I just got a call from the techs: they were only able to recover a portion of the data from the hard drive before it failed utterly. I asked about what transferred over… turns out that what I needed most (basically the bulk of my aerospace research) DID NOT get transferred before the end.
The only option left is to take it to some sort of specialist to see if they can recover the data; I gather this is a task that can cost THOUSANDS.
OK, so there’s not a whole lot that I can do here. i basically have two options:”
1) Abandon all hope of data recovery for the damaged drive. Try to rebuild the database from DVD backups… which I was not nearly diligent enough with. Lots and lots of data will be simply lost. I will have to spend a *lot* of time digging through various sources to try to recover a boatload of reports and whatnot.
2) Take the drive to a data recovery service, which means a trip to Salt Lake City and probably a vast sum of money in order to get full recovery (if possible). Money being something I have in *negative* quantities just now.
So, here’s my thought. The two main folders that I really *really* want to get back are “reports” and “images.” Several thousand PDF and PPT reports of aerospace interest, and thousands of aerospace images collected from numerous sources. Also a lot of personal items and whatnot, plus the complete collection of every photo I’ve ever taken (fortunately, these are backed up on DVD… a *lot* of DVDs). So assuming I can get the drive backed up, and assuming it costs a lot of money (thousands seems likely), I can burn DVDs – a lot of ’em – to those who “invest” in the recovery effort. The DVDs would include all the “reports” and aerospace “images.” A couple hundred gig, I think. Investment amount is unclear, but would probably be in the range of $500 – $1000, depending on level of interest and cost of the recovery. I could also burn this onto a portable hard drive for those interested in shipping one along.
None of this is certain yet. Could be that they can’t recover a damned thing, which would be a major problem for me. But if they can, and if you’re interested in helping and getting a massive block of data, let me know, send an email.
15 Responses to “DISASTER”
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Would there be a way to talk a university into doing it if they get some of your research promised to them in the future?
I’ve used Ontrack recovery in the past. They had to remove the platters from the drive in order to read the data. Very specialist equipment and teh whole thing was done in a clean room. It cost somewhere north of $3,000. (It was my primary mail server and despite backing it up fully once a month and doing a nightly delta backup I had to go back 18 months to find a backup set I could restore from.)
These things always happen at the worst possible time don’t they.
I suppose of you were to take a mystic perspective, you could say Loki heard you joking about backing up to DVD last week and is screwing with you.
Odin is the god of high availability, but Thor is the god of backups.
> I suppose of you were to take a mystic perspective…
I’m damn ready to start doing so. One thing the Norse were quite certain of: “luck.” Some people had it, some didn’t. This nonstop stream of disappointments and disasters and medical misadventures is starting to convince me that I know exactly where on that spectrum I fall.
You didn’t repossess a Gypsy woman’s house by any chance, did you?
That would explain a lot.
I’ve had good experience with Ontrack in the UK too. If you have total hardware failure then the clean room hard drive disassembly approach is the only option for recovery.
I’d expect sum in range of 3000 bucks…
Scott;
I had a drive recently die myself and my wife had a list of data-recovery places around here. I think she had some notes on prices too. I’ll check.
Might be a couple of paydays yet, ($1300.00 in repairs to a couple of teeth that I’m still negotiating between the dentist and insurance about 🙂 ) but I wouldn’t have an issue with ‘investing’ money in the project.
Randy
Scot,
Every External Hard drive I have ever used has failed horribly. (and every Maxtor drive FYI) Its not a matter of if, but when.
I got paranoid about it and took an old PC, put several identical drives in it and run a RAID network attached storage server. Now if I lose something it’s not the hardware’s fault, just my own stupidity.
I guess the question now is, do you NEED anything on that drive immediately. if not, put it on a shelf for future repair.
The good news is the failure sounds like it happened in the electronics, someone should be able to swap those out (or remove the platters) and you could be back in business. You need to get detailed quotes from multiple places. Don’t forget to check with the manufacturer. They might be able to do an electronics swap out based on the serial number.
Sorry about this,
-Gar,
I’ve taken enough hard drives apart (to grab the super magnets) to understand how they are made.
How come you can’t buy the same type hard drive, disassmble it, replace the stack of drive platters in it with the ones from the defective drive, and crank it up again?
It might be difficult from the point of view of not screwing up the read/write arms as you do it, but it should be possible.
Once you understand the principle the thing works on, it’s mechanical innards aren’t that complex to figure out.
Apparently the slightest bit of dust will screw up a platter royally. I live on a farm. In the desert. With cats.
And apparently the tolerances involved are impressive.
Of course, the obvious solution (which no one ever does, because of inherent human laziness) is to update your important data backup on CDR’s on a weekly basis.
Everyone hears about the wisdom of doing this over-and-over again; no one ever does it until the shit hits the fan.
I’ve had a look at a lot of them; although you obviously want to do it in a clean environment, how the read-write sensors work at the end of the arms is to actually come in contact with the metal discs at rest, and starting to hover just a bit above them as they spin at high rpm due to atmospheric adhesion motion under them due to centrifugal effects of the rotating discs and how the air adheres to their surface as they spin.
The whole concept owes a lot to the Tesla bladeless “turbine”.
Except for an area very near the axis of rotation of the discs, centrifugal force on their surface would drive any contamination on their surface clean out to the edge as they whirl at high rpm as they are spun up, in the same way a centrifugal compressor turbine engine can sort out dust or sand contamination on the intake air a lot easier than a axial flow one can.
I’ve only taken apart one, the one that died on me a couple of months ago. (The heads actually ‘crashed’ for some reason you can see the ‘scratch’ trail they left in the right light… ugh) My more computer literate friends tell me that the largest “issue” with what Pat suggests is mostly software related, and in point that’s BASICLLY what the recovery folks do is remove the platters and install them into a “reader” that try’s to lift the files. In my case that’s not possible because the damage is actually physical and that pretty much ensured the WHOLE platter was corrupted.
Anyway, Scott:
We went through “Click-Computers” which has three offices:
SLC: 801-328-2542
Utah County: 801-373-2542
Weber/Davis County: 801-622-2542
They came and picked up the HD and dropped it off after the job. They do a preliminary survey first to see if the data is recoverable or if they need to take it into a clean room. I don’t recall the exact pricing but the survey was pretty in-expensive as I recall.
Randy
Two things interesting about the magnets in there: first, they are godawful powerful to the point where I can’t understand how they can keep them that close to the magnetic platters without having them erase them (I mean, you get one of these things within a foot or so of a TV screen and the picture goes distorted; you get part of your finger stuck between two of them and you are probably going to end up with a blood blister, as they will pinch the hell out of you.)
Second, they demagnatize at a very low temperature if heated.
Whatever the alloy they are made of of is none too thermally stable.