Hard drive - no joy

[johnridley]

I got the replacement for my dead hard drive on Saturday, it was the same model, but swapping electronics did no good. Apparently the fault is inside the drive itself.
This is a bummer since that drive contained my web server directory. That had mainly stuff for my own use, not our family site (which is hosted) but there were a bunch of scripts in there that will take a while to replace, some going back a decade or more, including the last 12 months worth of comics archives (I can probably replace some of those from friends who also archive). I'm going to check backups and I may be able to recover some prior version of the scripts from years past.

The biggest current hurt is that all the spreadsheets with my video inventory on it were in there. I've re-typed about 6 binders and a couple of spindle's worth of stuff so far. I'm mainly working on stuff I'm still collecting, so I need accurate inventories in order to know what to record (Modern Marvels from the History Channel was the first one I retyped - they have nearly 500 episodes, I have over 200 of them, so while I have some recollection of having seen one episode or another before, I really need the inventory.

The majority of stuff on the drive was crap looking for a good fire to get rid of it anyway, so good riddance. Some day I'll probably remember something precious that was on there and slap my forehead. But really the stuff I REALLY don't want to lose (digital photos, mainly) I already had at least two copies anyway.

I now have a 250GB external drive that I've promised myself WILL be dedicated to backing stuff up. I'm not sure how long 250G will last as a backup, but it should suffice; I'll just get selective about what to back up.

Comments

[madtechie2718.livejournal.com]

Did you try the trick of putting the original drive in the freezer for a couple of hours then try to use it as it slowly warms up?

I've had some success with that - but mostly, it must be said, for an electronics failure rather than the hardware problem you seem to have.

But it has worked that way once - I assume a problem in the feedback sensor for the servo buried within the drive mech, since the failure mode was a continuous yakkety-clackety from the head positioner. It worked long enough for me to get all the data I needed.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Yup, tried the freezer thing, tried blowing out the contacts, cleaning them with an eraser and alcohol, tried tapping the drive lightly on the side, harder on the side, light and harder on the flat.

I didn't get a single byte off this drive once it went titsup. Most of the time the BIOS didn't even recognize it; the BIOS timed out and gave up on the drive before the drive gave up trying to initialize itself.

Luckily anything confidential that's on there is encrypted; since I work with tax return data all the time, I've gotten used to putting anything I wouldn't want revealed in encrypted volumes, so even if the drive gets sold or something all they'll get is a bunch of half-downloaded movies and some inventory spreadsheets and amateurish CGI and PHP scripts, plus some FILENAME.tc files full of gigabytes of random bytes.

[mbumby.livejournal.com]

I archive some comic strips, and on the off-chance that our tastes overlap (or mycomics.com (to which I subscribe) carries one you want that nobody else archives) let me know what you're looking for.