Dead External Hard Drive

[cottonmather0]

My external hard drive has been giving me a lot of trouble lately and has finally died. I'm going to go buy a new one this weekend to handle my time machine backups, but there was some other stuff on the old drive (music and videos) that I don't have backed up. Ergo, I need to find someone who can try and recover my data.

Any recommendations for a local company? It doesn't have to be right away, I can wait until later next week but I eventually need to get it done. Thanks.

[Native Son]

I had a flash drive eat a bunch of family photos, so I asked an IT guy at work and he suggested going to Cnet and downloading freeware data recovery software. I did(don't remember which one I used), and it worked...by the way, never buy flash drives off ebay....good luck

[jm1fd]

Data recovery software may be OK for a solid state drive, but it is inadvisable for a mechanical drive since running a mechanical drive can result in further data loss, depending on how it failed.

[LTAWACS]

My external hard drive has been giving me a lot of trouble lately and has finally died. I'm going to go buy a new one this weekend to handle my time machine backups, but there was some other stuff on the old drive (music and videos) that I don't have backed up. Ergo, I need to find someone who can try and recover my data.

Any recommendations for a local company? It doesn't have to be right away, I can wait until later next week but I eventually need to get it done. Thanks.

Can't you just go back in time before it died, make backups, then come back to the present?

[foxmulder]

Can't you just go back in time before it died, make backups, then come back to the present?

There is a company called "drive savers" i've heard of and seen commercials for. You may want to invest in a Windows home server system. My system backs up one hard drive to another and THEN i have a backup drive for the backup. The new HP system handles MAC.

[Geoff8201]

Personally, I would advise that things like family photos, writings, documents... the kind of things that are not replaceable, be backed up on an optical storage device like a CD-R, DVD-R or BD-R (if you got the money and a lot of data!). Recordable only, no rewritable. It's burned data pits that can only be destroyed by time exceeding our life spans, or physical destruction. No hard drives with possible damage by a broken read/write head, no erasure by magnetism or emi.

For everything else I keep my original I access, on my main computer... a backup on another computer... and another on an external... and then the optical storage if its priceless data.

[Bombero451]

I had an old laptop go out on me once and replaced it with a newer, better model. I removed the hard drive from the damaged laptop and connected an adapter to it, then connected it to my new computer and transferred the items I wanted.

There are several on the market, so go to your favorite electronics store (I got mine at Tiger Direct).

Maybe that would work for you.

[jm1fd]

Personally, I would advise that things like family photos, writings, documents... the kind of things that are not replaceable, be backed up on an optical storage device like a CD-R, DVD-R or BD-R (if you got the money and a lot of data!). Recordable only, no rewritable.

The above is fairly sound advice.

It's burned data pits that can only be destroyed by time exceeding our life spans, or physical destruction.

This is bad advice. Lots of burnable optical media produced in the last few years is not stable for more than 3-5 years. Moreover, where are your grandchildren supposed to get a CD drive to read the media? If they do manage to find a CD drive, where are they going to get the IDE controller, computer and power supply to run it? If you get the data off of the CD how are you supposed to make sense of it if the format has been obsolete for decades?

The true way to preserve data long term is to always keep it moving onto the latest media, and transitioning it to the latest formats. It has to be an active process.

[LTAWACS]

The above is fairly sound advice.

This is bad advice. Lots of burnable optical media produced in the last few years is not stable for more than 3-5 years. Moreover, where are your grandchildren supposed to get a CD drive to read the media? If they do manage to find a CD drive, where are they going to get the IDE controller, computer and power supply to run it? If you get the data off of the CD how are you supposed to make sense of it if the format has been obsolete for decades?

The true way to preserve data long term is to always keep it moving onto the latest media, and transitioning it to the latest formats. It has to be an active process.

Interesting.

Right now I dont have anything important/replaceable on solid state devices because I'm not confident in their quality. Previously I had a raid setup in my home office. Today I have 2 DVD copies of family photos/documents in 2 separate locations. I went from CDs to DVD late last year. Do you have any examples of optical media deteriorating that quickly? This is disturbing.

[ricco67]

Interesting.

Right now I dont have anything important/replaceable on solid state devices because I'm not confident in their quality. Previously I had a raid setup in my home office. Today I have 2 DVD copies of family photos/documents in 2 separate locations. I went from CDs to DVD late last year. Do you have any examples of optical media deteriorating that quickly? This is disturbing.

I don't have the information off hand, but it has been reported that they DO deteriorate. I recently looked at some of my older DVD's (4 yrs?) and CD's (8 years) that I recorded awhile back and one DVD won't play and 8 of my CD's can't be read.

I was peeved, but I didn't have anything vital on them, and I have backups on my server.

[jm1fd]

Interesting.

Right now I dont have anything important/replaceable on solid state devices because I'm not confident in their quality. Previously I had a raid setup in my home office. Today I have 2 DVD copies of family photos/documents in 2 separate locations. I went from CDs to DVD late last year. Do you have any examples of optical media deteriorating that quickly? This is disturbing.

I have some CD-Rs from 2002 that are now unplayable, friends have experienced the same thing, and I've read about it happening to others as well.

Copy the data to new media every year and you should be good.

[caldvn]

I have some CD-Rs from 2002 that are now unplayable, friends have experienced the same thing, and I've read about it happening to others as well.

Copy the data to new media every year and you should be good.

I would suggest a NAS set to Mirror or Raid 5 if there are more then 3 drives. One drive fails you get warned and replace with similiar size drive. Data will replicate over after the drive is replaced.

[Mr. Chenevert]

I would suggest a NAS set to Mirror or Raid 5 if there are more then 3 drives. One drive fails you get warned and replace with similiar size drive. Data will replicate over after the drive is replaced.

Do NOT use a NAS RAID as a backup solution. NAS RAIDs can fail just like a single HDD can fail. (albeit less likely) While redundancy is nice, you should always have a backup of the NAS.

Also, be warned that most linux based NAS boxes use the ext2 or ext3 filesystem which cannot be seen with Windows XP.

[Fringe]

For really important stuff I backup online.  Currently use Mozy. Free 2GB backup and unlimited for $4.95 a month. Extremely easy to use. Will backup things automaticaly. 

Mozy

ps: 

[caldvn]

Do NOT use a NAS RAID as a backup solution. NAS RAIDs can fail just like a single HDD can fail. (albeit less likely) While redundancy is nice, you should always have a backup of the NAS.

Also, be warned that most linux based NAS boxes use the ext2 or ext3 filesystem which cannot be seen with Windows XP.

To each his own. I prefer a NAS for redudancy, storage (5+TB) and ease of use (burning DVD is a time consuming process depending on the amount of dating you're dealing with.) It REALLY depends on how paranoid you are in regards to your data and how many backups you want. If a fire breaks out in your house, it doesn't matter what backups you have unless it's offsite. Heat alone will damage sensitive parts inside a fire safe.

- Online backup. (I will never trust certain data to online data sites. There more data you have, the slower the process of backup and/or accessing will be. I've also seen some online data sites close down, bye bye data.)

- DVD Backup. (I've seen discs deteriorate, scratch or error during the burning process, limited data space.)

- Tape backup. (Tad on the slow side. I have little experience with this.)

- Nas. (But there are many different types of NAS, drives can go bad, the odds of multiple drives at the same time are slimmer. But definetely not impossible.)

- Raid card on pc. (Similiar to NAS.)

- Data usage. (How often are you accessing and/or updating the data?)

Pick and choose what suits your needs.

[Mr. Chenevert]

To each his own. I prefer a NAS for redudancy, storage (5+TB) and ease of use (burning DVD is a time consuming process depending on the amount of dating you're dealing with.) It REALLY depends on how paranoid you are in regards to your data and how many backups you want. If a fire breaks out in your house, it doesn't matter what backups you have unless it's offsite. Heat alone will damage sensitive parts inside a fire safe.

- Online backup. (I will never trust certain data to online data sites. There more data you have, the slower the process of backup and/or accessing will be. I've also seen some online data sites close down, bye bye data.)

- DVD Backup. (I've seen discs deteriorate, scratch or error during the burning process, limited data space.)

- Tape backup. (Tad on the slow side. I have little experience with this.)

- Nas. (But there are many different types of NAS)

- Raid card on pc. (Similiar to NAS.)

- Data usage. (How often are you accessing and/or updating the data?)

Pick and choose what suits your needs.

I would recommend a dual NAS strategy each at a different physical location.

I have a NAS at home that automatically backs up to another identical NAS at a different location each night.

[editor]

For personal data, I have a virtual drive on my desktop that is mirrored to my .me account (cloud archive). It is also backed up to a Time Machine (NAS) volume in my house. Every couple of weeks I back up the data to CF cards which I keep in a fireproof box I got at the army surplus place on Galveston Island.

For my photographs, I have a pretty easy archive system.

I only shoot on 4GB or 8GB cards. When they're full I burn the raw pictures onto a DVD-R or DVD-R-DL, depending on which size card I'm backing up.

Then when I'm done processing the photos I keep one copy on a 1TB drive, and have a second 1TB drive that mirrors the first.

Then every year or so I mirror the 1TB drives onto new drives and FedEx them to my mother's house in another state.

If something goes wrong with one of the TB drives, I can use the other. If that other one fails too, then I can go back to the DVD. If that's faulty, then there's the "mom" archive.

Also, brand diversity is important. I used to be loyal to LaCie, but then I had three LaCie drives all fail within two weeks of each other (I suspect it's a power supply issue but haven't had the time to investigate). Now I just get whatever is cheapest in my capacity of choice. If one fails, I just replace it and mirror its new brother.

1TB drives were $109 at Office Depot when I was there the other day. I picked up a 1TB portable drive there a few weeks ago on sale for $59, and it came with a bonus carrying case and a desktop dock.

[editor]

I have some CD-Rs from 2002 that are now unplayable, friends have experienced the same thing, and I've read about it happening to others as well.

Copy the data to new media every year and you should be good.

If you buy high quality discs, copying every year shouldn't be necessary. Many photographers use a particular type of Kodak CD-R that is guaranteed for 99 years.