so...dropped my hard drive last night

[alexis524]

ughh.......

I'm trying to remain calm, but inside I'm pretty devastated. I had my music collection, my wifes pictures she's taken over the years of family, and all my ROM's and extras. It was sitting on the edge of my desk and I tripped over the power cord getting up and it caused the drive to fall on the floor. Yes, a concrete floor.

At first, I thought I had dodged a bullet when I did not hear any unusual noises after I connected it again. I went into the drive, file structure/directory is there, I'm OK. Wait, what? Why does my ROM's folder show only 40GB of data, when i know it's close to 400GB? Upon further inspection, each folder that had copious amounts of data showed empty despite the properties of the drive showing 940GB of data. I knew something was up when I tried to FTP some files over to the xbox. I could clearly see the files on my now damaged drive, but got an error message in filezilla that it could not find/read the source file. I went into file explorer in xbox to prove to myself that the data DID get transferred. I saw the files on my F Drive that filezilla claimed it couldn't transfer, but file size showed 0 next to each and every file name. I frantically unplugged the damaged drive thinking it just needed a few moments to collect itself, you know, kinda like after getting your nuts blown out, you just need a minute to collect yourself, and after a few minutes of hunching over, hands on knees and deep breathing, you're OK. Plugged it back up, drive shows up, files are there, still massive amounts of data missing even though all my file structures are intact, but after a minute, all my folders show empty.

My HD is now collecting itself hunched over with it's hands on it's knees in a ziploc bag in my freezer. I need to format an old drive that was pulled from my sofmodded xbox to make room for the 2Tb that's in now in hopes of being able to save just the pictures. The rest I can always track down again, but the pictures I cannot. I'm hoping that i can get enough time to transfer over 25Gb's of pictures/videos my wife has taken over the last 10 years.

It's funny since all this week I have had this dreadful feeling that I have become an e-hoarder and needed to purge, but did not and could not let go of data that I know i will never use and haven't for years. Now, I'm forced to, and it feels good to be honest. I had so much music and video game data, but not enough time to sort through it all. I like the fresh start, it's liberating. I just hope i can salvage the memories off of the old drive so that I don't have to tell my wife that they are all lost.

lessons learned?
1. Cull and purge data often.
2. Stick to a small drive so when there is loss, it's not catastrophic.
3. Hard Drives do not belong on the edge of desks.

Sorry for the length here, but needed to get all this out so I can get on with my day at work.

[isiolia]

2. Stick to a small drive so when there is loss, it's not catastrophic.

Instead of that, the plan should be to have backups. If data is important to you, keep multiple copies on multiple devices. Never bet on a single storage device. They will all fail, just a matter of when.

[ZenErik]

I have AT LEAST one backup of all my stuff. But it is all media. I don't even consider it THAT important. Yet I STILL back it up. I do not understand when customers come in here with 'critical' data and never back it up.

[Hatta]

RAID and offline backups. It's hard to drop an internal drive. If an internal drive goes bad on its own, RAID will keep your data available until you replace the drive. Anything really unreplaceable, e.g. family pictures needs to be burned to DVD occasionally. ROMs, albums, movies, etc, should be backed up to the net. In other words, just redownload them from wherever you found them first.

[isiolia]

ROMs, albums, movies, etc, should be backed up to the net. In other words, just redownload them from wherever you found them first.

Depends on how much stuff you have, how obscure it is, how legal the method you used to obtain it was, and so on.

I've got stuff stretching back 15 years, if not more. Rebuilding that from scratch would take a long time. Even just re-reripping all my CDs would be a chore. I'd rather have at least most of it backed up.

[Ivo]

I'm trying to remain calm, but inside I'm pretty devastated. I had my music collection, my wifes pictures she's taken over the years of family, and all my ROM's and extras.

The junk (music, ROMs, whatever extras was) is not that important. I once lost an external hard drive with similar type of content. I was sad as that had been some considerably effort accumulating (it was partially organised and was a selection, not just "everything I could find"), but at the end of the day it is nothing I could not get again - even though up to now, several years later, I never bothered.

The pictures taken over years though, that is what I would consider a serious loss.
If you can't find it in another drive, I would personally try to use the expensive professional services of data recovery. If you dropped the disk while it was spinning some part may be irrecoverable even then, but presumably most of the data will be salvageable.

Anyone here knows more about these type of services?

EDIT: that stuff about putting HDD on the freezer I wouldn't try again. It may make future (professional) recovery harder. Or not. I don't know.

Also you can get hard drives that can take falls better than others - although if they are plugged in and spinning when they drop it is always going to be bad. This one:

apparently can handle tumbling around if it is unplugged.

Ivo.

[isiolia]

EDIT: that stuff about putting HDD on the freezer I wouldn't try again. It may make future (professional) recovery harder. Or not. I don't know.

I don't think it should matter, but it's something that actually works far, far less often than given credit for.

I would look more at running chkdsk, Recuva, or other utilities in case it's more a problem of the file table being damaged than the actual data.

[CRTGAMER]

EDIT: that stuff about putting HDD on the freezer I wouldn't try again. It may make future (professional) recovery harder. Or not. I don't know.

I don't think it should matter, but it's something that actually works far, far less often than given credit for.

I would look more at running chkdsk, Recuva, or other utilities in case it's more a problem of the file table being damaged than the actual data.

I'm not keen on the freezer idea, think of the condensation from the temperatue change getting on the platters.

I burn CDRs and DVDRs of personal JPGs and MPGs once a year because of the potential risk of a hard drive fail. Nothing fancy, just the raw files for an easy read on any computer. This is easy to do if the PC has folders labeled by year ahead of time. The discs are all in a box and easily can be backed up to additional discs even years later for my great grandkids to rediscover.

@ alexis524 - Hopefully you can recover the data. Copy any important files that you can before running any disc repair or going to a data recovery service.

[fastbilly1]

EDIT: that stuff about putting HDD on the freezer I wouldn't try again. It may make future (professional) recovery harder. Or not. I don't know.

I don't think it should matter, but it's something that actually works far, far less often than given credit for.

I would look more at running chkdsk, Recuva, or other utilities in case it's more a problem of the file table being damaged than the actual data.

I'm not keen on the freezer idea, think of the condensation from the temperatue change getting on the platters.

I burn CDRs and DVDRs of personal JPGs and MPGs once a year because of the potential risk of a hard drive fail. Nothing fancy, just the raw files for an easy read on any computer. The discs are all in a box and easily can be backed up to additional discs even years later for my great grandkids to rediscover.

@ alexis524 - Hopefully you can recover the data. Copy any important files that you can before running any disc repair or going to a data recovery service.

While the freezer issue is more often stated than it should be, it has worked for me on several occasions. No issue with condensation. You just have to be fast, you usually have less than 10 minutes to pull everything you can. So go for pictures and most important at that.

Actual data recovery companies like Drive Savers are not cheap, but they do work that should not be possible. They have to be wizards.

[isiolia]

I'm not keen on the freezer idea, think of the condensation from the temperatue change getting on the platters.

Fairly low risk of that I would say, as HDDs should be taking steps not to have moisture in the air inside them in the first place. Sealed with a filtered breathing hole to allow for pressure equalization is standard AFAIK.

Though, again, very rarely actually works. I think the only time I've seen where it could have helped the drive worked at room temperature anyway, and failed as it heated up. So the user was able to get their data off of it...5 minutes of copying at a time.