My External Hard Drive has "died" on me...

[Marquise]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 4:16am

and aside from the music i have uploaded to my iPod i have lost my treasured music library.

my library consisted of my own hard copies (which i've since donated to the public library) generous friends who have shared with me and music i've purchased and downloaded on the web.

i don't mind so much the current stuff but i had acquired so many out of print gems and now they are all gone...not to mention my treasured ella fitzgerald songbooks...

lesson learned: back up the library as data discs onto dvd-r's.

i was in the process of upgrading my hard drive to a terrabyte and was just going to transfer the contents and then do a back up, but as fate would have it, it wasn't meant to be...

i'm not stressing it out too much...it's material...sh*t happens, y'know?

yet and still... i'd give anything to be listening to ella right now.


Updated On: 2/24/10 at 04:16 AM

[tazber]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 7:29am

Marq, when I transferred all my data to an external the same thing happened (among many other weird and annoying glitches.

I'm sure everything is still there somewhere, you just need to check and make sure your computer is reading the right drive.

[LaurenB]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 7:50am

Yes, if you take the drive to a tech shop, they might be able to recover your files.

[StockardFan]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 8:06am

You can get the stuff back that you bought from i-tunes, but everything else you have to re-download. It's happened to me twice.

[best12bars]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 9:02am

I have all my music on an external terabyte drive, but I still have all the CDs saved in boxes. And my iTunes files (what few I have) have all been backed up to CDs and stored.

Call me old-school if you want, but that's why I will never go "all download" or "digital files only" with my music. I've seen way too many drives fail, over the years.

[ErikJ972]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 9:11am

Ugg that sucks. One of the drawbacks of the digital age. But it sounds like there is hope!!

[tazber]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 9:18am

I do the same thing besty. I always buy a hard copy and then import it. I keep all my cds in boxes.

I recently lost my external drive too, and everything was gone. Thank god I still have the back-ups, but now I have to import all the cds into itunes again which should take about 3-4 years.

[best12bars]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 9:31am

LOL

It took me about 2-3 months to do it the first time ... getting them all on the terabyte drive.

I would hate to do it again, but at least I would be able to (God forbid) if I had to.

Updated On: 2/24/10 at 09:31 AM

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 10:01am

Another in the old school club here. I much prefer to have the actual CD as opposed to only a digital copy.

But, I do routinely back up, so when I did lose my hard drive, I was able to recover the library (though I am sure it is nowhere as extensive as Besty's Taz or Marquise.

My computer is just about to die (video card failure) and I backed everything up so I can start over again on a new machine.

[orangeskittles]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 10:54am

That happened to me a year ago. I was between computers at the time and I lost almost everything. Years worth of picture backups, all my work from college, probably 80% of my music. The woman at Geek Squad told me that she'd never heard of a problem with my external hard drive brand before, so my case was probably one in a million. Then I burst into tears. It was quite a scene and she handled it well.

She did say there is a company I could send it out to for data recovery, but it can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars, and I'm not in a position to do that. Your case may not be as severe, so you should definitely check to see if anything can be salvaged. I was told it's easier (and cheaper) for data recovery on externals than computers because they don't have to sort through OS files.

[best12bars]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 11:06am

I recently found two bad DVD-Rs (out of ten) with old design files and photos on them. They were my backup while I changed computers.

I deleted the source files off the first drive, switched computers, and discovered my backup discs were corrupted later on when I went through my archives.

Sucks either way.

The drives can fail, discs can fail, and the backups can fail.

Welcome to modern technology!

[Marquise]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 11:11am

i still have the hard drive in my possession. i'm going to look intto trying to extract and salvaging whatever information is stored.

my extensive image and graphic collection is also gone.

i took the time out last year and printed and archived my hi-res natalie wood collection but the ones i kept on audrey hepburn and ann-margret are gone, gone, gone...

[best12bars]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 11:39am

What exactly is the problem, Marquise? Is the drive not spinning up at all? Or can you see the drive mounted on your computer, but there's "nothing in it" when you check the contents?

It might be salvageable either way. Maybe there's hope!

[Marquise]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 11:46am

the pc is not recognizing the hard drive when it's plugged in and when it's *does* "decide" to recognize it it does so not as a removable device but as a "local hard disk drive"...when i click on the icon it comes up empty. i also noticed the once steady green light to indicate the device was "on" now intermittently flashes....

[Marquise]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 11:50am

oh and when the drive is plugged in and i want to restart my laptop it impedes it from re-booting. it stays in perpetual "shutting down" mode i have to literally unplug the thing to get the laptop to properly shut down.

if it does shut down and it restarts with the drive still plug in it takes awhile to "fire up" and then it "freezes" the process, windows explorer then stalls and doesn't load properly until i unplug the sucker....then everything goes back to normal.

[best12bars]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 12:55pm

Have you tried mounting the drive on another computer? Perhaps a Mac this time? It might work.

Other than that, I would see if Geek Squad or someone (perhaps affordable) can rescue the data. I'm guessing your drive is failing, but maybe hasn't failed completely. And the data could still be salvageable.

Who knows? Depends on whether you think it's worth the trouble.

[Marquise]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 1:06pm

i'll give geek squad a try...it would be defintely worth the trouble. thanks for your advice.

[eatlasagna]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 1:47pm

damn this thread is making me paranoid about losing files on my external drive!!!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 2:02pm

One external drive is not enough. Any kind of disc can get corrupted and any kind of drive is just another mechanical piece that can fail.

Multiple backups are necessary, of your most important files.

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 2:24pm

The last few weeks I have been reconfiguring the various back-ups at home. I have considered on-line back up, but prabably not practical for 40G of pics and music.

[tazber]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 2:24pm

Also, make sure that within the itunes program you have the correct drive selected. When I get home I'll tell you where to find that area.

That was my problem. For some reason itunes was not recognizing the correct drive. All I had to do was switch it with a click and all was fine.

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 2:34pm

I just checked with Norton and I have 8G of on-line backup. That could probably handle personal documents and e-mail account.

[Craww]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 2:37pm

Well. I for one wouldn't judge you if you hit the sharing communities to rebuild.

[Marquise]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 2:51pm

i'm getting some really generous offers from many on here who are truly showing concern and i extend my heartfelt thanks because it really does mean a lot to me.

just got off the phone with my friend steve who only a couple of weeks ago let me borrow his very extensive doris day collection...we're talking every single recording she released during her tenure at columbia records. he's more than wiling to re-lend me the discs because he "feels my pain"...,lol

i know i won't be able to replace EVERYTHING but i'm in the process of replacing some things until i invest on another external which should be around the middle of next week.


Updated On: 2/24/10 at 02:51 PM

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 2/24/10 at 3:01pm

We had a Western Digital die here at the office. It was a redundant back up, but annoying!