It all went wrong on the 13th!!!

Pixieskip · 13 Sep 2006 at 20:56

Just bought myself a new WD 320gb hard drive worked fine for two days, long enough for me to transfer all my data (around 100gb) to this new drive. Today in the process of backing up my files and the first time i have not had my data backed up in five years my new hard drive began clicking... so i quickly turned off my pc and attempted to restart, but that was it gone... everything! The annoying thing is that i have spent so much time backing stuff up over the years and now its all gone!

No point to this other than to have a moan! :mad:

benjo · 13 Sep 2006 at 20:57

Did you not keep the stuff on the old drive? Or did you litteraly cut and paste to the new one? :<

matt1 · 13 Sep 2006 at 21:02

Oh dear, sorry to hear this Pixieskip, I'm in the process of securing my data (through the means of extra HDDs) so this is the last thing I want to read! I hope you get lucky and get your data back.

Cyber-Mav · 14 Sep 2006 at 00:58

im sick and tired of hard drives that fail. i can;t wait for solid state disks to arrive.

Gas Panic! · 14 Sep 2006 at 01:35

Cyber-Mav said:
im sick and tired of hard drives that fail. i can;t wait for solid state disks to arrive.

I second this. I'm hoping we should see some high-capacity solid-state drives in the next few years, that hopefully won't break the bank.

We can only hope. At the moment, though, I've found there can never be too many backups.

Greenlizard0 · 14 Sep 2006 at 11:06

Rivey said:
I second this. I'm hoping we should see some high-capacity solid-state drives in the next few years, that hopefully won't break the bank.

We can only hope. At the moment, though, I've found there can never be too many backups.

Quoted for truth. All my uni projects are on C: D:, a writable cd and on my uni space. Right before deadline time, they're on a flash drive too.

squiffy · 14 Sep 2006 at 11:08

Pixieskip said:
Just bought myself a new WD 320gb hard drive worked fine for two days, long enough for me to transfer all my data (around 100gb) to this new drive. Today in the process of backing up my files and the first time i have not had my data backed up in five years my new hard drive began clicking... so i quickly turned off my pc and attempted to restart, but that was it gone... everything! The annoying thing is that i have spent so much time backing stuff up over the years and now its all gone!

No point to this other than to have a moan!

I have zero sympathy for someone who hasen't backed up data onto cheap DVD-R's. Oh well you saved £10 not buying a 100 pack of DVD-R's. And now you've lost everything. Well done.

matt1 · 14 Sep 2006 at 11:47

squiffy said:
I have zero sympathy for someone who hasen't backed up data onto cheap DVD-R's. Oh well you saved £10 not buying a 100 pack of DVD-R's. And now you've lost everything. Well done.

There's no need for that.

Cyber-Mav · 14 Sep 2006 at 13:22

yea there is no need for that. cheapo dvdr can be troublesome at that. once i use cheapo dvdr and backed up some data and the dvdr was unreadable a month down the line. so cheapo is not very good.

yesterday i had a brownout as in the power dipped for a second or 2 the lights in the house dimmed and my pc's psu made a slight crackling sound but the pc carried on running. then later on it started to give paging errors. iv seen this happen before. the smart data is clear for the drive, an surface scan passes fine but i suspect during that power sag i ended up with some corrupt data to the drive since i got random bsods in windows and event viewer says its to do with page errors. so corrupt pagefile or what not.

good thing i back up my emails on a weekly basis and the c: partition is used only for windows and ms office. all my work is stored on the d: partition. so now im doing a windows reinstall. and games are installed on my d: partition too so most of them should be just recreate icons job.

this time i may get the c: drive to a fully updated install and with all my apps then image it with acronis or something. since the c drive is usually always under 15 gig.

gunner · 15 Sep 2006 at 17:28

squiffy said:
I have zero sympathy for someone who hasen't backed up data onto cheap DVD-R's. Oh well you saved £10 not buying a 100 pack of DVD-R's. And now you've lost everything. Well done. [/QUOTE

What a jerky thing to say!!
The poor guy was trying to back his stuff up when it happened.

well done yourself for being an nkob.

squiffy · 15 Sep 2006 at 17:44

He didn't have another copy of his backup data did he? And my comment about "cheap" DVD-R's not the cheap dye type, but £10 for a pack of 50 is cheap compared to the risk that his single drive could've gone down at anytime losing everything. DVD Writers and DVD-R discs are cheap, if the data is that important he would still have the DVD-R.

His fault entirely. You should always make the assumption that your data on a single machine will be lost at any point, so you have a backup. Not hard really.

gunner · 15 Sep 2006 at 17:53

I think most people understand your point squiffy. Two things though your "its is own fault" attitude is a bit harsh, especially when the guy claims to have a regular back up system which this time failed.

Secondly backing 100GB or more onto DVD is hardly convenient can't really be sheduled and has also got its own problems. surely using a daily back up to something like True Image is the norm.

Have a little heart.

davetherave2 · 17 Sep 2006 at 13:29

just out of interest have you tried any file recovery software such as file scavanger, or my personal favourite Recover my Files. There may be a chance you can either recover the info from the old drive or possibly the new drive. I know from personal experience how bad it can be when you lose a vast amount of data and it seems like all the data is gone.

Pixieskip · 18 Sep 2006 at 20:46

I have been looking into this a bit, but I am getting close to my MSc dis hand in date so not much time. I had this backed everywhere, it would have been the end of me had I lost all that work.

I think i should be able to recover some data.

encephalopathy · 19 Sep 2006 at 13:22

i have had good success using getdatabackntfs or getdatabackfat32 before

very easy to use and may help you recover some of the work you have lost

wizardmaxx · 19 Sep 2006 at 13:57

Recover my files worked for me many times.

snowdog · 19 Sep 2006 at 19:03

squiffy said:
He didn't have another copy of his backup data did he? And my comment about "cheap" DVD-R's not the cheap dye type, but £10 for a pack of 50 is cheap compared to the risk that his single drive could've gone down at anytime losing everything. DVD Writers and DVD-R discs are cheap, if the data is that important he would still have the DVD-R.

His fault entirely. You should always make the assumption that your data on a single machine will be lost at any point, so you have a backup. Not hard really.

No its the hdd's fault, they're supposed to work, also not everybody has the time/patience to waste his time backing up, i already hate burning one or 2 dvd's, let alone 100 gb's, i personally would prefer to spend 100 quid for a new hdd above wasting my time backing up on dvd's. Hdd's are supposed to work not break. Dvd's and cd's are a nightmare, 1st theyre small just 9 gigs max per disc, then its slow takes almost 5 minutes per dvd and finally you can lose em very easely, ive lost tons of cd's and dvd's (and with them personal data) and gave up on burning ages ago.

Very bad luck pixieskip, hdd dead in 2 days, never had that before, onyl 2 times i lost my data was becouse: 1: i short circuited one of my hdd's accidently, hdd died, and 2: virus killed my partition, both thing were ages ago havent lost data fortunatly in last 4 or 5 years myself...
Hope you can recover most of it.

squiffy · 19 Sep 2006 at 19:22

snowdog said:
No its the hdd's fault, they're supposed to work, also not everybody has the time/patience to waste his time backing up, i already hate burning one or 2 dvd's, let alone 100 gb's, i personally would prefer to spend 100 quid for a new hdd above wasting my time backing up on dvd's. Hdd's are supposed to work not break. Dvd's and cd's are a nightmare, 1st theyre small just 9 gigs max per disc, then its slow takes almost 5 minutes per dvd and finally you can lose em very easely, ive lost tons of cd's and dvd's (and with them personal data) and gave up on burning ages ago.

It's viewpoints like that show that users are to blame when data loss occurs. I know of a few companies with servers with NO BACKUP AT ALL. If their servers go down they're in deep ****. Hard drives are mechanical devices, and if that single drive goes down you've lost gigabytes of data. Yes they're "supposed to work" but it's not like that. If you lose CDR/DVD-R discs that's your fault, again. Strange how I don't lose discs. Burning a DVD-R off every now and then when you get 4.1GB of data is not that hard. You don't have to burn 100 discs in one go, just do a couple a day and soon have everything backed up.

I used to burn CD-R's off at single speed so it takes 1 hour plus for the verify, so a 8 minute 4x burn for seven times the amount of data pales in comparison.

snowdog · 19 Sep 2006 at 22:56

well in my case even if i would do a couple dvd's a day it would take ages, 1.1 terrabytes to burn is a lot...
I personally think hdd manufacturers are to blaim as they make something that is supposed to storage data not kill it.
About cd's & dvd's losing: well im bad at finsing stuff and keeping them properly becouse im just too lazy, im just too lazy to clean my stuff and put stuff i need in one place, i know thats my own fault , but that hdd's die isnt my fault...