[PodcastMN] Can you help me rescue my files?

[Zee and Zed]

Hello everyone,

I want to say thanks again for all the replies to the email I sent below.
Overwhelmingly, I received over 30 replies, all of which were helpful.

Among the hard drive rescue suggestions for Windows/DOS, a bunch of people
suggested SpinRite (http://www.grc.com) to recover the files.  There were
some other suggestions but that was overwhelmingly the #1 suggested software
overall.  A few people mentioned they have had luck with it though it can be
a long tedious process.

As for the Mac, Data Rescue II (
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php) came highly suggested
with positive results as well.

In my situation (after living in denial), I concluded the issue was physical
damage to the drive, something software (in most cases) can not help with.
So after a bit of messing around, I gave in, plugged it into the Mac and the
drive mounted just fine.  Immediately I set to copying files from it only to
have the drive give out after about 5gb.  I was happy at this point, it was
all of our photos, something I thought I wouldn't recover.  Long boring
story short, I plugged it into the PC (where the DVD burner is) and was able
to copy over all of the files, about 5gb at a time before I'd start to hear
the click-click of the drive failing and receive an I/O error.  Ultimately,
with lot of patience, I was able to recover all of our files from the drive,
including the 180gb of music.

The most interesting suggestion - in retrospect, probably relevant to my
situation - was to freeze the drive, which a couple of people vouched for (
http://lifehacker.com/software/hard-drives/macgyver-tip--save-your-hard-drive-in-the-freezer-170257.php).
Had my drive not mounted I was ready to try this technique as a last ditch
effort.  Fortunately I didn't get to this point.

Out of curiosity I contacted a professional data recovery service.  Of
course they couldn't give me a cost estimate though they did give me a
ballpark figure of anywhere from $400 - $2000, probably leaning closer to
the $2000 side.  It is $100 just to look at the drive and give me an
estimate.  The cost does not include a new drive to store the recovered
data, I would have been responsible for finding one on my own or paying for
blank DVDs.  This is the company that Geek Squad sends all of it's data
recovery issues to (the name escapes me at the moment).

In the end, the lesson learned is (of course) backup your files to a
reliable removable media format constantly (e.g. DVD, they're cheap).  Best
case scenario, you have a back-up drive for your back-up drive (that's what
the data recovery guy suggested, at least).

Anyway, now on to dealing with Western Digital and seeing if I can get a
replacement drive (I plan to use for my already burned to DVD MP3s).  The
hard drive was not even a year old.

-Ross



On 9/23/07, Zee and Zed <zeeandzed at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello all, I apologize for the mass e-mail but right now I'm at the "I'll
> do anything" point.  Put short, I have a 250gb Western Digital external hard
> drive (Firewire/USB - it's always been connected via Firewire), it's been in
> use for just over a year now, about 200gb full.  It's broken and I need help
> recovering our files.  I'm mass emailing everyone because they are family
> photos, audio recordings, writings, websites I've developed, pictures sent
> by friends, resumes, etc.  Most of the pictures I have on CD but everything
> else is pretty much in limbo.  I don't care much if I can't get the music
> but I want to get everything else off the drive.  There was a lot of stuff
> that can never be re-created.
>
> Today I copied the contents of our iTunes library (about 160gb) from the
> internal drive on our machine (Windows XP, Pentium 4, 3.2ghz ) to the
> external drive.  A bit later I rebooted and then all hell broke loose. Okay,
> it wasn't all hell breaking loose you can imagine what happened next.  I got
> mad.
>
> Right now when you boot up it makes a clicking sound.  The drive isn't
> assigned a letter however I know the machine recognizes it; the "Safely
> Remove Hardware" icon in the system tray has listed it and you can remove it
> that way and power it off (it's powered off and on when the machine
> starts).  The files are nowhere to be seen, however.
>
> Does anyone know of a program to recover data?  Or a trick to making the
> damn drive work at least temporarily?  I'm assuming I'll have to toss the
> drive away, that's fine, I just want what's on it.  I have an older
> bubble-style Firewire equipped iMac G3 running the latest version of OS X (I
> think it's 10.4.10).  I was going to plug it into there but haven't done
> so yet on the odd chance it makes things worse.  I'm exercising caution...
>
> Again, I apologize for the group e-mail, hopefully you don't find it
> intrusive.  If you don't have any idea, don't worry about it.  I thought I'd
> take a chance and email everyone I know who might have an idea how to
> recover our files rather than spending countless hours going out of my mind
> trying to find something that works or bringing it in and paying $200
> (less/more?) for lackluster results I could have accomplished myself.  You'd
> think I would know, this has happened to me once before (a Maxtor external
> Firewire HD which prompted the purchase of this drive) however in that case
> I was able to rescue everything before it ultimately died.  I have a feeling
> it might be too late now...
>
> Thanks for any help you can offer.
>
> -Ross
>



-- 
Zee and Zed
website:   http://www.zeeandzed.com
podcast:  http://zeeandzed.libsyn.com/rss
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