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muzishun
Senior Member
United States
1079 Posts |
 Posted - 30 March 2005 : 02:38:38
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I have a 160GB Western Digital hard drive that I use as storage. I keep my programs installed on my main 20GB, then store all of the files on the 160. I had appx 4 or 5GB of data that was for around a dozen web sites that I've been developing. Since I have IIS installed, I haven't had to upload to a testing server. This is extremely, extremely (I can't stress this enough) important information. Does anyone know about how much it costs to get data retrieved from a hard drive? I tried rebooting, but the hdd got too hot to even touch within about 30 seconds (not to mention, Windows stopped recognizing that it was even there). I'm really trying to hope that I'm not totally *&^%ed on this one. Anyone out there have any advice or suggestions? One of the sites I was working on (30 hours in the past four days) was supposed to be shown to my client by this weekend.
I really don't know what to do right now.... this is the most infuriating, devastating things that has happened to me in awhile (the data and the work more than the drive itself  ).... I don't know... I just have to stop typing now. |
Bill Parrott
Senior Web Programmer, University of Kansas
Co-Owner and Code Monkey, Eternal Second Designs (www.eternalsecond.com)
Personal Website (www.chimericdream.com) |
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sr_erick
Senior Member
USA
1318 Posts |
Posted - 30 March 2005 : 02:47:23
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Well it can be recovered I'm sure, I just don't know the cost. There are a few places out there, but I've never used them. I lost 40 GB of data in the past, and I don't like it either. I cannot STRESS proper backups enough!! Also, I do not trust large drives today...one thing fails and you lose WAY TOO MUCH. Any large drive setup I use is mirrored or is RAID5 or has some sort of redundancy.
Time for me to go back-up some things.  Sorry about your files and I hope you can get them back.
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Erick
Snowmobile Fanatics
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Classicmotorcycling
Development Team Leader
Australia
2084 Posts |
Posted - 30 March 2005 : 03:10:06
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I had a WD HD that crashed on me once.. I took it out of the case, held it in one hand and hit the top of the drive with the other open hand, plugged it back in and it worked. I would suggest that you get another HD, try what I said and if it comes back up, copy your data straight over to the other HD and then back it up to CD.
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Cheers,
David Greening |
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muzishun
Senior Member
United States
1079 Posts |
Posted - 30 March 2005 : 04:05:44
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| Well, the problem is that this is the backup hard drive. Unfortunately, a lot of the data I had on it wasn't backed up anywhere else. (from now on I plan to make weekly backups... I've got enough CD's for it) But considering the burn marks on a couple of the chips on the underside of the drive, I'm not so sure that it'll be up and running anytime soon. |
Bill Parrott
Senior Web Programmer, University of Kansas
Co-Owner and Code Monkey, Eternal Second Designs (www.eternalsecond.com)
Personal Website (www.chimericdream.com) |
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ruirib
Snitz Forums Admin
Portugal
26364 Posts |
Posted - 30 March 2005 : 05:25:22
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That seems to be a too frequent story with WD drives. I have a 160 GB one die on me, the luck was that it did it with advance warning and I was able to update the disk's image before letting it go.
As far as I know, retrieving your data can cost several hundreds of dollars, if not more... |
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HuwR
Forum Admin
United Kingdom
20584 Posts |
Posted - 30 March 2005 : 05:32:08
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since your drive seems to be working to a degree, there are some very good data recovery tools around that may help, by the way, many drives get very hot, maxtors are notorious for it, you could fry eggs on them.
I use a program called GetDataBack, I have been able to recover info from drives that windows wouldn't recognise. |
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Gremlin
General Help Moderator
New Zealand
7528 Posts |
Posted - 30 March 2005 : 06:28:00
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Sounds like the onboard controller has died or dying, you may be able to buy an identical second hand drive thats had a head crash but still got a good controller on it and swap over the controllers it's possible on some brands of drive to do it yourself, I don't have any WD's so can't say for sure but just looking at it you'll probably be able to tell if you can or not.
It could be just heat like HuwR's said .. if it's too hot to touch though (and theres scorch marks) I'd be thinking more likely controller death .. drives normally run around 30-35 degrees on average in my experience.
If not then try to RMA the drive and get WD to have a look at it even if it's not within warranty they may be able to fix it for you (seagate have done this for me in the past and charged a minimal fee + shipping for replacing a controller board on a drive outside of warranty). |
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Edited by - Gremlin on 30 March 2005 06:31:11 |
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muzishun
Senior Member
United States
1079 Posts |
Posted - 30 March 2005 : 14:37:30
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| Well, I called Maxtor, and they will replace it, but they don't cover data recovery. The only place in town that can do it charges $60/hr. Is this about what I can expect across the board? Does anyone here know of anywhere cheaper? I'm certainly willing to mail the drives (the replacement and the failed one) someplace if I can save a significant amount. |
Bill Parrott
Senior Web Programmer, University of Kansas
Co-Owner and Code Monkey, Eternal Second Designs (www.eternalsecond.com)
Personal Website (www.chimericdream.com) |
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Gremlin
General Help Moderator
New Zealand
7528 Posts |
Posted - 30 March 2005 : 21:14:57
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| $60 actually sounds pretty reasonable to me, I've heard of places charging a lot more for dedicated data recovery services. Make sure you get a quote from them on the number of hours they'd expect it to take so you don't end up with a 30 or 40 hour bill unexpectedly. |
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withanhdammit
Junior Member
USA
236 Posts |
Posted - 31 March 2005 : 02:20:46
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You should see if Maxtor will do an "advanced exchange". They'll ask for your credit card, but won't charge it unless they don't get the bad drive back in 30 days. Then you can take the controller board off the new drive, put it on the old hard drive, see if you can get the data off it, then put it all back and send the bad drive back to them.
h |
I reject your reality and substitute my own. |
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muzishun
Senior Member
United States
1079 Posts |
Posted - 31 March 2005 : 05:31:38
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| You guys certainly know your stuff. I'm doing an advanced exchange with Maxtor and should receive the drive in the next week or so. Also, the company I spoke with told me that it normally takes them 1 1/2 - 2 hours to recover data off a drive my size. |
Bill Parrott
Senior Web Programmer, University of Kansas
Co-Owner and Code Monkey, Eternal Second Designs (www.eternalsecond.com)
Personal Website (www.chimericdream.com) |
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Gremlin
General Help Moderator
New Zealand
7528 Posts |
Posted - 31 March 2005 : 07:42:08
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quote:
Originally posted by withanhdammit
You should see if Maxtor will do an "advanced exchange". They'll ask for your credit card, but won't charge it unless they don't get the bad drive back in 30 days. Then you can take the controller board off the new drive, put it on the old hard drive, see if you can get the data off it, then put it all back and send the bad drive back to them.
h
I wouldn't exactly call doing that very ethical .. not to mention if you bust the controller on the replacement drive then you'll end up having to pay for that and still not have your data back. |
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muzishun
Senior Member
United States
1079 Posts |
Posted - 01 April 2005 : 03:24:37
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| Well, I've talked to my father, who is generally one of the first people I go to with computer questions. We talked about setting up RAID and the possibility of swapping controller boards and whatnot. After about an hour, I decided that I'm not going to attempt data recovery. Since I've had a chance to calm down, I've searched around and found some backups I made a couple of months ago on the sites that were finished. The only thing I'm 100% losing is the 30 hours I worked on this particular site. Most of my other stuff can be brought back, partially, from what I have on the web. I'll miss all of my media stuff, but I can just rip my CDs again and stuff. I'm definitely going to buy another hard drive though. I can't do a RAID setup, but I'll be getting something in the next month or two that I'll use solely for the purpose of backing everything onto once a week or so. Oy... I wish I hadn't learned this lesson the hard way. |
Bill Parrott
Senior Web Programmer, University of Kansas
Co-Owner and Code Monkey, Eternal Second Designs (www.eternalsecond.com)
Personal Website (www.chimericdream.com) |
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withanhdammit
Junior Member
USA
236 Posts |
Posted - 01 April 2005 : 09:48:17
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Why can't you set up a RAID? All it takes is an add-on PCI RAID card and another hard drive. The car will mirror your first hard drive onto the new hard drive, then keep them mirrored in a RAID 1...
h |
I reject your reality and substitute my own. |
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muzishun
Senior Member
United States
1079 Posts |
Posted - 01 April 2005 : 12:36:13
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| I can't have a RAID setup because I've still got a fairly old computer, and the PCI slots (only two) are full. If I get a new computer in the next few months, I'll definitely be getting RAID on it. |
Bill Parrott
Senior Web Programmer, University of Kansas
Co-Owner and Code Monkey, Eternal Second Designs (www.eternalsecond.com)
Personal Website (www.chimericdream.com) |
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Gremlin
General Help Moderator
New Zealand
7528 Posts |
Posted - 01 April 2005 : 19:53:23
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| you don't even need a Raid card really, with Windows XP Pro you can just software mirror the drives, the performance hit by doing mirroring in software is negligible especially if the drives are sitting on seperate IDE channels. |
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