Aaaauugh!

[Sphinxter]

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

Has actually saved my ass on a few occasions, typically only works on drives that have just worn out of tolerance and are no longer recognised, broken or clicking drives are not real good candidates. Triple baggie it, (locks in freshness, seals in flavor), and put it in the very back or deepest part of the freezer and leave it there for 24 hours, then get your recovery media or backup system up and ready first and then pull it out and be moving fast, if it works you'll only get a couple minutes.

 

[Jourdy288]

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?

Of course it is! They can't make this things so fragile! What, it's not like they're supposed to be stationery on desks :rolleyes: Hahha, I kid.

Spoiler

But what do you think I should replace it with, though? SDXC is not an option ATM, although my (very 1337!) dad opened up the case and removed the panel from the HDD and discovered that the actual disk had been nicked. It was the tiniest thing, really, but was quite apparent against the mirror perfect surface of the silvery ring. It was thus rendered useless by said scratch.
But, the aluminum casing and cables, etc., are still good. So perhaps I could put in a (less fragile!) drive of some sort? Is flash memory an option? I don't want any moving parts...
Thank you, yet again. These forums rock.

 

[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

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

Yes. Which would cost many times the value of the HDD. So the question is if the data is worth it, or just to buy a new HDD and start again.

 

[Javacat]

So perhaps I could put in a (less fragile!) drive of some sort? Is flash memory an option? I don't want any moving parts...
Thank you, yet again. These forums rock.

Your best bet would probably be just finding a hard drive with a built in G sensor. You'll also want to make sure that the hard drive has actually powered down before unplugging it (so that the head's parked properly).
I killed my laptop hard drive a few months ago and was having similar thoughts about getting a flash drive, but the insane cost per MB soon changed my mind. Now I'm just a lot more careful with the laptop (ie, i hibernate or shutdown before putting it away and I no longer drop my bag onto the floor with the laptop in or throw it into the boot of my car ).


Regarding the cost of data recovery, all I know is that it costs stupid amounts I know a guy who had a quote to get a few files off of a dead laptop hard drive and the final figure was about £800.

 

[Jourdy288]

So perhaps I could put in a (less fragile!) drive of some sort? Is flash memory an option? I don't want any moving parts...
Thank you, yet again. These forums rock.

Your best bet would probably be just finding a hard drive with a built in G sensor. You'll also want to make sure that the hard drive has actually powered down before unplugging it (so that the head's parked properly).
I killed my laptop hard drive a few months ago and was having similar thoughts about getting a flash drive, but the insane cost per MB soon changed my mind. Now I'm just a lot more careful with the laptop (ie, i hibernate or shutdown before putting it away and I no longer drop my bag onto the floor with the laptop in or throw it into the boot of my car ).

I'm still curious about flash memory, though, suppose I wanted a terabyte, how much would it be? I'd like to be able to plug this into the old housing for the drive, since it has all the ports still functioning, all I need to do is connect it to the IDE cable.

 

[Javacat]

You'd be able to get a terabyte of solid state for about £2000. It'd have to be 4 drives though. Alternatively, you could do it with 2 drives but you'd be looking at about £2500.


Compared to buying a standard drive, it's really not worth it. You'd be better off buying a couple of 2TB drives for about £100 each and backing up to both of them, then storing them in separate locations.


Edit: ^^ £100 each

 

[Jourdy288]

You'd be able to get a terabyte of solid state for about £2000. It'd have to be 4 drives though. Alternatively, you could do it with 2 drives but you'd be looking at about £2500.
Compared to buying a standard drive, it's really not worth it. You'd be better off buying a couple of 2TB drives for about £100 each and backing up to both of them, then storing them in separate locations.
Edit: ^^ £100 each

*FAINTS* Whoa... Just... Whoa... I don't want to convert that to USD, I'm afraid of numbers that huge...
But I'm still afraid of shiny, spinning media... Any alternatives?

 

[Titcher]

Just don't drop your hard drives. Maybe you should think about attaching a wrist strap to the case as a bit of insurance for the future?

 

[Nova]

This is apparently drop-resistant. It utilises a patent called "Drop Guard Xtreme".

EDIT:

The Iomega Drop Guard Xtreme feature provides unparalleled ruggedness and protects your drive from a 7' drop - over twice the industry average!

 

[sam fisher]

Just put your data off in some online storage solution and then it doesn't really matter if you smash your drives. All you have to do is buy a new one and restore the data - it's then someone else's problem to look after the integrity of your data. That someone else then has huge data centres with stupid amounts of redundancy that you could never possibly hope to match in a personal setting due to cost etc.

 

[Tom`]

To summarize, you have a few options: solid-state storage, either USB (cheap in small capacities, more expensive for large ones) or SATA (expensive to very expensive); you have spinning-platter drives, either 3.5" (stores a lot of data for cheap, but does not deal with vibration and shock well), 2.5" (not as cheap, less capacity, maybe more reliable), and 1.8" (expensive and somewhat hard to find, but the most durable - still probably wouldn't survive a long drop, though).

You could also combine the two approaches - get a reasonably large USB drive, say 16 GB, and a couple of 1 TB hard drives; use RAID 1 for the hard drives and make them network-accessible, and put the most frequently used files on the flash drive.

 

[Jourdy288]

This is apparently drop-resistant. It utilises a patent called "Drop Guard Xtreme".

EDIT:

The Iomega Drop Guard Xtreme feature provides unparalleled ruggedness and protects your drive from a 7' drop - over twice the industry average!

That looks like a good solution, I'll definitely consider that...

Just put your data off in some online storage solution and then it doesn't really matter if you smash your drives. All you have to do is buy a new one and restore the data - it's then someone else's problem to look after the integrity of your data. That someone else then has huge data centres with stupid amounts of redundancy that you could never possibly hope to match in a personal setting due to cost etc.

But the trouble is, I'm constantly ferrying data between my iMac and Xbox 360; so unless M$ gives me a Dropbox option...

To summarize, you have a few options: solid-state storage, either USB (cheap in small capacities, more expensive for large ones) or SATA (expensive to very expensive); you have spinning-platter drives, either 3.5" (stores a lot of data for cheap, but does not deal with vibration and shock well), 2.5" (not as cheap, less capacity, maybe more reliable), and 1.8" (expensive and somewhat hard to find, but the most durable - still probably wouldn't survive a long drop, though).

You could also combine the two approaches - get a reasonably large USB drive, say 16 GB, and a couple of 1 TB hard drives; use RAID 1 for the hard drives and make them network-accessible, and put the most frequently used files on the flash drive.

Thanks for the info, I was wondering about the differences.