19 June 2006
Uh-Oh - My Hard Drive Might Be Dead
Although I have had computer problems before (see here (and here) and here (and here)), that was simply a matter of my computer overheating and such. However, this time it's different. As I was checking e-mail (and for a local Blockbuster), my computer froze - which, for a PC is normal (see new Apple ad (though there's a funny counter-clip). However, when I restarted it, it started giving me bad messages and clicking. It didn't seem good. So I took it into the place where I had taken it the previous two times and the guy at the counter guessed that the hard drive might be bad. Sooooooo that means ALL of my files are no longer - boo! BOO! Fortunately, I think that, for the most part, I can move on, even though there's a lot of pictures, especially, as well as some files that would have been good to have, but I will have to move on if that is the case. It wasn't even like I could have known to back up my computer, as I wasn't having any problems and then, without any warning, my computer goes kaput. Darn. OH well.
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8 comments:
You said, "It wasn't even like I could have known to back up my computer, as I wasn't having any problems" but that's exactly when you should be backing up your computer. When you aren't having any problems. You can get flash drives pretty cheaply these days--they're good for backing things up (if you don't lose them, as I sometimes do).
Good luck! Maybe they can retrieve the information.
I already have a flash drive. Fortunately, I already saved some things when I had dropped off my computer the first time, so I have some stuff saved, but certainly not so much.
Does it say the boot sector is bad? If so, there's a program you can run to restore the boot sector. It may work then for long enough for you to back things up either to CD-ROM or to an external HD (not so expensive these days, and you can buy a drive and enclosure separately if you want).
I had that with my WD 40 gig drive here at home.
Uh-oh my HD died on Friday. Could it be catching?
I use and recommend Norton Ghost. I Ghost my computer to a second HD every day. So when the C: drive died, I popped it out, replaced it, booted from the Ghost CD and restored the entire C: drive from the D: drive Ghost backup. 45 minutes total.
BTW, I tried listening to Larry Kaplan's lecture but it cut out after 22 minutes and he had not really said much up to that point.
Thanks for the effort though.
Thanbo,
That was not the case.
R' Tzvee,
Hmph, I've never heard of Norton Ghost - I'll have to check into that.
As far as Prof. Kaplan's lecture, I had noted on the posting where it is linked that my battery ran out - I know that it lasts only 22 minutes.
Don't give up on the hard drive. Connect it as a second drive on a working system and use a piece of software called "GetDataBack" available online for not a lot of money. It should allow you to offload all of the data from the malfunctioning drive. It's absolutely the best end-user level application for this type of issue. You can even download a demo which will allow you to see your data to test whether you'll be able to recover it before paying for the application. Give it a shot.
if the drive is clicking, there's little one can do about it, as it's not the data on the disk that is causing problems, but the actual mechanism.
As long as it'll spin, GetDataBack will, well, get... data... back.
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