Hard Drive Failure.

[The Mad Monk]

Thanks, I'll download the easyrecovery trial and see if it can even locate the files -- if it can, I'll probably buy the $199 version.

Fortunately, the second drive was mainly being used to back up the first, and to store old data from years back. Unfortunately, it was my gaming disk as well, and held all my PTW modding work. THAT'S what I'll really miss if I can't get it back.

Because the second disk was so much larger (40 gigs vs. 10 gigs on the first), I had to pick and choose what files to have on both disks, and the games lost out.

I've decided to solve that by installing a pair of 80 gig drives instead -- one will archive the other regularly, and hopefully I won't have to worry about this again.

[Urban Ranger]

If you do that, you may want to consider a cheap IDE RAID card. Some newer mobos have them on board, but if you don't you should be able to find a card to do that. Put the pair in RAID 1 (mirroring), and you have an exact image on drive 2 as your drive 1.

[The Mad Monk]

That would be easier than doing it manually -- thanks, I'll look into it.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Urban Ranger, thanks for catching one poorly worded statement in my first post. I assumed (which was stupid of me, I even stated I know this is not a geek forum) everyone knows NEVER open hard drives at home.

What you mean to say is:

"Urban Ranger, stop being such a frigging pedantic git! Anyone with an ounce of common sense would know not to open the hard drive itself. Alas, you don't seem to be part of this concensus. So just get your head out of your arse and be a normal human being like the rest of us, OK?"

Is that more like it?

[Urban Ranger]

Just because you don't open your HDD doesn't mean others don't. Whuz

[Grrr]

I use an app called getdataback it will restore files from formated and repartitioned drives perfectly (provided it hasn't been overwritten), and does a good job at drives which for some reason or other have been corrupted.

[Mr. Harley]

One piece of advice for RAID backups. You can still end up screwed. I had a power supply catastrophically fail, as in one of the capacitors BLEW UP (I found that out when I opened it). Well, I was using a RAID level 1 (disc mirroring) setup. Both ended up cooked. As in fried, as in really, really dead. Along with everything else except the memory (luckily almost everything was under warranty except a CD-drive and the motherboard/CPU.

If you have more than one computer, I now recommend keeping back-up type files in one mega-directory, and do weekly back-ups onto another machine, if you have that option. There are also programs out there that do that kind of mirroring between machines, but all of the ones I know of are corporate style programs and really pricey. A weekly or bi-weekly backup (plus a backup after any big project) should work fairly well.

[Urban Ranger]

If you want to do serious backups, do a nightly tape backup and have a rotation of at least 7 days.

[Mr. Harley]

Actually, tapes are becoming old hat and are actually falling by the wayside, even in corporate except for legacy applications and a few specialized cases. Hard drives have fallen so far in price RAID level 1 is actually much more cost effective for a home user (tape media is expensive, I used to use a SCSI TRAVAN3 unit, and tapes ran around $20 for o3.2 gigabytes (I still have the drive, I haven't used it in years). Do a weekly backup onto a CD-R or RW (which I didn't do, STOOPID), that gives you a much cheaper alternative (in case of a malignant worm or virus). I believe there are some programs that will do incremental backups, so you only backup the changes since you last one, important if you have several gigabytes of data. Check the Seagate site, they used to have a backup program that was decent, though I don't remember if it had an incremental backup feature. Also Cnet and ZDnet might have some lowcast shareware programs available for download.

[Urban Ranger]

Tapes have at least 40GB capacity these days, much more than CD-R or even DVD. Only an optical disk can match it.

[Mr. Harley]

Costs aren't worth it. Raid 1 your primary machine, do a weekly backup onto a similiar sized hard drive on your network once a week. Only problem is worm vulnerability, and you just need to be careful (I've only gotten nailed once in - well, let's just say I predate windows ).

I only got nailed by staying on Napster using dial-up, but staying online for over 20 hours without a firewall and got hacked it may have been the same guy who hacked microsoft (altered the notepad.exe, interesting little bugger). I got to talk to the FBI folks in Houston handling the case! Everything was backed up, my only loss was time, so they weren't interested. When I reported it to my local FBI office, I was horrified. He wanted me to type in this run command. I had to explain that was for his anti-virus package, I was using someone elses, so I wouldn't have the .exe on my computer. It took five minutes to explain. Scary.

Use a SAN device for small businesses, often a attached RAID5 device, with it's own firewall. Automatic and up-to-the minute updates. Once you are talking tapes, or optical discs, you are talking small IT departments or larger outsourcing-type companies. Even then, SAN appliances have growing popularity.

[The Mad Monk]

I bought my two 80 gigs for a little less than $170, including tax.

[Grrr]

Bear in mind people that RAID 1 ONLY protects against hardware failure. If a moron or a virus overwrites all your files, you are STILL ****ed.

[Rogan Josh]

I am surprised no-one has said this already, but never-mind:

"So who is this 'General Failure' guy and why is he reading my hard drive?"

[reds4ever]

Originally posted by Rogan Josh
I am surprised no-one has said this already, but never-mind:

"So who is this 'General Failure' guy and why is he reading my hard drive?"

...and why doesn't he just delegate the job to Major Malfunction?