So yeah I got a new computer recently and I was going to run my old computer along side of it, acting as a irc/im client, webserver, tf2ds, and media server. It has 4 drives in it, two of which are made redundant with my new comp as I copied most of those files over. One other one has all my video files, and the last one has pretty much everything else, all my photos, music, a local copy of my website, and a bunch of other stuff I don't want to lose. Guess which one died, and guess who thought about making his first backup a couple of weeks ago but couldn't find time to do it

I think the disk has died. My computer won't start up (thought it was the power supply but the disk was acting odd for a bit before the computer failed, and I have yet to try booting up without the disk attached), and the ide->usb thing I have won't power up or spin up the drive when I plug it into the drive (it just turns the power brick into a fire hazard, it gets so hot).

A friend of mine suggests if the drive is short circuited or something to try and grab the same model on ebay and swap the circuit boards and connectors. Does Massassi have any ideas?

Some of the data I can get back. I'm setting up my website to redownload now (660mb whee). But all my music and worse my photos are gone. I have a list of my music library but that's about it.

We've all been there, I lost my -photo- collection once, 3/22 never forget.

I've got tons of anime and movies that I can't afford to backup (too much space). I'd be very saddened to lose that. But my music is backed up via my laptop and external, my projects/work/documents are on Dropbox and my external, and my programs could be reinstalled.

I keep triple backups of my photos; everything else I can in theory replace using [perfectly legal means], but I'm paranoid about losing all the pictures I took. It's less than 20 gigs of data so it's not a problem to keep copies on a few drives; and I have them backed up online too.

I keep all of this sort of thing on portable hard drives. I back up anything irreplaceable on dvds.

I lost all of my student videos a few years ago and had no backups. Years worth of work, down the drain.

It won't boot at all? It should still POST with a bad drive.

Put it in the freezer!

(I'm sure you already know this but) for anyone using optical media for backups, make sure you replace the disks relatively often. A lot of writeable media has a surprisingly short useable life (less than five years in some cases iirc).

Oh no the power light on the PC doesn't even come on. The USB ports turn on for an instant then turns off again.

Gonna try it without the drive today after work.

Before I started at my company there was a huge server meltdown, and we paid a sum of money (ok so it was quite large) to a company who recovered the data (99.99% of it in fact). Is this an option to you MAZZT?

Eh not sure yet. I'd probably opt to rebuild my collections actually over that.

Just lost everything in a pc burn down a few weeks back. 130gb of music all gone.

That sucks.

I won't be surprised if my PC keels over and melts a hole through the floor. It's been running hot. I should back up things, but I guess my laziness is just gonna bite me in the arse sooner or later.

The only thing I don't have back up really well are my movies and TV Shows unfortunately. I don't have nearly enough hard drive space to have duplicate copies like I would want.

Something is off other then the HDD, a dead HDD wouldn't do that. Or it shouldn't anyway.

HOORAY it seems the hard drive took the OTHER hard drive with it. Luckily I copied everything I cared about off that drive long ago.

Tried booting without the completely dead drive, computer won't even turn on. Unplug its power, computer turns on but slows during IDE drive detection and hangs after POST. Unplugged the other drive and it blazed through POST like it was running a marathon.

Computer can boot from Ubuntu Live CD now. The other hard drive isn't mounting via IDE -> USB either. Windows can't read the partiton table though at least the drive powers up and Windows recognizes the model.

How is that even possible, try plugging them both into another computer.

Back in like, 01 I lost a drive. It had 3 JK maps I built that were 99% complete. I still haven't got over it.

Tibby I have, using IDE->USB adapter. Neither mounts, both fail in different ways.

I've never had a hard drive fail on me. Go me I guess.

Same happened to me with Showdown. I sure caught some flak for that. XD Then years later (06) I had the same happen while midway through a high profile pirate mod for Oblivion. v_v urgh.

Never got back to modding afterwards, though

LIES. UTTER LIES.

Same thing happened to JK: Source :/ R.I.P. / Oct. 14, 2009 Never Forget

I've actually heard of that working, but it's usually the LAST chance you have. As it will end the drive forever.

I think the lesson here is that having a JK mod in progress stored on a hard drive *VASTLY INCREASES* the chance that the drive will fail.

"My hard drive died" is the new "My dog ate my homework"

I had a RAID 0 fail on me a few years ago. I used Bart's PE and the Trinity rescue kit. I don't know if those are options for you yet, because the HDD won't even be recognized, I guess. Have you tried sticking it in another system?

Anyway, best of luck dude.

On a tangent, I don't understand how people can have important projects stored on one drive. Any data I generate I copy to seven different locations: I have it on a server, on a hospital comp, on my laptop, on my computer in NY, at my family's house in CA, on an external HD, and on a USB stick I have with me at all times.

Any data that is noncritical I have on a RAID1 array and an external.

Yes, I'm paranoid.

This is like a post from 2001...

Most of the data I had lost over the years was data I neglected to back up prior to a reformat. Even then, I think it was just my old websites and a DF level I was making that I can even think of. The only hardware failure I experienced was a 60GB laptop hdd that broke. Prior to that I managed to back up pretty much everything, a few files were broken. I've actually been really lucky. Every computer I've bought in the past fifteen years works with only the one hdd that needed to be replaced. Like the last time this topic came up I still plan to subscribe to Carbonite. It's about $50 per year and you can back up an unlimited amount of data. It would take forever, I'm sure, to back up all my ripped movies and TV shows (let alone restore) but I really would not look forward to doing them all again.

>_>

<_<

Am I the only one who is insane enough with his backups?

1) 6x 1tb harddrives in raid6 config
2) 1tb external drive for backing up
3) 750gb external drive for *second set* of backups
4) 40+gb worth of photograph backed up to amazon S3 ~ $6.25 a month
5) 10-15gb worth of documents/etc also backed up to DVD and deposited in a safe depot box in the bank
6) Second copy of said dvd in #5 in my parents house

7) Am considering eventually shelling out the money for a second 6x1tb array.... *sigh*

You're such an RIT nerd...

I'd backup on more stuff if I had oodles of money to spend on hard drives as well. But I don't.

Besides, I already know my next PC purchase will be an SSD, and that's going to cost a TON.

lol