My world lays in ruins...damn hardware!!!

[The-Somberlain]

Well, today my hard disk passed away with the 'click of death'...It was my 'data' disk holding the map files. Everything is gone. Fortunately most of my setting notes (history, places, etc) are in 'My Documents' in the 'windows' disk. So not everything...But a lot of hard work and regions ready for my players to explore! I don't know how to feel yet...I went through my backups and I only have a few maps salvaged...I noticed that I miss one whole continent! I don't know...It seems I am back to zero as far as mapping of my setting goes...I try to think that this is OK, maybe I'll start from scratch and all my maps will be concise, style, scale, everything will be in place...But where to find the time?!?! I mean I have a day or two at most during a month to go through mapping and stuff. Hm...Anyway...Maybe if I throw a big catastrophe at my setting and move onward? To a new one? Or a changed one? Pfff...

Anyway, just wanted to share my thoughts and feelings...Backup guys. Every day, every thing! And I thought I had this under control...!!!

[Steel General]

In one word... CRAP!!!

[Robbie]

All is not yet lost! I have had this happen before too!

Seriously...I'm not joking, even though it may sound like I am.

Take the hard drive out and put it in a ziplock bag and get as much of the air out as you can. Take the bag of hard drive and put it in the freezer for a couple of days. I'm seriously not joking. This will cause the platters to shrink due to the cold and possibly shrink away from the read/write head long enough for you to fire it up and recover data on it if you work quickly.

If you think the DATA on the drive may be damaged...whatever computer you use to plug the drive into to get data off of it, I would SERIOUSLY recommend a program called GetDataBack, it works fantastically. Install that program on the computer BEFORE you plug in the hard drive from the freezer.

1. Freeze Hard Drive
2. Set up GetDataBack on other computer
3. Leave side panel off other computer
4. remove frozen drive, plug QUICKLY into other computer
5. try to read data and start copying important files QUICKLY
6. if drive is corrupted, start a GetDataBack scan quickly, and hope for the best.

I've saved a LOT of data from clickofdeath using this method.

[torstan]

That's the best, and wierdest, bit of computer advice I've ever heard. Wow.

The-Somberlain - thanks for the salutory warning. I'm off to back up my work now. I really hope that you are able to save some of that work. Losing all that data is a terrible thing.

[The-Somberlain]

Wow! That's surely a piece of original advise. Well, I am still checking my backups. See what else is missing...if nothing TOO important I might try the freezer thing. Else, I might pay some data recovery service...

[Robbie]

I just got done with a data recovery service. The total cost was 1,957 US$ for 160 gigs recovered. Thats a lot...be prepared for a chunk of change to be spent. Clean Room evaluation doesn't come cheap.

[ExMachina]

Yeesh that realllly sucks, personally I've never had to deal with catastrophic failures or data loss *knock on wood*. This inspires me to do some serious backing up though...

[drow]

backup your data.
don't bother with regularly, use software to do it automatically.
check your backups periodically, ensure that they're usable.
your work is valuable, an extra HD dedicated to backups is cheap.

[waldronate]

As far as backups go, I recommend keeping one as far away from your main machine as you can reasonably get.

At work we had a nice RAID-5 array on a machine and the power supply blew badly, taking out two of the three disks, making all of the contents unrecoverable without resorting to expensive data recovery services (which the bosses did not want to do - it was only the source code repository, after all).

I recommend at least an externally-powered USB drive that is plugged into its own baby UPS coupled with automatic backup software as drow pointed out. Better is keeping your automatic backups on a machine out on the network (NAS systems or a netbook with server software are relatively cheap these days), better still is making backups over the internet to another site if you have the bandwidth and storage. It's awful to realize after the fire/earthquake/flood/robbery that not only have you lost the physical things, but all of the non-physical things as well. Scan them family photos! Take pictures for insurance purposes! Do it today!

[Juggernaut1981]

Somberlain> I've heard of tricks like that, I've also heard similar tricks for wet mobile phones. My brother's method was to take it apart and leave it in the glove box of his car for about 6 hours in the sun.

Arcana> Did a similar trick on the computer drive that used to run the NMR machine at uni. Suddenly the NMR had a heartattack and [insert horrid sound here] from the computer. Tech guy opened the top, waved a hand around exploring for heat... picked up the relevant components, put them into a negatively pressured dessicator resting on dry-ice. Within about 3 or 4 hours, open everything up and restart process... NMR worked just fine...