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**omisan** · 01-17-2006, 04:24 PM

So I've been away a few days...

Last week, as I was banging away at my keyboard and catching up with people I hadn't talked to since before my November adventures, everything came to a standstill and for the first time I ever, I had to give my trusty PowerBook a hard reboot... And then it wouldn't boot up.

I heard the dreaded "click of death" from the hard drive - mechanical failure. No amount of software repair tools or rebooting would bring the fucker back up.

Normally I'm immune to this stuff. I back up my important stuff pretty religiously, especially my photos and my music. But having spent all of November and much of December on vacation, I'd been slacking and putting off the big backup effort.

A lot of the stuff I hadn't backed up is replaceable... MP3s and iTunes songs, much of the newer stuff being on my iPod. And most of my Australia/NZ photos are on CD's since I was burning them as I was filling up my memory sticks... However, the last couple of hundred just went straight from memory stick on to the laptop, and those are LOST. Also lost is all the post-processing I did on the photos, not to mention all the film scans of the photos I took with a traditional camera. So for the photos I still have, I have to go through and Photoshop them again, AND I need to start the painful process of scanning all my film again, a huge project that I'd just started and was making decent headway on.

I called several data recovery companies and found out for them to recover data from an 80GB drive would be in the neighborhood of $1800-$2700. And even if they don't manage to recover anything from the hard drive platters, I'd still be charged a $900 "attempt fee." For that kind of money, I could just go and make the trip again and re-shoot all those photos! It's bad enough that I had to go spend a couple hundred dollars on a new hard drive, not to mention the pain of cracking open one of the newer PowerBook cases, which is nowhere as easy as it should be.

What I want out of this posting isn't sympathy - what's done is done. But I would like everyone who reads this that doesn't back their stuff up regularly to take this as a lesson and just take a little time out every week or two to put the stuff on to CD/DVD/an extra hard drive. There's a ton of stuff out there that's replaceable or that - god forbid - you can buy again. Memories, on the other hand, only come around once. Once they're gone... you know how it goes.

chelseafc05 · 01-17-2006, 04:31 PM

jesus fukin christ....why did i buy a digital camera again?

so how do ya burn ya photos onto a cd while ya overseas? just go to a camera shop place, stick the memory card into a burner computer thing then the pics just go to the cd?

**U2fan** · 01-17-2006, 04:59 PM

Sorry to hear that and point well taken.

For the last week and a half, I had been upset b/c I thought I lost my 512 mb. memory card with the first half of my trip`s pictures somewhere in Australia....

and of course, didn`t back anything up....

Luckily I have just found out my friend has it and he is going to mail it up here, but I will be MUCH more careful about backing stuff up (constantly!) from now on...

**benna2** · 01-17-2006, 05:02 PM

That really sucks Omi, sorry to hear about that!

And it is a good lesson to teach people though to back up their stuff. In fact, I have some pictures on my laptop that I should go backup right now. I hope you are able to retrieve anything you can.

**omisan** · 01-17-2006, 05:12 PM

Chelsea - just go into any internet cafe and tell 'em you need to burn your photos to CD. Some will let you do it yourself, others do it for you.

U2 - Glad to hear you're getting your stick back!

Benna - Back that thang up!

**LostFarmboy** · 01-17-2006, 05:41 PM

hmmmm that aint cool. I only just backed up the photos from my around the world trip 2 days ago....i've been back for 2.5 months. I would have been pretty damn upset if that'd happened to me.

Quote:

I called several data recovery companies and found out for them to recover data from an 80GB drive would be in the neighborhood of $1800-$2700. And even if they don't manage to recover anything from the hard drive platters, I'd still be charged a $900 "attempt fee."

Now that's just farking rediculous

**The Monsignor** · 01-17-2006, 07:29 PM

External drives Rock!!

**SuDz** · 01-18-2006, 01:04 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by The Monsignor@Jan 17 2006, 10:29 PM
External drives Rock!!

[snapback]99028[/snapback]

I back up my external drive stuff onto DVD's as well. I mean, if an internal drive can die at any moment, why can't an external? I have luckily never had a disk crash on me on a home system but put things on CD's and DVD's everynow and then as an added bonus. Every few years I roll over old CD's into a new DVD so I can combine about three CD's onto one DVD and have fresh new media again.

SuDZ

**voyd** · 01-18-2006, 01:08 PM

Damn...how long do laptop drives usually last before they crash? My friend's did the other day too from overheating...

**SuDz** · 01-18-2006, 01:33 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by voyd@Jan 18 2006, 04:08 PM
Damn...how long do laptop drives usually last before they crash?* My friend's did the other day too from overheating...

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The laptop drives take way more of a beating than regular drives. I mean they are moved, dropped, banged etc all the time even when you take great care of them. They also have to go through a lot more startups and shutdowns than a regular computer. also a lot of times desktops are in a controlled tempature but a laptop might come in from freezing or below freezing temps and be expected that turning it on right away is okay. Same with heat and being in a poorly ventilated space.

They live a tough life.

SuDZ

**kingcrazylegs** · 01-18-2006, 08:24 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by The Monsignor@Jan 17 2006, 07:29 PM
External drives Rock!!

[snapback]99028[/snapback]

here here

**expatben** · 01-19-2006, 11:27 AM

Sorry to hear about that man.

**ajb3000** · 01-22-2006, 03:52 AM

It's a slim chance, but try putting the drive (in a sealed container) in the freezer for about an hour, then try plugging it in again straight away. Believe it or not I have experienced this working, but the drive will probably only last an hour or so if it does work, enough to backup your pics.

If you don't believe me, google it, it seems to work about 50% of the time.

**omisan** · 01-22-2006, 10:57 PM

Hmm... I think I might have to give that a go! Thanks for the tip

**SuDz** · 01-23-2006, 10:27 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by ajb3000@Jan 22 2006, 06:52 AM
It's a slim chance, but try putting the drive (in a sealed container) in the freezer for about an hour, then try plugging it in again straight away.* Believe it or not I have experienced this working, but the drive will probably only last an hour or so if it does work, enough to backup your pics.

If you don't believe me, google it, it seems to work about 50% of the time.

[snapback]99551[/snapback]

I've heard the same deal working in the past. I have never tried it myself but have always heard the thoery of it working.

SuDZ

**omisan** · 02-08-2006, 12:47 AM

Alright!!! I'm very happy to report that I've recovered just about all the thought-to-be-lost data from my drive... which means I now have all my recent Australia, New Zealand, and Canada pictures back. THANK THE LAWD AWMIGHTY!!!

I finally had time to try the freezing trick. Well, I hooked it up after putting it in deep freeze for a while, and the drive spun up... but nothing showed up. I kept waiting, trying, scanning the buses - the system didn't even acknowledge the now-spinning drive. Grrr.

In a fit of frustration, I thought of the other last-ditch solution provided by amateur data recovery experts - dropping the drive from a height of 3 feet. Well, being in that frustrated state of mind, I instead threw it at the hardwood floor from a height of about 4 feet. I figured I'd plug it in for shits and giggles and - lo and behold - it worked!

The drive's crapped out on me several times during the recovery process, but now I'm only a few gigs away from having everything back.

Thank you, everyone, for your tips.

**SuDz** · 02-09-2006, 02:35 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by omisan@Feb 8 2006, 03:47 AM
Alright!!!* I'm very happy to report that I've recovered just about all the thought-to-be-lost data from my drive... which means I now have all my recent Australia, New Zealand, and Canada pictures back. THANK THE LAWD AWMIGHTY!!!

I finally had time to try the freezing trick. Well, I hooked it up after putting it in deep freeze for a while, and the drive spun up... but nothing showed up.* I kept waiting, trying, scanning the buses - the system didn't even acknowledge the now-spinning drive. Grrr.

In a fit of frustration, I thought of the other last-ditch solution provided by amateur data recovery experts - dropping the drive from a height of 3 feet. Well, being in that frustrated state of mind, I instead threw it at the hardwood floor from a height of about 4 feet. I figured I'd plug it in for shits and giggles and - lo and behold - it worked!

The drive's crapped out on me several times during the recovery process, but now I'm only a few gigs away from having everything back.

Thank you, everyone, for your tips.*

[snapback]101734[/snapback]

Nice. Glad to see you were able to get all your data back.

SuDZ

**space virgin** · 02-09-2006, 04:43 PM

SWEET!!

Now post them on the internet just in case, uh, well... I don't want to jinx it.