Oh noes

[gwyn]

You know how you never think you're going to be one of the people writing those posts about how your hard drive seems to have been killed or croaked in an untimely demise? But you still end up posting about it at some point in your life because your drive seems to have gone to the great silicone graveyard in the sky? Yeah. I guess I'm one now.

And I have no idea how to get it back. Everything was just peachy until yesterday, when I realized I hadn't optimized and defragged for an eon and had been making way too many vids for it to have not been defragged in such a long time. Plus, I've added a fair amount of music to my iTunes. So, I ran Tech Tools and came back a while later and it said FAILED, that it couldn't defrag, that I needed to run the volume scan or something. Which I did, about five times, and it still won't optimize. Now I'm running all these tests because when I tried to run the movie files for the rebuilt L'Abattoir Bride of Don't Fight in the Snow disc I'm trying to make, they wouldn't work and it kept telling me there were all these bad sectors, and couldn't copy files over to the iMac. So far the surface scan says 93 bad blocks, and it's barely even 1/100th of the way into the bar indicating how far the scan is going. (95, 96... I guess the whole thing is a bad block.)

I have no idea why trying to optimize killed it. And I've tried the recover feature in TT, but the LaCie external drive doesn't even show at all. Can't recover from something that's not there.

I've never figured out how to adequately back things up like large project files for the vids. So my working project files for my BSG and Life on Mars vids look like they're going to be history, I guess, and maybe even worse, all my music is gone. At least the new stuff I hdn't yet dumped into the iPod (I guess I'll have to figure that out, too).

My stomach is churning. The one thing that's always baffled me is backing stuff up. I'm still using a ridiculously old-fashioned method of rewritable CDs, which is cumbersome, but I don't have that many files to back up -- the only thing that really changes regularly with any significance are my vids, and my music -- and that's all on the external drive. So I put the newest vid .mov files onto dvds, back up the rest of the small stuff onto the rewritable CDs, and just hope and pray that nothing will happen to the new music or the working vid files. As usual, the praying doesn't work. I guess I'm just screwed, and I'm feeling pretty sick about it.

Comments

[ann1962]

If it is dead, freeze it. Put the hard drive into the freezer, let it get good and cold, like 5+ hours and then run it as a slave. I had my IT guy at work do it, on both of my dead hard drives, and I was able to get everything off of one of them. The other, no luck. But if it is dead, then at least try this. I found out about it here and I can't believe it worked.

[aukestrel.livejournal.com]

:-(

[umbo.livejournal.com]

Oh noes is right--I'm so sorry!

*hugs*

[leela-cat.livejournal.com]

Yikes. I know that sick feeling from personal experience.

If it's important enough to pay the money, there are companies who will attempt to recover the files for you.

[mmapmaker.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

In future, you might be interested in this particular off-site storage post from someone else who deos vids on my flist (if you're not already very familiar with her work!!)
at:
http://morgandawn.livejournal.com/382079.html?style=mine

[mlyn.livejournal.com]

Oh god, how horrible. I hope you can get some advice that works in comments. I'd ask my computer-savvy coworkers but I don't think I understand the problem well enough to describe it and act as a go-between.

Will the Apple store take a look at it?

[barkley.livejournal.com]

Oh noes indeed!

Recovering HD data after failure - Want some music backup CDs?

[taverymate.livejournal.com]

That sucks. I live in fear of a hard drive failure, because I am such a collector of data, many files very large: primarily vids, but I've a ton of music (gigs!) and literally tens of thousands of fiction files - an that's only the fun stuff. I've two external hard drives now (which I adore) and I still back up on CDs.

You might try looking at some of the suggestions in this article (Get IT Done: 200 ways to revive a hard drive); perhaps one will work for you. The solutions come from a wide variety of IT and other folks, and all that I read came with personal experience and also any caveats. For instance, the freezing of a failed hard drive will often let data be recovered from it, but that technique seems to work only once with a drive and only for about 20 minutes, so try it as an absolute last resort.

Get IT Done: 200 ways to revive a hard drive
http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6255-5029761-1.html

Also, if the drive is indeed kaput - or even if it isn't - would you like some old backup CDs of music files? I go on download binges when I have access to a broadband connection, so I've a wide range of music - often whatever is available at that particular moment via various music blogs or LJs - that I sort through later. You'd have to sort through the various CDs, but a large proportion are at least loosely grouped (e.g. British/UK groups, Canadian groups, or strings, etc.) Of course, some are separated out by artist/band (e.g. Jethro Tull or Beatles). I don't do iTunes, so I don't know what restrictions if any that has on format. Most of the music on the old backups are mp3 (probably 90%), but some are m4a and some wma. VLC usually plays it all for me, so I worry less about format than I might otherwise.

If you want the music, I'd be happy to pass the backups on and see them get some use. I hate throwing that type of thing out, even though I've newer backups that are better sorted. There's about 12-15 gigs on the old backups, with a really wide range of genres.

Good luck!

Good link, thanks

[ann1962]

but that technique seems to work only once with a drive and only for about 20 minutes, so try it as an absolute last resort.

Totally as a last resort, yes. My experience was that the drive I was able to save was able to be accessed twice and it didn't stop in the midst of the saving, we had it on for probably 45 minutes total. It seems like each drive has its own story when freezing.

Re: Good link, thanks

[taverymate.livejournal.com]

It seems like each drive has its own story when freezing.

Too true - that's one reason I like the linked article, because it gives such a variety of possible fixes & experiences. I will admit the rather high success rate from dropping the drives had me smiling a bit.

Re: Good link, thanks

[ciardhapagan.livejournal.com]

Heh, that reminds me of how my sister got her old computer, which she gave to mom, to get it to finish booting up when it started stalling and dying. She'd rock the tower hard back and forth and it would come up. That worked for a couple of months before it stopped working completely. It was old enough a computer it had Windows 95 on it when she got it.