezer ain't likely to work. You've probably smashed the heads, and there simply aren't anything left to read whats on the drive. If thats the case, you got microscopic shards of the heads bouncing around in the drive as well as the damage where the heads hit the disc(s) and restarting the drive over and over might make it worse. Try the freezer trick once, after that you have to make a decision. Buy a identical drive, and rip both drives in pieces, salvage the head assembly from the new working drive, and put it in the broken one, without letting them hit each other, or anything else, and you should, if your able to do the work careful enough, be able to grab your data... (Or whats left of it anyway) Then throw the two drives away. They are now both compromised by dust, and cant ever be seen as reliable.

The "freezer" trick was something came up with during IBM's "Deathstar" issues. It works for a large number of drives that die of "natural causes".
Best of luck.
B!

*SIGH* I'd need to borrow a sterile room first (reads your reply more thoroughly) Oh, you mention about their being compromised...
Yeah, my stuff I can get back, fortunately, it'll just take... Time. Arr, all those AMVs I downloaded from Youtube, gone... Like that... I'll be mourning my HDD a few days, please excuse my lack of good posts for that...
Also, any recommendations for a replacement? Preferably something less fragile?

And thank you, everybody, for all the help.

 

[cosurgi]

I've set up one of my older PCs to sit downstairs with debian, 6 of 500GB HDDs in raid5 configuration (configured with mdadm tool) which backups all PCs in the LAN three times per day using rsnapshot. It sits there connected to UPS which safely shuts it down if there's no electricity. Pandora will be in the LAN too of course (using vtun so that it could connect from everywhere in the world, just like my laptop), so it will be backed up also. One time I was on some conference on the other side of the Earth, and in the hotel I left my laptop on overnight, because it was compiling some stuff, and it was left connected to internet. And because of that it got connected to my LAN with vtun. And in the morning I realized, that my laptop used hotel's broadband to get backupped by my backup server. And I even forgot about how good it works. That comes in handy sometimes. Especially when I accidentally delete something. Though I didn't have any disaster like yours, except for those that were planned, because smartmontools notified me that some HDD is going to die.

 

[lulzfish]

rsnapshot, vtun, and smartmontools

This post is full of interesting things. I'm installing smartmon now and will look into the other two. I'm the kind of person who has a backup server, but hasn't thought to run backups in ages. I need to make it a cron job.

Vtun sounds similar to what SSH does. Is it better somehow?

 

[cosurgi]

rsnapshot, vtun, and smartmontools

This post is full of interesting things. I'm installing smartmon now and will look into the other two. I'm the kind of person who has a backup server, but hasn't thought to run backups in ages. I need to make it a cron job.

Vtun sounds similar to what SSH does. Is it better somehow?

you forgot about mdadm, which is the easiest method of managing raid configuration.

yes, vtun is better than tunelling over ssh, because it's a deamen, which runs automatically, if the connection goes down it restarts itself until connection gets up. In fact if you run vtun, you no longer need to remember about your convoluted network ports, you simply have the access to remote machines.

I'm running rsnapshot from cron. it's great.

 

[WizardStan]

Also, any recommendations for a replacement? Preferably something less fragile?

You drop a hard drive on the ground and it's the hard drives fault for being too fragile?