HDD Fail, not a happy camper

Sometimes HDs go belly up. It's inevitable but really annoying when it happens. I hope you get your data back ok.

You do regular back ups, right?

Tell me you got back ups of your pictures and your work.

Damn, I hope you have back ups.

no backups as it was pretty recent stuff almost finished the blind yesterday and went to bed..... not to happy when i discovered a blackscreen on boot.... well are setting up xp as i type this some AV and Firefox. Then im gonna plug it in and see if i can save anything...

My sisters little toddler got to my computer once, kept pressing the on off/reset buttons over and over until it stopped working. Had destroyed the motherboard and the HDD!!

Getdataback or some such program (I'll check when I get home) can get back ALL (Vast majority) of your data.  I had a 0 RAID fail (Or 1? whichever is the one that is striped) and with getdataback (or whatever it's called) and a program to reconstruct the raid virtually I got access to everything.  Of course it was like a terra of info so I only grabbed what I really needed.

Back ups people, back ups. It's so simple. Did you appologize to your wife for the noob speech? here's one for you for not backing up. Back up, every time you have a new file, back it up.

Sucks I had a failure 3 weeks ago   Ease up guys it's painful hahahah

I don't know how to backup my computer (Windows XP Media Edition), because it's a hand-me-down computer, and it didn't come with the Windows CD, because that's on a partition and I don't know how to get at it for anything but factory re-installing purposes.  

However, I HAVE learned from losing everything when I had to factory reinstall, that whenever I start making a Windowblind, after every session, I make a .wba package and put it on my flash drive.  I just don't trust my geezerly computer to be there for me for the rest of my life -- she's been letting me know, little by little, she's going to bail on me one of these days.  The heartbreak of losing her will be enough of a grief, I don't want to have to deal with lost work, on top of that.

This would be my #1 tip to anyone newbie making Windowblinds (and I know you're no noob, Voidcore!) -- make .wba packages for every session, and save a copy -- that way if you screw something up in the next session, you always have the last copy to "un-do" the screw up.  

My favorite feature of Photoshop is Ctrl+Alt+Z -- I would like to Ctrl+Alt+Z my life sometimes, but I can't, so I've learned at least with SKS6, backup .wba packages is the next best thing to Ctrl+Alt+Z.

@voidcore,

On occasion when I've encountered a "dead" drive, I've wrapped it in newspaper then placed it into the freezer for a few hours.  After a few hours take the drive out.....let it warm up just a tad (do not let it get right back to room temp.).  You should then be able to run the drive long enough (before it heats up again) to get your data off of the drive.

Please treat the above as a last resort (ie. you have tried all methods NOT requiring the freezing of the drive FIRST!).

I can attest that the method I've described above has saved my ass several times in the years I've been computing.  After performing the above, I was always able to use a simple "copy" command to get at the data on the drive (no need for recovery software etc.).  Obviously don't connect/startup the drive while it is frozen just really really cold.

the Monk

Thanx for the tip Monk ill use it as a last resort if i cannot access the drive at all, biggest problem is when it failed it killed all ntfs tables so a data recovery app is the thing im going to use first on my 3 other disks they all got corrupted....

Yeah haha this is a bit over a tera that got corrupted so gonna cherry pick the stuff i need if i can get hold of it

Didnt need to, she didnt listen anyway haha.....

Haha i never screw up!! but my computer likes to screw things up from time to time

Owell its just another day fixing computers....

What??????

Seriously Runtime GetDataBack and Raid Reconstructor worked wonders for me.

Yeah the 3 non faulty drives...

Heya yrag, yeah something went bad somewhere... the ntfs filesystem somehow got corrupted.. and all disks showed as FAT(!?) filesystem but only where i had files on the disks the empty sectors showed as unformatted(!?)

Anyhow looks like i can get my data back with getdataback.

Don't know how you managed that unless someone ran something like Fixboot or some partition manager....

...and a blackscreen at boot is telling.

My guess is there's nothing wrong with any of the drives (hardware-wise). 

If it's actually Fat32 (and I have no reason to think it isn't), then unplug them all except one that you don't have much on it to lose (or put in a running system), install Windows and plug in the others one by one.....your files will be there to transfer off. Reformat and transfer back.  

They show as unformatted in xp, doing datarecovery on them.. and yeah probably nothing wrong HW wise... so just pluging them in and run the recovery all should be fine..... got my pix backs from 1 of them.... doing the 2nd one now.

@voidcore

If you're thinking the drives don't have any hardware issues.

Use the following FREEWARE program to rebuild the MFT (from the backup that the O/S maintains), rebuild a lost or overwritten partion-table or even un-do a disk format (I've actually used this tiny little utility to UNDO a hard-drive format for some of my dumber extended-family members....hehe )

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

If the other software/methods you've been using to solve your issue haven't made things worse by too much, this tiny utility should just be able to make your drives bootable again.  I've been using this util for years now, and it's the very first thing I look to when I know the drive failure state has nothing to do with hardware failure.

the Monk

I'm not getting kickbacks, but in the vein of backups, I'll add that I'm quite happy using Jungle Disk (http://www.jungledisk.com/) to keep some core files off my home pc. I have a WHS box and some other backups as well.

There are other services which will backup everything on the PC for a not unreasonable yearly price, considering the gnashing of teeth if you lose it all.

 There are two good recovery program>

Recover My files and ONTRACK EASYRECOVERY (The latter, in principle, help to restore files from the HDD and when ruined MFT

 There is a trial version, which at least will say: that they find it possible to restore...  process takes more than an hour for every 100GG

 (* But in both cases it is desirable to have a second HDD, for storing the recovered data

It's really very very important to have another HDD.. just for backup. i hate it when these things happen..

Jesus and Satan have a discussion as to who is the better programmer. This goes on for a few hours until they come to an agreement to hold a contest, with God as the judge.

They sit themselves at their computers and begin. They type furiously, lines of code streaming up the screen, for several hours straight. Seconds before the end of the competition, a bolt of lightning strikes, taking out the electricity. Moments later, the power is restored, and God announces that the contest is over.

He asks Satan to show what he has come up with. Satan is visibly upset, and cries, "I have nothing. I lost it all when the power went out."

"Very well, then," says God, "let us see if Jesus fared any better."

Jesus enters a command, and the screen comes to life in vivid display, the voices of an angelic choir pour forth from the speakers. Satan is astonished.

He stutters, "B-b-but how? I lost everything, yet Jesus' program is intact. How did he do it?"

God smiled all-knowingly, "Jesus saves."

I wish some almighty power would strike thee down