Anyone an expert at data recovery?

[Neil]

Hi everyone,

One of the disks from SWMBO's PC has just given up the ghost, and unfortunately it hasn't been backed up for a month or two. It isn't a life-or-death situation, but I would like to recover some of her data off it before stripping out the rare earth magnets and recycling the rest. I've had it in the freezer for a few hours this morning, after which it still didn't work so I went to the tried & trusted plan B technique of 'hit it wif an 'ammer' (hammer) (not literally, just a tap on the desk) - after this it started working and I got some data off it \/ . Unfortunately I was feeling cocky after my success, and didn't go straight to the most important stuff first :sign3: . Now its back in the freezer but I haven't had any joy on the last few attempts.

Does anyone have any other (sensible) ideas or advice?

Thanks,
Neil

<edit> maybe I should give up now - I've just noticed this is my post number 666 :roll:

 

[Charley]

The only methods I know are the ones you mentioned, dropping it flat on the desk or popping it in the freezer. The first method worked for me when mine died the other month.

It may be work a search on a computer forum such as http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/

 

[Neil]

Thanks, Charley.

Well, the freezer trick worked once, and once only - luckily I found that I had done a backup of most of SWMBO's stuff onto my network not long ago, so its not as serious as it could have been
Cheers,
Neil

 

[Steve Maskery]

Slight panic attack last night. I yanked the inspection lamp in my workshop and all the lights went out. Didn't blow the fuse- tripped the main RDS to the North Wing of the Maskery Mansion, which means the workshop and my office upstairs. Afterwards my PC just wouldn't boot. Goto to identifying the drives and then nothing. A permanent red light, which suggest the machine was doing something, but no progress to show for it.

I ended up switching off all the drives in the CMOS and adding them back one by one, and then all was well. PHEW! I had already separated out my data from my programs (although they are on the same disk) but it was still a scary few hours. Last backup was, well, lets see now, this year is 2005, so last year was 2004...

I must back up, I must back up, I must back up...

Cheers
Steve

 

[RogerS]

One of the best ways of backing up in my experience (especially if you have more than one PC) is to buy a NAS (network attached storage) device....costs now have probably droped circa £200 (OK. OK..less to soend on WW stuff ).

In essence it just sits there on your network like a big hard drive and using software like Genie backup, you very easily setup a backup regimen that works for you automatically and in the background.

If you are as paranoid as I am ( :lol: ) then you locate it away from your PCs. Mine is in a locked cupboard next to the workshop and on its own little UPS.

Works reasonably well with MACs as well.

 

[Neil]

I'm even more paranoid than you, Roger! For my work stuff, I mirror my data drive onto three other disks (one in the same PC, two in two of my other PCs. I just use Second Copy for this - highly recommended. Then I do a nightly tape backup on a cycle of daily, weekly, monthly & quarterly tapes (13 tapes required for the system IIRC). Then once a week or so, I archive the critical data to a DVD-R, which gets posted to head office in another country. Then the source code for my main project gets copied to the head office network!

Paranoid, moi? :lol:

I've had four disk failures in the last 6 years, so I'm well protected against that and I can be back up and running very quickly. Its a fire I fear the most, though. 8-[

Cheers,
Neil

 

[Terry Smart]

Not sure if this will help (not in this case of course but prevention being better than cure and all that) I use Ghost 9... it backs up my C Drive every morning (in a compressed form) then does an incremental back up every two hours. It backs it up to my F drive which is a physically different drive.
Being perhaps almost as paranoid as Roger - or is it cautious? - one of my next jobs is to have a removable hard disk installed so I can back it up to that. The plan is to remove this drive at relevant times so that should anything happen to the PC I'll still have the back up drive.
Perhaps I'll look into the NAS though, sounds very interesting.

 

[woodshavings]

one of my next jobs is to have a removable hard disk installed so I can back it up to that. The plan is to remove this drive at relevant times so that should anything happen to the PC I'll still have the back up drive.

Hi Terry,
I used to have my hard drive in a removable caddy but found that after a while, the caddy plug/socket became unreliable. I now have a networked second computer that backs up the main one.
John

 

[Charley]

You can never be paranoid when it comes to backups. Even UKW gets copied to the spare hard drive every night then transferred to a backup server in the US.

 

[RogerS]

Terry

The Christmas edition of PC Answers is carrying a 'How to Build a low cost NAS from any old PC'.

Roger

 

[sxlalan]

Taking paranoia 1 step further I use these people http://www.ibackup.com. My important data is backed up to them daily. It is quick and inisible to me as a user. I also run DVD/Tape backups but it is much easier (i.e. reliable) to have a system that runs in the background as I am apt to let the manual backups slide for a day or 3. Also, having an offsite backup is nice 1) in case of a fire etc at home and 2) as I can access the data from any PC via a web front end if needed.

Cheers

Alan