If you are not backed up, do it now!

[Harvestman]

This is a warning to any computer users on here who do not have their computer files backed up. Do it NOW!

Don't, as I did, think, "Oh, I'll do it later". Last week i suffered a total hard drive failure, and stupidly was not backed up. I didn't lose anything critical, but I did lose about 5 years of photographs (many with sentimental value), and have to re set up all my computer favourites, remember all those passwords that I never use, upload all my music all over again, re-establish all my internet favourites, and generally go through a lot of hassle and inconvenience.

All because I couldn't be bothered to take a few moments to back my files up. I was a numpty, and doubly so since this isn't the first time it has happened to me. I was lazy and I've paid for it.

Don't let the same thing happen to you. Get backed up now.


If you are one of the many sensible people who are backed up and therefore will never have this happen to you, please don't come on here just to tell us all how it will never happen to you. Good for you, you are dead right, but that isn't what this thread is about.


P.S. if anyone knows a service that can retrieve files from a dead hard drive (my local repair shop tried and failed) I'd be very interested.

 

[GGTBod]

Shhhhhhhhhh you can set it to do it automatically if you like on any time scale you like, i backup daily as i suffered a similar devastation back in 2005 and i lost 5 years of raw video data and photo's from attending music festivals with VIP backstage access all over europe, all i have left are the edited versions i loaded onto dailymotion as my youtube page got deleted for infringing youtube policy, still gutted about it now 9 years blimmin later

 

[GGTBod]

woah i just freaked myself out, i am new to win7 and just realised i am not setup to do it automatically like i used to be in XP pro, searching through the windows jargon now for the settings, i thought when i transfered all my settings via usb device during the installation of win7 that this setting would also be copied!!

 

[Shewie]

How dead is the hard drive?

 

[Harvestman]

How dead is the hard drive?

Dead enough that it wouldn't boot up for anything. No amount of persuasion by me or the computer repair place could get it to do more than recognise that there was a mouse and a keyboard to connected to it. The auto back up was therefore useless because if the machine won't boot up even to the point where you can start it in safe mode, you can't get at the auto back-ups. Hence the need to back up files on an external source.

I'm no computer tech. I'm a user. I want it to work and don't have a clue about even the simplest of technicals.

 

[GGTBod]

"It's not dead look it's still moving!" "It's just sleeping"

















































Monty Python anyone?

 

[GGTBod]

Auto backup used to work at shutdown, when you shutdown it automatically backed up to a non primary harddrive attached to the computer with a usb cable or another internal harddrive, still can't find it in win7 lol

 

[ADz-1983]

Some free advice...

Browser Backup: You can do this easily via thr browser itself. For example Firefox/Chrome have inbuilt password managers. You can automatically sync your browser/bookmarks etc to your Google account (Gmail address) or via Firefox Sync. You can also do a manual external backup of Firefox via MozBackup.

Files: There is a million and one ways to do this from simple services like Dropbox that will auto backup folder you choose to Dropbox account or by setting up your own remote or local machine as server and installing a OS like OwnCloud and syncing to that. There is obviously also option of just manually/automatically backing up to a USB drive attached to system or via setting up a RAID setup with harddrives so that all data is backup up automatically in RAID.

Dead enough that it wouldn't boot up for anything. No amount of persuasion by me or the computer repair place could get it to do more than recognise that there was a mouse and a keyboard to connected to it. The auto back up was therefore useless because if the machine won't boot up even to the point where you can start it in safe mode, you can't get at the auto back-ups. Hence the need to back up files on an external source.

I'm no computer tech. I'm a user. I want it to work and don't have a clue about even the simplest of technicals.

Whether it boots up to OS or not is irrelevant really. You can attach the drive to another computer and try and mount it that way and recover files, either via software installed on OS or from something like a boot disc.

 

[Shewie]

Whether it boots up to OS or not is irrelevant really. You can attach the drive to another computer and try and mount it that way and recover files, either via software installed on OS or from something like a boot disc.

What he said, I wouldn't give up hope on retrieving your files just yet. If you know someone half-techy ask them to connect your HDD to their computer and see if it's visible as another drive.

 

[cranmere]

If the disc will spin up then it's likely that at least some of the contents can be retrieved. What Shewie said. Or if you have another computer get a cheap external hard drive caddy (I can see them listed on Ebay for around £10), pop the disc into it, plug it in (you can nearly always do that via one of the ports on the working computer) and see if anything is visible. Otherwise there are places that can retrieve data for a fee.

 

[Harvestman]

Thank you folks. I was given the old drive back, so I can pass it to some people I know and see if they can get the pictures off.

 

[GGTBod]

If it is showing things connected to it but not booting you have a good chance of getting your stuff when it is hooked up to another pc as a slave especially if they run a freeware recovery program like TestDisk or Recuva both free to download and use non commercially

 

[THOaken]

You're quite right. This is why I have two 1 terabyte portable hard drives and I back my files up every week. It's good to get into the habit of backing up your files. I remember I lost a lot of old photos and I was devastated. That will never happen again.

 

[Macaroon]

Hell's bells Mike; you won't forget June 2014 in a hurry mate!

 

[Harvestman]

Hell's bells Mike; you won't forget June 2014 in a hurry mate!

Yeah, I got the car back, went out for the day, had a great day, and came home thinking "Right, now to upload my pictures from today" and the computer wouldn't start...

Ah well, no-one got hurt.

 

[slowworm]

I've recovered the data on several hard disks in my time. If it's just the Windows system files that are corrupted then, as has been said, get a caddy and plug in the disk and read your data off just like an external hard disk. (Or get someone to do it / help you).

I've also helped someone who's disk had failed so you couldn't read anything off via a caddy and I found a company that rebuild the drive and read off what data they could, cost several hundred pounds but most of it was recoverable.

 

[RE8ELD0G]

P.S. if anyone knows a service that can retrieve files from a dead hard drive (my local repair shop tried and failed) I'd be very interested.

Try a free software called Recuva.
you need to use the harddrive as an external on another computer and then use the software to search the drive for what type of files you want.

This is also great for getting back deleted items as well.

https://www.piriform.com/recuva

 

[ArkAngel]

yup you're never bothered about it until it happens.

It happened to me and I lost a load of data, now i have my laptop HDD, a portable 500GB that things are backed up to immediately then a 3TB mains powered one on my desk at home which is done weekly.

 

[horsevad]

This is a warning to any computer users on here who do not have their computer files backed up. Do it NOW!

Don't, as I did, think, "Oh, I'll do it later". Last week i suffered a total hard drive failure, and stupidly was not backed up. I didn't lose anything critical, but I did lose about 5 years of photographs (many with sentimental value), and have to re set up all my computer favourites, remember all those passwords that I never use, upload all my music all over again, re-establish all my internet favourites, and generally go through a lot of hassle and inconvenience.

There is a very good chance that most of the files can be recovered. Photos are actually the easiest files to recover, especially if they are stored in JPEG.

The procedure is:

Connect the drive to another computer. Do a dd to another HD. Do all you recovery work on the new HD. This way none of the original data can be damaged. This procedure is standard for all computer forensics operations.

No real computer specialist will do any kind of recovery work on the damaged HD. You ALWAYS copy the entire drive contents to another HD and do all your recovery work on this. The linux command dd is used to clone the contents of a HD - bit for bit.

For the actual recovery work you need "Photorec". Download from here: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec.

If the drive is to damaged for it to connect to another computer it is sometimes possible to replace the control circuit with a similar circuit from a (sacrificial) similar HD.

If all else fails - and you got the money to pay for their services - this company can perform miracles on dead harddrives: http://www.ibas.no/

(If you choose to send the HD to the norwegian specialists it is of VITAL impotance that no amateurs have tried to do recovery operations on the HD in question. This is one of the important reasons always to copy contents to another drive and do the recovery attempt on the new HD. )

//Kim Horsevad

 

[nurvware]

I'm a it support guy. I'm sure the shop tried to connect the HDD to another computer to try and simply copy the files off, this is always the first method. If the disk spins up but windows doesn't detect it or says the HDD needs to be formated before use the their are issues with the drives formatting or file allocation table or other. How important are the files? We use a company called cheadle data recovery, but you will be looking at £180-£250 to recover. The more you try to diy recover, the high the risk of total data loss. If your data is not worth that much then you have nothing to loose in following any advice on here or any internet guides.

Good luck, Scott.

Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk