A reminder to those who are lazy like me...

[CaraRose]

BACK UP YOUR PHOTOS!

I hadn't done it for awhile and my hdd died without warning. Stupid stupid stupid....

Anyway, I think its a hardware problem, not data corruption. Looking into data recovery place that's nearby. Hopefully I'll be able to recover my photo libraries. Probably going to pay through the nose, *sigh*.

Lesson learned.

[Franglais]

Good luck with your recovery.

I pay great attention to my backups. I just switched over to external USB hard drives (no more DVD-D's - too expensive, not reliable). I bought a disk clone utility (PARAGON) which makes things much simpler

- I clone my system disk every three months or so
- I use VISTA backup to do a file-level incremental backup every week (to external drive as well,)
- Most important - I have a spare external hard drive to act as a pivot. I never wipe out a backup disk until I've done another backup disk to replace it

[Frog]

I have to get around to that.
Thinking of getting windows 7 may jog my ambition.
I had everything backed up to an external two years ago, not realizing that externals go bad so regularly. Payed 80 bucks to recover what was on it to a new external.

[jetrim]

Something similar happened to me a couple weeks ago - XP failure. Other than having to reload the OS it wasn't quite as catastrophic as your scenario. My efforts are a bit different than Franglais' but achieve the same thing. First, I don't EVER keep data files on the same HDD as the operating system, they get loaded onto a secondary 500g internal drive, then backed up to another 500g fujitsu internal drive mounted in an external case and burned to DVD at the end of each month. That way I have three copies of each file in case 1 fails. I have gone 'round & 'round with the guys in my camera club about this. Even the pro members swear by the external USB drives, but they just aren't safe for long term storage. Get a real drive and drop it in a case, the cost difference is negligible and they are FAR more reliable. You can get 500gig 7200rpm SATA drive for $60.00 on Amazon and if you know your way around the computer websites you can pick up a full terabyte for just couple bucks more, and a good fan cooled case/enclosure is $20 to $30.

[SmartWombat]

The drives are the same, if you open up the case and look, as the consumer grade drives.
I don't know what you mean by "real" drives.

I'm considering buying an external SATA interface and using enterprise class drives.
Hopefully they will last longer than consumer grade.

[jetrim]

The drives are the same, if you open up the case and look, as the consumer grade drives.
I don't know what you mean by "real" drives.

I'm considering buying an external SATA interface and using enterprise class drives.
Hopefully they will last longer than consumer grade.

I'm not a computer wiz by any measure, but I'm related to a few. They, and many of my techie friends have advised me to steer well clear of the consumer external drives available today as they suffer an alarmingly high failure rate.

Maybe I've been exceedingly lucky through the years but I've only ever suffered 1 HDD failure on a PATA internal drive that was over 10 years old. I don't buy Maxtor, Seagate, or Western Digital drives though, so that may have something to do with it. Most of the drives I own are Toshiba 3.5" 7200rpm SATA or PATA internal desktop units, so that's what I was referring to as "real drives".

I'm curious though, when you say the drives are the same... the same as desktop drives, or notebook drives? Most of the cases don't appear to be large enough to hold a desktop drive, let alone leave room for cooling and shock protection.

[Franglais]

The drives are the same, if you open up the case and look, as the consumer grade drives.
I don't know what you mean by "real" drives.

I'm considering buying an external SATA interface and using enterprise class drives.
Hopefully they will last longer than consumer grade.

I agree with that. The drives in the external USB casing are just the same as fitted internally on your computer. The only problem I've had (so far) was with a noname external drive casing which went bad. I took the drive out and fitted it in a computer and it works fine. Now I stick to big name external drives (LACIE, Western Digital, Verbatim..)

All my "finished" photography files are on external drives. I stick to consumer quality external drives but I change about every 18 months as my collection grows (300MB > 500MB > 1TB). I reuse the old drives for other things (example: as a Pivot)

Reply to Jetrim: the bigger external drives hold the 3.5 inch disks you find in a desktop and the smaller external drives hold the 2.5 inch disks you get in a laptop. The cooling fan (when fitted) is usually at one end next to the vent in the casing. The amount of "shock protection" in all the drives I've opened has been minimal (a tiny slice of foam plastic).

[CaraRose]

The drives themselves are the same, but depending on how the external casing is constructed. If your adding a layer between the drive and the power source and the drive and the sata/ide connection, you have another layer of components, however minor, that could fail. The power connections could short. Ect.

That and I know my external dinosaur didn't have any fan and always felt to me like it had poor ventilation and ran hot. However a small computer case with poor ventilation would be just as bad for a drive.

I generally buy all of my components on Newegg. Best deals on hard drives I've ever found. I stick to internals since they're cheaper, but I'm considering getting a dock to use them out side the case. Keep them boxed up in anti-static bags when not in use.

I actually was planning on building a new machine and ordered my parts on Monday, only to have my current desktop's drive die Wednesday. Parts for the new machine came Thursday, and two days later on a rush build, I have a new desktop. New case can hold 7 hdd's, so I'm probably going to add a couple next paycheck.

Going to call the data recovery place tomorrow and see if I can drop off the drive on Tuesday to get a diagnosis and an estimate.

[OldClicker]

I'm looking at building a new PC off Newegg. Could you post the list of what you ordered? TIA - TF

[Franglais]

..

I actually was planning on building a new machine and ordered my parts on Monday, only to have my current desktop's drive die Wednesday. Parts for the new machine came Thursday, and two days later on a rush build, I have a new desktop. New case can hold 7 hdd's, so I'm probably going to add a couple next paycheck.

Going to call the data recovery place tomorrow and see if I can drop off the drive on Tuesday to get a diagnosis and an estimate.

If it makes you feel any better, two weeks ago I totally lost my 3-year old portable. I flashed the BIOS to try to make it support HYPER-V and it went wrong twice = no recovery possible. I had to rush out and buy a new one and spend all weekend rebuilding my work environment.

Fortunately I always see a portable as being expendable/stealable/breakable and all my useful files were on an external drive.

I'll take it into the repair shop sometime to see if the BIOS chip can be replaced easily. If it means a new motherboard then it's not worth it.

[armando_m]

.. backup in progress as I type

[thedill]

I lost everthing a couple of years ago when lightning struck my house and fried my computer and external hard drive, I now also use flash drives as backup just incase. The funny thing about it was a day earlier I read an article which said 'you have more chance of being struck by lightning than winning the lottery,'

[Franglais]

I lost everthing a couple of years ago when lightning struck my house and fried my computer and external hard drive, I now also use flash drives as backup just incase. The funny thing about it was a day earlier I read an article which said 'you have more chance of being struck by lightning than winning the lottery,'

I keep my backup drives in the cellar, 5 floors below my apartment. If an aircraft crashes on the building then I could lose both but otherwise I hope I'm safe.

[CaraRose]

OC--

I had a salvaged case that was nicer than my old one. No name steel mid-tower. I reused my old IDE dvd-burner and dvd-rom from the old machine. I'm probably going to replace those with SATA drives if I ever find some that match the case (for some reason beige optical drives are hard to find).

I have a lot of DDR2 RAM hanging around that I reused. I put 6gigs in it.

So what I bought was at a minimum, but--

Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-UD4H (AM3/AM2+/AM2 socket) mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128384

AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103696

SAMSUNG EcoGreen F2 HD103SI 1TB 5400 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152173

I also got this AZIO wireless adapter. Cheap but works great.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833340013

I'm just using the onboard video. I do want to get a video card in here eventually, but that'll wait for another paycheck or two.

[readingr]

That's tough, Hope you get them back.

Well, last night my HDD on the laptop died, giving really sporadic results. Fortunately the photo's had all been backed up to my desktop machine and my external HDD and a copy on a DVD.

I keep a second set of DVD's off site about 180 miles away at my parents house, just in case. I test these once a year just in case.

I think I'm protected.

Roger R.

[OldClicker]

Thanks. - TF

[Shebang]

What thoughts or experiences do any of you have regarding one of the on-line back-up companies like Carbonite?

[SmartWombat]

They are on;y as good as their backups.
Didn't one of the online companies recently lose their users' files?
Read about it in one of the "cloud computing" websites - most embarrassing.

[Greg McCary]

Thanks Carla for the post and I do hope you can recover your files. You made a believer out of me though. I broke down and got a couple of 320gig external drives and have backed up almost everything.
Like Charles I have been thinking that storing old drives may be better than burning a couple of dozen DVD's.....
I also may look into PARAGON. Thanks too Charles........
Good luck Carla