Harddrive crash...

[TheBluePanda]

Today I walked into the office like an other day, ready to tackle the things on my todo list. I arrived at my computer, and turned it on (Mac, Dual 2 GHz G5, 2GB RAM). Instead of being greeted with the normal bootup sequence, I hear a terrible noise coming from one of the harddrives...

... 4 hours later, and after much diagnostics and tech involvement, I've pretty much given up hope, the harddrive is dead. All in all, I've lost about 2 months worth of Flash work, and countless other files.

I also lost about 20 electronic-music tracks I've created here and there over the past couple months. I was so proud of those too.

We're gonna continue to try all options, and perhaps even send out the drive to a data-recovery center. Does anyone know how much that type of service usually costs?

Right now, 6 hours after my workday technically started, I am finally starting to get things back to some order. I'll have to rely on Flash decompile software to salvage my Flash files. Thank goodness I have the .swf's.

[doubting_thomas]

Does the hard drive still spin, or is it totally frozen? I may have an idea...

[Silence04]

did you try disk warrior or the Tech Tools that came wth your g5?

if all else fails, you could try buying the identical hard drive, take both of them apart carefully and swap the actual hard disk.

[mac.FINN]

You could try crying. Sometimes in a situation like this crying helps; and swearing, swearing is good.

[Craig B]

I know this sounds a little crazy, but this link (http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/freeze-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data.html) tells you about how freezing your hard drive in your freezer for a while might help it to run again (at least for you to get some files off of it ... hopefully). I've never done it, but heck, it's worth a shot. Freezing it shouldn't hurt it any more (as long as you seal it off from condensation as mentioned in the article).

[colonel5]

don't you have apple care?

[Jackimalyn]

You could try crying. Sometimes in a situation like this crying helps; and swearing, swearing is good.

I find throwing things (i.e. the broken hard drive, the entire tower, or any loose office supplies) tends to be just as effective.

[D-Frag]

i wouldnt suggest doing a data recovery through a shop, I called a place back when this happened to me and they quoted me roughly $800 for a 40gig hardrive.

I would suggest however, using something like this http://www.microbarn.com/USBAdapters_ADA-UIDEP--18-162-101531.html?source=gadwords&gclid=CP39z-2hmIsCFRO-hgodCjAySg

basically, (and im speaking from a PC standpoint) you can plug in the hardrive externally into one of these bad boys, it will come up on your computer as a plug and play external device, if there is any information on the drive that is retrievable, you can go in and copy the stuff on your old drive and swap it too a working hardrive. I have used this technique on drives that I thought were totally lost (clicking, making horrible noises, not showing up in the OS) and this technique worked. for such a cheap buy, I would highly recommend it

[doubting_thomas]

If it's frozen you can take the hard drive out of the computer case and drop it on
the ground from about 3 feet up. Reset the jumper on the back of the drive to
slave and put it in a different machine. I've been able to get information off
toasted drives a few times this way. After you drop it it probably won't boot
for you, but it may spin enough to get the data you need off. If it's not frozen, try
to hook it up to another computer as a slave and see if it'll at least give you the
data. It's worth a shot I guess.

[Mynock]

If it's frozen you can take the hard drive out of the computer case and drop it on
the ground from about 3 feet up. Reset the jumper on the back of the drive to
slave and put it in a different machine. I've been able to get information off
toasted drives a few times this way. After you drop it it probably won't boot
for you, but it may spin enough to get the data you need off. If it's not frozen, try
to hook it up to another computer as a slave and see if it'll at least give you the
data. It's worth a shot I guess.I think my mom used that technique on me.

[Craig B]

I also had an internal drive not boot and go bad on a G5 mac and I hooked the G5 up to an old G4 of mine and loaded it in target mode through my ipod firewire cable (only works with firewire) and it booted like an external drive and let me copy everything off.

[TheBluePanda]

So far we've tried the following:

- Use the 'target mode' firewire connection.
- Take out the drive and slave it in another computer.
- Tech Tools, Disk Warrior, and about 2 other smaller softwares. They tend to see the drive, but not any volumes on it.

The noise sounds like a "bzzzz... click.... bzzzzz... click". Itll do that for about 30 seconds before giving up.

I really don't want the company to shell out all that money for drive recovery.. so I'll prolly be trying everything under the sun to get it working again.. even freezing it.

[Drazan]

probably the drive motor went caput. If the data is worth recovering there are the service places that take the actual data disk out of your drive and put it in another drive to copy off the data. If the disk is not damaged or data corruption then the data should be able to be recovered.

In a former life I actually used to build the parts for the disk drive motor so I know bits and pieces that go into it. However, unless you have an absolute clean room even one smote of dust can ruin the disk.

So how much is the data worth?

And where's your backups?

[The_Black_Knight]

And where's your backups?I was going to ask the same thing. Hopefully this scares you and the owners of the company enough to put a reliable, automated backup solution in place, NOW.

It's not a matter of IF your hard drive will fail, just WHEN.

I am amazed that companies allow their employees to have months of work on their hard drives without any kind of backup. It's just bad business practice. Imagine telling a client, "Oh, those files? The ones from the last three major projects we worked on for you that required over a thousand man hours? We don't have those anymore. Hard drive crashed. Oopsie!"

I really don't want the company to shell out all that money for drive recovery.If the company was too dumb to spend the cash on a backup system, then I wouldn't feel bad about making them pay through the nose for drive recovery. It serves them right.

[EC]

It cost me about $600 to have my data recovered after a hardrive melt, and it wasn't restored to its former glory either. I had to do it, but it wasn't fun.

A good backup system is much cheaper I learned.

[TheBluePanda]

I managed to recover most of my Flash work thanks to decompiling software.

As for the "where are your backups?" question, I'm not even gonna bother answering that, since I've already had to answer that question a dozen times here in the office. Bunch of hypocrites though... everybody in this office would be screwed to some degree if their entire harddrive died.

[The_Black_Knight]

As for the "where are your backups?" question, I'm not even gonna bother answering that, since I've already had to answer that question a dozen times here in the office. Bunch of hypocrites though... everybody in this office would be screwed to some degree if their entire harddrive died.I'm not attacking you personally, here. The company you work for should have an official system in place, because things like this are going to happen sooner or later. If they won't set up a backup system, then they're going to get burned badly one day, and it will be their own fault. Of course they'll blame the employee in question, but it will still really be their fault.

[Drazan]

We actually don't put anything on our computer harddrives - it all goes to the bulk file server which has external harddrive backups. Not the best but it is a small company.

[urstwile]

Most of us here do the same thing, Drazan, but we also back up the hard drives anyway, for those who might not be doing that. It's saved us on a number of occasions.

[EC]

I back up on an external drive. I have no idea how reliable that is, but I'll find out the next time a hardrive melts.

[LeftBrain Artist]

The company you work for should have an official system in place, because things like this are going to happen sooner or later. If they won't set up a backup system, then they're going to get burned badly one day, and it will be their own fault.

Ha. Its especially their fault if you continually point out their lack of preparation, and still they do nothing. I'm jus' sayin' . . .

I had a 60 GB external firewire drive take a poo on me - I had painstakingly created and organized roughly 30GB of images from one of our major clients on it. The hard drive's servo mechanism went kaput. Recovery services quoted 2 Gs to fix - they claimed image files were difficult to retreive. Luckily, I had all the images backed up on disk - but still, it was like 2 weeks of work that had been done over a years time that got wiped out.

[CatintheHat1]

Here in Canada where I live (Nova Scotia) it's $1500. Ask me how I know. Go ahead. Ask me!

[SpugNothuson]

$1500 how'd you know that CatintheHat1?

I've used the freezer technique before, didn't work for me though, mine was full on proper dead. Didn't even do the clicking sounds. :(

Good luck though fella.