Physician - Heal Thyself

Well, it finally happened: I had a hard drive failure.

I've worked in IT for many years, and have helped folks deal with their own failed hardware many times. I frequently admonish them for not keeping adequate back up copies of their important files. It's always difficult for me to explain to folks that unless they can justify the thousands of dollars it costs to send the drive to a certified clean-room equipped lab, their data is gone. . .

Up to now I've avoided any of my own data loss by replacing a drive that starts to make noises that drives in good working order just don't make. In fact, this has never even been an issue on my home PCs. They've never started to make noise, and none ever have failed before now.

The irony? The drive that failed was my back up drive. There was no warning. It never made any sounds that I would interpret as a precursor of impending failure.

So what's the problem, you ask? It was only my back up drive - so all the original data is still on my main hard drive, right?

Yeah, if only . . .

My "back up drive" also happened to be the one place where I kept all of my digital photos!

I have no backup of them. . . After all, I back up things To that drive, not things already ON that drive.

Well, the drive is presently in the service department of a local computer retailer to see if any data can be recovered using non-invasive, software means. If that fails I stand to be out quite a few bucks. . .

Update. . .

The technician just called me about my hard drive. He said he was able to recover about 75 to 80 percent of my data! I'll let you know what that really means once I get my hands on the data.

Last Update . . .

Well, I know that some data was not recoverable, but I can not remember what is missing. I'm very happy with the results, and it only cost me $64.00!