A little background
A few years back I had the operating system drive in the computer then die at an inopportune time. Is there ever a good time?
I did what I had done in the past. I’m not sure if this is out of sheer stubbornness or belief that it’s doable, but I tried the drive over and over again using a boot disk until it came on one time so I could get the important data off of it.
I replaced that PC since it was outdated and when I shopped for the replacement I wasn’t terribly concerned about hard disk space since I planned to have only the operating system and programs on that C: drive. The drive that contains the operating system and programs runs a lot more since if the computer is on, that drive is in action. Which logically means it’s the most likely drive to fail. If only the operating system and programs are on it, no big deal. Get a new drive, install the operating system and programs (no small feat by any means if you’re a heavy PC user) and you’re back in business.
Never again would I entrust important data to the drive that runs the system.
So where’s all the data?
I have a lot of data. I have tons of images, I have an immense music library, I have a lot of documents, I design websites. All of these (anything that isn’t the operating system or programs) are stored on redundant external drives so I have at least 2 copies in case of drive failure.
I know some recovery specialists recommend burning stuff to DVDs since they aren’t vulnerable to disk failure. I would rather invest in hard drives than have stacks and stacks of DVDs. If I had all my data on DVDs it would literally be stacks and stacks.
Latest disk failure
A drive where I store video files was giving indications it was about to give up the ghost. I suspected this not only because it was failing to showing up in Windows Explorer on occasion, but also because of its age — this drive had been attached to my previous PC so it had put in years of service above and beyond the call of duty.
I thought about being proactive and ordering a new hard drive before it failed so I could copy all the videos off of it, but procrastinated and it went belly up yesterday. Really belly up.
As in the past I tried over and over plugging the USB cable in, powering it down and powering it up. Nothing. I held it to my ear and hurt it ticking away. A certain sign of a really dead hard drive.
I considered dropping it and freezing it. I’ve had friends tell me they’ve recovered data this way, but I figured it was already damaged internally and dropping it or adding moisture from the freezer would only exacerbate problems. I researched online and found plenty who warned against this procedures.
Stubbornness
There wasn’t anything on the drive that I couldn’t live without and I considered giving up. But then that stubborn streak reared it’s ugly head and wouldn’t let me.
In the end I resorted to my tried and true method. I continued to reconnect the USB, power it down, over and over and over, ad nauseam.
And guess what? It came back on. It not only came back on, but it stayed on and allowed me to copy every living last file off of it to a drive that had open space. Cool!
Guess what I did this morning? I researched and ordered a new hard drive so I can copy all my video onto a separate drive again.
Protecting yourself
Keep redundant backups. Many external drives come with automatic backup software to make it easy. If you don’t have a lot of data, burn it to DVD. There is also software to clone you drive.
If it starts showing signs of failure or is over 3 years old, be proactive — get another drive and copy the files before you loss stuff.
If you haven’t done any of the above and you have a drive fail, don’t give up. Keep trying over and over to access the drive and you may end up being pleasantly surprised. It may take some time, but it will be a heck of a lot cheaper than taking it to a data recovery specialist and a lot less painful than losing everything.
