My DS smoked the desktop

[lawren2 Malibu Beach Barbie & A Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close lawren2]

total meltdown of the hard drive. Gone are my RCI records....my pictures.....data.....

I ordered a new 80g and latest XP Pro from Dell today. Comes with a 3year warranty. I've been inside this box more than a few times over the years. I imagine replacing the hard drive won't be a big deal.

My biggest loss is my 7 years of on-line searches and trade tests.

I feel like crawling under the covers and crying. I know I have some back up disks somewhere but I'm really inconsoleable at this point I could use a good stiff drink or 3 and a hug from someone who actually understands how great a loss this is to me.

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

This happened to me 3 months ago with my old laptop. I know keep photos online and on CD. The data like Christmas card lists I try to load into 3 of the computers in my house. Sometimes an old computer is good for data back up stotage.

[lawren2 Malibu Beach Barbie & A Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close lawren2]

Frank

I lost ALL the pre-2005 RCI data. The resort bulkbank dates. EVERYTHING!

You have no idea how empty I feel right now. I could always prove every statement I ever made here, or anywhere else, with cold hard facts and now?

This is huge for me, it is what I do and what I know best and it is GONE.

[Thirsty Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Thirsty]

Lawren don't give up on the hard drive. Data can be recovered. It could be a mechanical issues or logical failure. I had 2 hard drives die last summer. For me it was the printed circuit board on the bottom of the HD went bad. I was lucky enough to find one that matched. If it is mechanical there are many companies that specialize in data recovery. The prices varies greatly. I called several last summer and got quotes ranging from $100.00 to $800.00.

I also read where people will take the HD apart and fix it themselves. I am sure some others will give you more advise. Don't throw the HD away. Put in a safe place until you decide what you are going to do.

[lawren2 Malibu Beach Barbie & A Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close lawren2]

Lawren don't give up on the hard drive. Data can be recovered. It could be a mechanical issues or logical failure. I had 2 hard drives die last summer. For me it was the printed circuit board on the bottom of the HD went bad. I was lucky enough to find one that matched. If it is mechanical there are many companies that specialize in data recovery. The prices varies greatly. I called several last summer and got quotes ranging from $100.00 to $800.00.

I also read where people will take the HD apart and fix it themselves. I am sure some others will give you more advise. Don't throw the HD away. Put in a safe place until you decide what you are going to do.

Sniff...do you think so? I couldn't get past to the recovery console today and that should only take 15 or 20secs.

I would destroy my HD before I threw it away or bury it in my yard. But if there is a slim chance I can get that data back out I will hold on to it.

[Thirsty Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Thirsty]

Here is a place in Jersey

Low Cost Revovery

0-40 Gb $199
40.1Gb -80 Gb $249
80.1Gb -120 Gb $299

[4ARedOctober Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close 4ARedOctober]

Sorry to hear the news L2....good luck with the recovery.

Sending a hug your way.

John

[riverdees05 Platinum Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close riverdees05]

I just hate it when that happens. I have lost seveal hard drives and each time always promise myself I will do a better job of backing up, but fall into the old habit of taking it for granted. Hope you can recover some of your data.

[lawren2 Malibu Beach Barbie & A Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close lawren2]

In the clear light of day I am more optimistic.

I had added an external hard drive earlier this year. I am hoping that I moved some if not all of my files there to clear up room on the CDrive....

I also have a few disks that I will need to go thru.

Will let you all know as soon as I do and thanks.

[susieq Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close susieq]

Lawren,

So sorry to hear this ~ hope things work out for you. I shudder to think, I would be more lost than you sound. Good Luck..........If hugs help, there's a bunch headed your way!

Sue

[bookworm Member Find all posts View Profile Close bookworm]

That is awful. It happened to us a few weeks ago. All of our great vacation pics were gone. My husband is not organized about backing up material (he will be now. A techie friend had us buy a hard drive enclosure and we put the old hard drive into it and then plugged it into another computer. Everything was there. It is not guaranteed, but often the files will still be there. We will now keep it to do regular back up. I hope things work out for you.
Angela

[biskits Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close biskits]

What a bummer!!!! I hope everything works out for you, Lawren...
Sucky way to end a Thanksgiving weekend....
Best wishes,
Paul

[pascal Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close pascal]

Sometimes you can DIY hard drive recovery but it really depends on the damage.

First of all, is this your main drive? Meaning this is the drive where your OS was installed? If it was then of course you need a new one and install your OS there. Then you need to put the old drive also in your PC being a 2nd Master drive or a Primary slave drive. Then in XP (I hope you are using XP) go to -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management and if you can still see your drive (old drive) in there then theres a good chance you can recover the file on your own using data application recovery which you can download and try for free. Otherwise you might need professional services.

BTW, some hard drive failure can be "fixed" by freezing your hard drive for 24 hours but you need to back up the files right away because there a good possibilty that you will lose the files again in a few weeks or months but sometimes just even hours. There's also another trick of dropping your drive for about 3 feet high (no kidding) in a carpeted floor, so if theres any sticking needle or disc inside it will dislodge by the force of the fall but dont expect that to be a permanent fix.

[Bobo Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Bobo]

So sorry to hear about the hard drive...

Is the drive making funny noises when you try to boot up? If so it's probably shot. Or does it just not boot up? If that's the case, you have a good chance of hooking it up as a 2nd drive (when you get your new one running) and using windows explorer to look at what's there. Lots of times these drives will lose some of the windows stuff and not be able to boot, but not really lose anything else. If it's a Dell, and you still have the utility partition try booting to it. It's usually F12 to see that right when the computer first starts up. If that won't boot up, try booting from the Resource CD that came with the Dell... there is a hard drive checking program on it. You could probably determine whether its shot or not from this utility.

If it's not totally shot, the easiest way to hook it up as a 2nd drive is to temporarily unhook the cd/dvd rom and use that IDE connection. Don't worry about screwing the drive into the case, letting it just hang or lean is OK, temporarily.

If this fails and the data is important enough, it probably can be recoveered by a 3rd party data recovery specialist. I saw two links in a previous post that probably would work for you...Not cheap, but it might be worth it.

What we say in the business, is that all hard drives are guaranteed to fail, it's just 'when' that's the question. It could be later today or 6 years from now, but it is a guarantee that all of them will fail eventually.

I think the best way for home users right now to back up their data are by using these portable USB connected hard drives. Theres a slew of them on the market; I saw several good deals right after Thanksgiving for 300gb drives in the $100 range.

A really easy and free backup program is one of the Microsoft Powertoys called SyncToy. It's a free download and you essentially set up a sync between folders on your C: drive for example; and the backup drive. So it's easy to keep the My Documents, Favorites, and any data folders backed up. Even if it's just done once in a while it would prevent the loss of archived data. The important thing with data is two have at least two copys of what you want to keep, and even a third offsite is even a good idea if what you're dealing with is important enough.

Good luck with this.

[tonyg Goomba & Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close tonyg]

I lost everything when my first computer fried, but I had enough on diskettes to recover most of what I still wanted. I had enough stuff saved that I didn't bother having my techie relation try saving what was on the drive. I now try to back up my important files on cd. With the advent of larger storage on email, I backup some periodic changing files by e-mailing them to one or more of my addresses so they can be accessed by my other 2 computers should the main one fail.