Author Topic: Pray for me - I lost 3 main and backup hard drives (Read 1523 times)

josefamenendez · « **Reply #15 on:** March 25, 2019, 10:23:39 AM »

me too

klasG4e · « **Reply #16 on:** March 25, 2019, 10:25:30 AM »

Do not discount the possibility of an actual miraculous recovery/repair. God, of course, could easily work such a miraculous recovery/repair of your hard drives, etc. in a mere instant. If it's meant to be in Almighty God's Providence it will happen. As your Patron Saint Matthew inspired by the Holy Ghost states in Matt. 19:26 ""...with God all things are possible."

Ascetik · « **Reply #17 on:** March 25, 2019, 02:04:46 PM »

Not sure which OS you use, but a linux distro like gParted might be to get that data off your main drive.

A good majority of the time Linux will still read partitions that have been corrupted by Windows. I have made a lot of money recovering data for people that way.

Ladislaus · « **Reply #18 on:** March 26, 2019, 07:51:09 AM »

Several people have chimed in that they would contribute to a GoFundMe to get your data restored. That place there says they'll give you an estimate for free of how much of your data they could recover. I'm sure there are many other places out there that do this kind of work.

AlligatorDicax · « **Reply #19 on:** March 30, 2019, 08:41:17 PM »

Quote from: Ladislaus on March 25, 2019, 08:29:42 AM

I would try taking the original main hard drive that crashed and running it in an external enclosure ... with USB connection. Sometimes hard drives crash but aren't 100% dead yet.

"I'm not dead yet!"
--Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Quote from: Ladislaus on March 25, 2019, 08:29:42 AM

Perhaps the boot sector crashed but the rest of the disk can be read, so accessing it as a secondary drive might work.

I ought to make sure that you're aware of a product that was sold by the CompUSA brick-&-mortar stores:

    ULTRA USB 2.0-to-IDE|SATA Cable Adapter
        (Part ULT40112; UPC 22769-40112):
    • IDE either 2.5-in. or 3.5-in.
    • 480 Mb/s. data rate (i.e., presumably USB2).
    • External-pwr. adapter.
    • Separate a.c. cable & plug.
    "The [...] adapter turns any SATA or IDE hard drive into a convenient external drive. Easily transfer files from computer or notebook, back up files, or store large file archives on hard drives."

Thus, without including on an "enclosure", it performs all of the necessary functions. Just keep the drive on an electronically appropriate surface.

There might be an issue with its claim of compatibility with "Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista^(TM)/Windows 7", because it fails to mention linux. But there don't seem to be any barriers to use of linux; in particular, there don't seem to be any h.w.|s.w. drivers built in to the product.

I suppose that access via a linux system would be required to interpret your own disks' directory structures.

Otherwise, it might suffice to locate a coöperative person with a Windows PC and at least 1 USB port. Much preferably 2 USB ports, so you could copy everything via direct pass-thro' to an external DVD drive. That would alleviate concerns that you would be guzzling the coöperative person's disk space. And because your "everything" is huge, it might make good sense to test the set-up by finding then copying the most critical files directly to a USB key. I routinely copied files from a camera or SDHC-carrier via direct pass-thro' to USB keys using XP Pro (XP Home seems to have been crippled for that and similar tasks).

Matthew · « **Reply #20 on:** March 31, 2019, 02:02:51 PM »

I am grateful for everyone's concern and prayers.

I managed to get set up again for work this past Monday, and with a bit of detachment from things like personal logs, diaries, contacts, e-mails, some books, things I saved from the Internet, etc. I think I'll be fine. Every once in a while I realize something else I lost, but usually it's minor.

I haven't had a chance to open up the machine and see what happened yet. I've been busy with work and household work.

One thing's for sure: I'm done with M2 SSD drives. They look like a stick of RAM. When those things crash, they're GONE. And I'm also done with external HDs. If a 3 foot drop can pulverize one, I can't trust it with anything. I'm going to use a dedicated PC as a fileserver for my home network, so ALL my PCs can copy backup files to it. And this machine will have RAID, so if one hard drive fails, I can just buy a new one, pop it in, and it will fully recover automatically. No lost data.

Since a fileserver (tower) isn't going to be dropped, you can't spill liquids on it, and it's in a full size case (no danger of overheating) plus it uses magnetic hard drives (which, when they fail, at least don't fail completely), I should be fine going forward. And although magnetic HDs can fail, this risk is minimized by using a RAID1 setup (2 hard drives, mirrored to each other automatically).

By the way -- part of the blame for the initial overheated *has* to be placed at the feet of Chrome. I had just recently upgraded from version 70 to version 73. And boy did I catch it slowing down my PC, using 1/2 or more of my CPU, etc. The computer was running a bit hot already, and this latest Chrome is NOT what the doctor ordered. Since then, I've caught it spiking up in CPU by a factor of 4 or 5. I restart it, and it's back to normal -- same webpage, same activity! It's like a resource leak or something.

forlorn · « **Reply #21 on:** March 31, 2019, 04:05:09 PM »

Quote from: Matthew on March 31, 2019, 02:02:51 PM

I am grateful for everyone's concern and prayers.

I managed to get set up again for work this past Monday, and with a bit of detachment from things like personal logs, diaries, contacts, e-mails, some books, things I saved from the Internet, etc. I think I'll be fine. Every once in a while I realize something else I lost, but usually it's minor.

I haven't had a chance to open up the machine and see what happened yet. I've been busy with work and household work.

One thing's for sure: I'm done with M2 SSD drives. They look like a stick of RAM. When those things crash, they're GONE. And I'm also done with external HDs. If a 3 foot drop can pulverize one, I can't trust it with anything. I'm going to use a dedicated PC as a fileserver for my home network, so ALL my PCs can copy backup files to it. And this machine will have RAID, so if one hard drive fails, I can just buy a new one, pop it in, and it will fully recover automatically. No lost data.

Since a fileserver (tower) isn't going to be dropped, you can't spill liquids on it, and it's in a full size case (no danger of overheating) plus it uses magnetic hard drives (which, when they fail, at least don't fail completely), I should be fine going forward. And although magnetic HDs can fail, this risk is minimized by using a RAID1 setup (2 hard drives, mirrored to each other automatically).

By the way -- part of the blame for the initial overheated *has* to be placed at the feet of Chrome. I had just recently upgraded from version 70 to version 73. And boy did I catch it slowing down my PC, using 1/2 or more of my CPU, etc. The computer was running a bit hot already, and this latest Chrome is NOT what the doctor ordered. Since then, I've caught it spiking up in CPU by a factor of 4 or 5. I restart it, and it's back to normal -- same webpage, same activity! It's like a resource leak or something.

I've always found Google Chrome using ridiculous percentages of my CPU even when it's just a couple tabs idling. It's separated into separate process for stability, so they say, but I've never had problems with browser stability anyway. Doesn't seem like a worthwhile trade-off to me. I'd switch to a lighter browser but I'm too used to Chrome at this stage and at the moment my PC can handle it.

Smedley Butler · « **Reply #22 on:** March 31, 2019, 05:13:31 PM »

Geek Squad at Best Buy can pull stuff off a crashed hard drive. It's all recoverable. Costs around $99-199.

Ladislaus · « **Reply #23 on:** March 31, 2019, 07:12:52 PM »

Quote from: Smedley Butler on March 31, 2019, 05:13:31 PM

Geek Squad at Best Buy can pull stuff off a crashed hard drive. It's all recoverable. Costs around $99-199.

Yes, I wish you'd just get this done, and we'd chip in to help pay for it.

Author Topic: Pray for me - I lost 3 main and backup hard drives (Read 1523 times)

josefamenendez

Re: Pray for me - I lost 3 main and backup hard drives

klasG4e

Re: Pray for me - I lost 3 main and backup hard drives

Ascetik

Re: Pray for me - I lost 3 main and backup hard drives

Ladislaus

Re: Pray for me - I lost 3 main and backup hard drives

AlligatorDicax

IDE|SATA via USB/Re: Pray for me - I lost 3 main and backup hard drives

Matthew

Re: Pray for me - I lost 3 main and backup hard drives

forlorn

Re: Pray for me - I lost 3 main and backup hard drives

Smedley Butler

Re: Pray for me - I lost 3 main and backup hard drives

Ladislaus

Re: Pray for me - I lost 3 main and backup hard drives