Storage: Poll: Has your hard drive(s) failed on you before?
- 10/10/08 9:59 AM
Poll: Has your hard drive(s) failed on you before?
by Lee Koo (ADMIN) - 10/10/08 9:59 AM
Has your hard drive(s) failed on you before?
-- Yes. (How so, and were you able to recover the data?)
-- No. (Lucky you! Anything you want to share about your luck?)
-- Not yet, but I'm starting to encounter some problems now. (What problems, and have you backed up your data?)
Share your experience with us if your hard drive has failed on you before. Let us know what the end results were, was your data recoverable (if yes, how was it recovered) or was it lost forever?
Once . . .
by Coryphaeus - 10/10/08 4:01 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
On my web server.
I back up my site regularly to DVD and external HD. And every month or so I clone the entire drive to another external drive.
Bummer that it failed, but inserting the cloned drive put the system back on line in minutes, and adding the backups was easy.
I don't go for the backup software.
I also clone my main PC drive to yet another external drive. Recovery is ten times faster and simpler than restoring a backup.
Yup
by beachmom561 - 10/10/08 5:54 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
A friend who is a real techie put it in the freezer.
Then, because he is very good and very fast, he installed the frozen hard drive into his computer and recovered and saved the info to another hard drive. Then he fixed it good enough to store info and things like game patches.
This is not a worry for me....
by tallin - 10/10/08 6:14 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I run Ghost12 on my PC and Acronis10 on my Laptop, both are image backup utilities so if either Hard Drive were to fail, I could be up and running in 36 minutes.
How do I know this? well I did a test run on the PC. I purchased a new Hard Drive, took out the working one, put in the new one and did the image transfer. I am still working from that image backup HD.
The initial HD I re-formatted and used it as my external backup HD for Acronis on my Laptop.
I know both Acronis and Ghost cost money, but for me a great investment and over time very reasonably priced I think.
So, I suggest you use image software then never worry about Hard Drive failure at all
You can also use DBE
by santuccie - 10/10/08 6:32 PM In reply to: This is not a worry for me.... by tallinParagon Drive Backup Express is free for personal use. Get it here.
Yes
by santuccie - 10/10/08 6:23 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Fortunately, I always keep disk image backups, and store multiple copies of important data on separate machines, external media, and online.
Only once
by peterj_1992 - 10/10/08 6:45 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
The only time my HDD failed was on a then 12-year-old Toshiba Sat Pro 400 CDT. Didn't bother fixing it since I didn't have any important data on it; except for Dark Forces and DOOM.
Yes, twice
by pburkeiii - 10/10/08 7:01 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
First, i had the hard disk on my Dell Optiplex break, no notice, it just stopped working. The computer was just used for web browsing, so no important files to loose. Just last week my 3 month old external hard disk broke, and the bad part is that it was the actual drive, not the casing circuits. I had just reformatted my laptop, and this was where all of my archived files were. I just hope Hitachi will send me a replacement, and i can find some software to recover the files.
Dead, Dead, Dead
by marcysg - 10/10/08 7:14 PM In reply to: Yes, twice by pburkeiiiLost the hard drive in a not quite 3 yr old HP. Luckily had the extended warranty with Geek Squad. They replaced the hard drive BUT due to GS first telling me it was a software problem--I took the CPU to another company (FireDog). The 2nd company was able to recover my hard drive and then I took the CPU back to GS to have it replaced. Then BACK to Firedog to have them reinstall the information they burned to a CD.
Luckily I'm not into downloading music or storing photos so much of my material was text.
Hard drive failure
by richande - 10/10/08 8:24 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I made a mistake & downloaded SP 2 for my pc running xt, after I installed it however I started having stop errors as many as 10 times in one day! Pointing at everything in the pc!
Dell eventually replaced the drive. I ordered sp2 on cd from microsoft, but it took me several months to work up enough courage to try to install from the cd, dῐid so finally & never had another problem.
Rich
Yep
by Flirkann - 10/10/08 9:52 PM In reply to: Poll: Has your hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
It was a new Seagate Barracuda 320GB (3mths old, SATA - seemed to be a spate of these at one point which quickly tailed off)
It was a platter defect I believe - after a normal shut down it lost the boot sector and MBR - I was unable to restore either and had quite a bit of stuff I did not have duplicated on other drives in some form so after a SpinRite session which found the data areas to be fine, and no luck with free recovery applications, I bought a copy of Seagate's recovery software.
Found all my files, and then some - internet cache...
Except for a few mp3s the data was intact.
I then nuked the drive and tried a clean install on it - it failed right after the 1st reboot so it got RMA'd
RAID 1 Failure
by DRONPAUL - 10/11/08 5:52 AM In reply to: Poll: Has your hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Paid a lot of money for a RAID 1 - if your main drive goes bad slowly you will lose the mirror. It happened to me twice. Viruses take both out also (I Know - duh)but the point is - cannot use either to get the data off. I lost both to a power surge - Lightening strike while the machine was off.
Now I have an internal 3rd drive using Norton and backing up the Raid - also two external drives which I alternate and backup the files.
I used the refrigerator trick and it worked - also sent one out for recovery and $500 later got most of the data back.
The biggest pain - reregistering software bought on line - find the old emails - contacting the companies. The very worst - PTC engineering software - it took me weeks to get it installed and reconnected back into the server. Some software upgrades require the loading of previous versions - MathCAD and Pinnacle (have to go back 3 versions). As much as I hate it - I buy the CD backups or you can spend weeks re-downloading everything. Sure getting the data back is important but having to reload everything to include all the updates - is insane - mirror is the way to go.
If you are using RAID 0 - get ready the data is split between the drives - so what you actually retrieve is a crap shoot - unless you really pay attention - so which drive goes out? You are about to enter the twilite zone.
Recovered "Blown Drives"
by Tere - 10/11/08 6:21 AM In reply to: RAID 1 Failure by DRONPAULThree times in the company I worked for. They were NOT happy when I insisted that they buy a NEW hard drive to replace the one(s) that failed, but when I got back ALL the data on the drives, they were thrilled. I used File Scavenger. I took a computer with a "blown" drive home, used a new hard drive in a hard case (making it a second hard drive) and ran it overnight. No one noticed any difference. And, after I did a format several times on the "blown" drives, they worked a charm, so the purchase of the new drives was not so much the blow to the budget they thought. I used those drives to back up the idiots who lost the drives in the first place (IIC did not want me to back up anything but the server). Now that I'm gone, I hear the entire server when belly up -- second time in two years -- and I am SO glad I'm not there anymore.
I've tried Spin Right on new boss' computer, but didn't work -- File Scavenger did the work for me. New that boss has a "blown" drive and the people she's hired has said: get a new computer. Well, she simply cannot afford that right now. I'm telling her that I can TRY to get her drive back. Plus, she has two other computers just sitting there. The tech she hired told her they are "too full" to be rescued. Baloney. Get rid of all the stuff those folks downloaded -- music mostly -- and they will be just fine. They are in the business of SELLING computers and I cannot get her to understand that. She's been completely scared by her brother who worked there after I went on leave of absence, and she's scared of me. Sheesh. What good would it do for me to mess up computers that she's already been told are useless? I can't get that little bit through her head, bless her heart.
Spinwrite Saves Lives
by Busboy2 - 10/11/08 7:21 AM In reply to: Poll: Has your hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
https://www.grc.com/sr/testimonials.htm
Pretty much the best HD recovery system
Has your harddrive failed before?
by JohnOaktre - 10/11/08 7:55 AM In reply to: Poll: Has your hard drive(s) failed on you before? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Yes
Started getting windows system warning messages my harddrive was failing, and to backup critical files immediately (or something to that effect)
I ignored it for about a week & then started to worry - I consulted my brother-in-law, a retired HP guru - well long & short I followed the advise he'd been giving me for years and installed a second harddrive in the PC - created a Ghost (Norton Ghost 2003) image on the new harddrive, and boot to that drive now - scrapped the old drive.
Now doing Ghost image back-ups on all PC's in the house kids, wife's no worries.
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