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Hard drive crash... 100gb ata (ten years of work)

M

movabi

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 24, 2002
85
0
Iowa City, IA
Hard drive crash... 100gb ata internal (ten years of work) HELP!!!

i have tried techtool pro 4 and disk warrior 3... they seem to hang. Should i be more patient? how long does it take to repair/rebuild directory structures? I had journaling enabled and i had backed up directory files using techtool, which, when i went to use Techtool, couldn't find the files (nice diagnostic/repair program... right) I've thought of sending the drive somewhere to try to get the data back, but i'm dubious if this will even work. Has anyone had similar experiences and got their data back? Is my drive dead... disk utility cannot repair it. I haven't tried restoring because i don't have a drive to restore to.

please help me... it has me wanting to cry. :(
 
RAID, RAID, RAID, RAID...
BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP...
...of course this is hindsight, but if you data is really valuable, there are professionals who can extract your data for a price... and it is usually not a cheap price. They get to laugh at you for not backing up your valuable data too.

I've had 2-3 drives die on me out of say around 10 over 5 years, and that is personal... work is much worse... drives die.

Only an MO drive disc will survive a near nuclear strike, and last 100 years.
Even for that, have a backup copy.

-Wyrm
 
i would also like to add, especially if it's TEN YEARS OF WORK, you should keep backups of anything important. hope you get your data recovered, but at least next time you'll remember to backup.
 
Send it to Drive Savers (and for God's sake, stop mucking with it before you make matters worse) and on your way home from UPS or FedEx buy a tape drive, and enough tapes to do revolving backups. I am very sorely tempted to be derisive, but I will let it go with that.
 
Everyone is talking about backing up BUT no suggestions. Perhaps some people can share how they back up there data? What would you use to back up on a budget and/or no budget? Should I back up using Retrospect on to another hard drive or DVD discs?

Thanks.


~e
 
if you have the money spring for tapes; and u can back up to them; but use them no more than 5 times; i keep it at one actually.

dvds are good so are other hard drives and cheaper.

retrospect is a good program, but i normally just pick what i want to back up and save that rather than the whole thing
 
virividox said:
if you have the money spring for tapes; and u can back up to them; but use them no more than 5 times; i keep it at one actually.

dvds are good so are other hard drives and cheaper.

retrospect is a good program, but i normally just pick what i want to back up and save that rather than the whole thing
Click to expand...


Two thoughts:

1) Take your HD to a data recovery center if it means that much to you, and be prepared to spend BIG bucks for the recovery (if possible). They even go as far as to dismantle your HD, take the platter, put it into a new drive, rebuild it, and then d/l all the data off of it.

2) As far as backup goes... a second HD would be my first choice, burning DVD's my second. All I do once a week is to copy my entire home directory over to the new HD, erasing the one that was previously there. I also have a folder with my applications and some library stuff in it that I don't touch very often. If I experience a crash (or when I migrate to a new machine) I simply copy over my applications folder, my user, and place the library documents I need. It takes no time at all. In addition to this, once every 6 months or so I burn data to a few DVDs and keep them off site, away from my house, at work.

Good luck, I feel your pain.

James
 
totalrecall.com

i had a similar situation happen to me. total recall was cheaper than drivesavers. turn around was great and i didn't lose single file.

if you have financial data (investments, etc.) and a good accountant, you can claim the recovery as a biz expense and deduct it.

i'd say 100GB will cost you around $2000 -- but if it's ten years of data, it will be worth it if you can afford it.

good luck.
 
I back up to my ipod. Gets the job done plus I get to listen to music on my "backup harddrive".
 
ah

obviously, i should have backed up... Thanks for the lecture (really needed it)... I really didn't have an alternative seeing that i'm back in school with little income and unfortunately food and gas come first before a brand new hard drive. Thousands of dollars is also out of the question, so i guess i'm just f'd. I also have a 250 which is full as well and I was trying to allocate funds so i could get the data backed up. It seems like everytime i get a new drive, its never enough, and what was used for backups becomes valued realestate for new photoshop files, digital video etc... Is there a sure proof way of backing up that has room for expansion? I thought about tape backup drives but they seemed rather expensive.

thanks for the help and advice :)
 
movabi said:
Hard drive crash... 100gb ata internal (ten years of work)
Click to expand...


dang, how the HECK did you fit TEN years of work on a 100 GB drive?!?!?

I've had my computer for less than 8 months and the 80 GB is full to bursting (thats why I'm looking for another( :rolleyes: ) external HD).


BTW, when you rebuild your disk using disk warrior, it can take almost a full day to rebuld a 60 GB drive...have patience...
 
i had the same type of problem my ibook's logic board failed and firewire target disk mode dident work and my science courcework was due in the next day my life depended on this work as i would not get into collage without it so i rushed out to oxford street bought a 2.5" firewire caddy took my ibook apart (for the first time :eek:) and got the data back :D

now i back up all my documents to my iBook to my iPod and my entire disk to my cube every month
 
I have been there, I was running a RAID 0 setup and lost years worth of photoshop work. Fortunetally I had very old CD's that had some of the work, the rest of it I lost. However, it was one of the best lessons I could I learned. The night my drive crashed I bought an external HD and that is ONLY a backup drive. Any more space I need gets put on new internal drives I buy. ALWAYS have a method of backup. Before my external HD I had CD's, they took forever to do and it was a pain but in the long run it ended up paying off (even though I only saved a small portion of my data). Even if you only back up your MOST essential files and not all of them, at least you will have some.

Good luck with recovering it, I know there are a bunch of programs that do it, when I used one of them (costed $50 I think) it took nearly 6 hours to read the drive and allow me to see my old data.

I learned my lesson, I think most everyone that is somewhat of a nerd has had this happen to them. When it comes to backup, I can't explain enough how nice it is having an external drive!! They are getting cheap now too, you can at least get an 80g for a reasonably good price.
 
movabi said:
I haven't tried restoring because i don't have a drive to restore to.
(
Click to expand...

if you can, get a 120gb drive, (i think you can get one for $60-80 after rebate), and try that first, if it doesn't then send it out and have the data recovered.

When you do get it back, backup everything on a drive, put it on the foam carrier and in the static bag it came with. Put that in a "high heat" strong box get a dessicant pack and put that inside. Then hide that in the closet, or safey deposit box (if you have one).

That's the best you can do without renting a climate controlled facility to store tapes in.
 
Wyrm said:
Only an MO drive disc will survive a near nuclear strike, and last 100 years.

Even for that, have a backup copy.

-Wyrm
Click to expand...
Basically this is about the only safe backup system, because it requires high heat & magnetic field to flip a bit.

Backing up to regular DVD/CD products is not a long term solution, unless it's a CD-WORM drive. The dye layer on DVD/CD will degrade over time.

Tapes, like floppies, can also degrade over time. But usually more prone to environmental problem.

The catridge drives... :rolleyes: some of those fail the second you put them in the drive.

---

And get in the habit of running fsck/Disk First Aid every few weeks/months -- just make sure you run them until they get a clean pass if they find anything.
 
redundancy is the most important thing when you are backing up files.

i have stereo .aiff masters that are my livelihood, you can find them on this Powerbook's HD (current files), my external firewire HD, on DVD-R, Gold CD-R, and the current projects are also on my 2GB web server (downloads at 300kb/sec, uploads at 60kb/sec).

sure it could be seen as me being a disorganized person, and i admit to that. But it also works out that i have things in 5 different places.
 
Sun Baked said:
Basically this is about the only safe backup system, because it requires high heat & magnetic field to flip a bit.
Click to expand...

I guess MOs are not as popular in the US as they are in Japan... most new drives only support 1.3GB and less, so using it as a general backup device are difficult at best. It's too bad this technology hasn't been developed as much as it could have been, but then it's a Sony tech...

-Wyrm
 
As mentioned before Data Rescue X is the best app to recover data.

You can download a demo copy, run it over the drive and see if it finds your files.

You will need another drive to boot from-recover to, though.
 
they can recover "lost data"... but i dont see how they can recover data from your hard drive if your hard drive doesnt work at all.

all you can do is send it to a data recovery firm... i think someone mentioned it
 
Drive savers will literally cost you $1000s. My external drive crashed and I spent $70 on an app called Data Rescue at the Apple Store. Note: my drive physically failed, as in a hardware failure. Somehow Data Rescue can get data off drives like this. Anyway I recovered everything off my 120GB drive. Give it a try.
 
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