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View Full Version : My primary hard drive failed a couple hours ago...


Abdurahman
October 19th, 2009, 12:54 AM
...And I am devastated. Everything was on it and I had no backup. Documents, music, pictures, irreplaceable files, all gone. Hard drive was fine, then all of a sudden I hear three clicks in succession, and my hard drive revving up three more loud clicks, and computer freeze. I fear the worst as I restart my pc. Yep. Hard drive gone. Dead. Oh well, I guess. I guess everything happens for a reason. I'm just bummed that I learned the hard way.

Oh yeah. I have to redownload my 55 gigs worth of steam games with my measly 1.5mb connection. I'll have a LOT of fun with that. And all the time wasted with reinstalling. And I had a nice powerpoint presentation made up for a speech class tomorrow morning which is also gone, and I have to make a new one real quick.


So kids, ALWAYS back up your stuff. ALWAYS.

Anyways there is a little good that came out of this. The hard drive that failed was a 250 gig sata. I'm gonna replace it with a brand new 400 gig sata I found lying around :woop: (don't ask)

And I rummaged around my room (it's messy) and found my old vista hard drive with all the stuff intact from before I installed 7 and most of my documents are still there, and my music. So it's not AS bad as it wouldve been, but now I'm gonna get an external hard drive IMMEDIATELY.

But I'm still sad so I'll accept any moral support.
Cortexian
October 19th, 2009, 01:14 AM
Take the hard drive with PowerPoint to school and tell your teacher that if he can recover your drive he can have your PowerPoint.

I was once able to convince our high school tech to send a failed hard drive of a friends downtown to the tech center for the school board. They were able to recover it in a couple days heh.
Ganon
October 19th, 2009, 01:14 AM
55 gigs worth of steam games

:O
Cojafoji
October 19th, 2009, 01:22 AM
by same hdd, replace platters with yours. LOLZ.
Abdurahman
October 19th, 2009, 01:29 AM
by same hdd, replace platters with yours. LOLZ.



Heh. I would probably need an industrial cleanroom for that. Won't want any dust particles to settle on the platters now would I?

What can I do? I'll just start over anew. It's ok. I think I've gotten over it.
rossmum
October 19th, 2009, 01:42 AM
I would be absolutely wrecked if my drives failed. Thankfully, my old ones serve as pre-upgrade backups (I literally copy-pasted them to my new 1.5TB HDD). If that did fail, though, I'd still lose a damn lot of files. I'd get that stuff back no matter how much it'd cost, because there's about seven years' worth of accumulated stuff on there.
Cojafoji
October 19th, 2009, 02:00 AM
Heh. I would probably need an industrial cleanroom for that. Won't want any dust particles to settle on the platters now would I?

What can I do? I'll just start over anew. It's ok. I think I've gotten over it.
yeah dude, i'm wasted. don't put stock in anything i say. sorry if that was a dick thing to say.
SnaFuBAR
October 19th, 2009, 02:20 AM
I tell everyone i know to make redundant backups of everything they have, but nobody ever listens to me, then they want to cry. :fail:

3 (soon to be 4) internal drives, external drive, server, flash drive, netbook. It would take an EMP to lose all my stuff.
Rook
October 19th, 2009, 02:23 AM
I tell everyone i know to make redundant backups of everything they have, but nobody ever listens to me, then they want to cry. :fail:

3 (soon to be 4) internal drives, external drive, server, flash drive, netbook. It would take an EMP to lose all my stuff.

or house fire
rossmum
October 19th, 2009, 02:28 AM
I tell everyone i know to make redundant backups of everything they have, but nobody ever listens to me, then they want to cry. :fail:

3 (soon to be 4) internal drives, external drive, server, flash drive, netbook. It would take an EMP to lose all my stuff.
Shit man, you know I would if I had the ability to :ohdear:
Cortexian
October 19th, 2009, 02:40 AM
If I had a good upload speed I'd just upload the entire contents of my PC to a website somewhere for backup purposes. Alas I have to do with the 1TB tapes for our tape backup :(
InnerGoat
October 19th, 2009, 12:09 PM
Don't forget to make backups of the backups
paladin
October 19th, 2009, 02:18 PM
1 TB Raid 1 supremacy.

Soon to have another 1 TB Raid 1 supremacy.
Cojafoji
October 19th, 2009, 02:21 PM
1 TB Raid 1 supremacy.

Soon to have another 1 TB Raid 1 supremacy.
impressive young skywalker. you running it on two or three disks?
paladin
October 19th, 2009, 05:20 PM
impressive young skywalker. you running it on two or three disks?

My primary HDD is 320gb and I have 2 1tb in RAID 1. I had a 500gb external HDD but it shat on me. To replace it, I'm going to get another 1tb RAID 1 setup. It costs about $200. I picked up two 1tb HDDs for $79.99 each, and a controller card for $44.99. I'm pretty sure the price hasn't changed.
legionaire45
October 19th, 2009, 05:39 PM
7Zip to DVD sized archives -> Burn to DVDs

Monthly "major" backups
Weekly minor backups (homework/critical files).

DVDs (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817131594) = best Price/GB (~4.8 cents per gig versus about 11 for an HDD). Buy them, use them, avoid what just happened to the OP.
Phopojijo
October 19th, 2009, 06:52 PM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392022
+
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136351
+
another http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136351

Sector-by-Sector image each drive overnight into the toaster each night... swap the drive every week... leave the other one in a fire & floodproof safe.

If that's not good enough for you -- do that + have some online backups too incase someone steals your shit.
****
As for DVDs -- they suck. They're cheaper by far, but it's a LOT harder to backup to than simply setting a Windows Task Scheduler for 3AM. I doubt you'll be swapping disks every <5GB every day.

Unless like you said you're only backing up once every month (which, let's face it -- will get procrastinated) -- or you're only backing up <5GB... which Dropbox would seriously help with.

***************

Important for O.P.

Okay... so your harddrive is making clicking sounds... is it still visible from the BIOS? If so -- it might still have A BIT OF TIME left. If not -- well then never mind.
Gamerkd16
October 19th, 2009, 07:38 PM
I backed up all of my hard drive on an external 1TB after my downstairs computer HDD failed. (Scares the crap out of me losing my stuff.) But we we're able to recover a major part of the HDD downstairs and copy the files over to another hard drive using some recovery program. Did you try that? It was surprising to me how much stuff we were able to save.
paladin
October 19th, 2009, 09:21 PM
I would never backup to an external HDD. The failure rate is higher.
Phopojijo
October 19th, 2009, 09:30 PM
I would never backup to an external HDD. The failure rate is higher.1) Harddrive toasters use internal drives.

2) It's better than without.
Warsaw
October 19th, 2009, 11:04 PM
I would backup onto Blu-ray, if I could...alas I'm stuck with DVDs, and my Steam folder is not going to fit on a single disc...
paladin
October 19th, 2009, 11:49 PM
BluRay disks are fucking usesless. Just get an internal drive and set a weekly backup of crucial files.
Abdurahman
October 20th, 2009, 12:35 AM
Okay... so your harddrive is making clicking sounds... is it still visible from the BIOS? If so -- it might still have A BIT OF TIME left. If not -- well then never mind.Started clicking loudly then PC crashed. Looked in bios it shows up as a WD Model HAWK (????) with 8gb space lol.



Anyways I reinstalled W7 on my 400 gig HD and everything running smooth.

As I was typing this I hear my secondary hard drive click and rev down, just like it does when I shut down my pc. I almost get a heart attack, then remember that my power options have not been set yet and that windows turned off my hard drive after 30 mins lol.