My OperaHard Drive Crash
Friday, July 18, 2008 2:36:52 PM
Oh no! 
Yes, I have lost a whole heap of data. No, I did not have a current backup. A partial backup from January this year is all I have.
It could have been much, much worse.
I was actually in the very final stages of transfering my computing life from a desktop PC to my new(ish) laptop. I'd been installing applications on my laptop, and uninstalling same from my desktop, so I could keep track of what was left to transfer. I was down to one major application (my PalmOS development environment), plus all my personal files and data. All my business data is on a network storage device (which happened to get backed up last week).
One very important item I transferred yesterday was my taxation security digital certificates - it would have been a significant hassle cancelling and having new ones re-issued. Particularly as I'll need them in a few days for my quarterly business reporting and tax payment. Phew!
Last night, as I was finishing transfering all my microcontroller development tools (successfully), my computer starting pausing. The mouse and all processing would freeze for a few seconds, then come good. I finished up what I was doing, then decided to call it a night - I was tired and the pauses were annoying me. Shutdown did take noticably longer than usual. At no stage were there any error messages.
This morning, the message was simple: disk read error. This was a BIOS error message - the disk didn't boot AT ALL.
So, using my laptop I started searching for recovery software. Running chkdsk from the Windows XP CD recovery console just got a bunch of "unrecoverable errors". Active@ Boot Disk (Windows and DOS versions) simply refused to read the drive. The Ultimate Boot Disk for Windows could at least scan the disk, but doesn't have the NTFS support required to recover data. The DiskInternals Recovery CD came the closest of anything. Their NTFS Recovery tool was able to detect more than 50 folders and over 30000 files before finally wedging (I left it for several hours without any further progress or completion).
Finally, since the drive in question was a Seagate, I tried SeaTools for DOS. That is currently in the process of scanning and recovering bad sectors. I'm hoping when it's done it will be enough for the NTFS Recovery tool (above) to be able to perform some sort of recovery. However, it looks like it will be taking hours, if not days, to complete the sector scan and repair. There's no guarantee that will fix anything, either.
Tomorrow's a friend's Christmas-in-July, and I'm helping out a bit. Plenty of time and opportunity to ponder this latest event:
Today's message is: backup, backup, backup! Don't put it off. I know my horror story is just one of many who have come before me. There will be many, many more after me. I guess it's just human nature to be lazy, but if this post can get just one more person doing regular backup (apart from me! ), then at least some good might come out of this.
Yes, I have lost a whole heap of data.
No, I did not have a current backup. A partial backup from January this year is all I have.It could have been much, much worse.
I was actually in the very final stages of transfering my computing life from a desktop PC to my new(ish) laptop. I'd been installing applications on my laptop, and uninstalling same from my desktop, so I could keep track of what was left to transfer. I was down to one major application (my PalmOS development environment), plus all my personal files and data. All my business data is on a network storage device (which happened to get backed up last week).
One very important item I transferred yesterday was my taxation security digital certificates - it would have been a significant hassle cancelling and having new ones re-issued. Particularly as I'll need them in a few days for my quarterly business reporting and tax payment. Phew!
Last night, as I was finishing transfering all my microcontroller development tools (successfully), my computer starting pausing. The mouse and all processing would freeze for a few seconds, then come good. I finished up what I was doing, then decided to call it a night - I was tired and the pauses were annoying me. Shutdown did take noticably longer than usual. At no stage were there any error messages.
This morning, the message was simple: disk read error. This was a BIOS error message - the disk didn't boot AT ALL.
So, using my laptop I started searching for recovery software. Running chkdsk from the Windows XP CD recovery console just got a bunch of "unrecoverable errors". Active@ Boot Disk (Windows and DOS versions) simply refused to read the drive. The Ultimate Boot Disk for Windows could at least scan the disk, but doesn't have the NTFS support required to recover data. The DiskInternals Recovery CD came the closest of anything. Their NTFS Recovery tool was able to detect more than 50 folders and over 30000 files before finally wedging (I left it for several hours without any further progress or completion).
Finally, since the drive in question was a Seagate, I tried SeaTools for DOS. That is currently in the process of scanning and recovering bad sectors. I'm hoping when it's done it will be enough for the NTFS Recovery tool (above) to be able to perform some sort of recovery. However, it looks like it will be taking hours, if not days, to complete the sector scan and repair. There's no guarantee that will fix anything, either.
Tomorrow's a friend's Christmas-in-July, and I'm helping out a bit. Plenty of time and opportunity to ponder this latest event:
Today's message is: backup, backup, backup! Don't put it off. I know my horror story is just one of many who have come before me. There will be many, many more after me. I guess it's just human nature to be lazy, but if this post can get just one more person doing regular backup (apart from me!
), then at least some good might come out of this.
Martin Haslamoldfart101 # Sunday, July 20, 2008 8:30:42 AM
scipio # Sunday, July 20, 2008 10:32:13 AM
Haavardhaavard # Monday, July 21, 2008 8:56:52 AM
Andrew Gregory # Monday, July 21, 2008 4:16:59 PM
I'm currently having a look at the Windows Backup tool. I set it for a scheduled backup today, and it seems to work OK.
I've also got a QNAP NAS that comes with an interesting app called NetBak Replicator. One of its features is called Monitor - every time a file in a set of watched folders changes, it gets copied to a corresponding folder on the NAS. Rather cool, actually! The only thing is it won't backup files that are open.
For me, the most important thing is automation. If it's not automatic I know I'll just put it off until it's too late!
Andrew Gregory # Thursday, August 28, 2008 5:57:24 AM
On the positive side, hard drive magnets are really good for holding papers and things to whiteboards and filing cabinets. The platters make good wind chimes too.
snuffypops # Tuesday, September 9, 2008 3:04:35 AM