Backup your shit!!!
Seriously! Why you puttin' it off, huh? Yeah, I'm talkin' ta you!
OK, some background here. A few months back I purchased a brand spankin' new Seagate internal drive. 300gb of storage, to replace an older 150gb drive that was starting to show it's age. I decided to take this new found space to dig through all of my other five hard drives to consolidate and create one unified place for all data that I NEEDED to backup to DVD. Then, once I had everything moved to this new drive, I would begin the process of burning it all. Well, wouldn't you know it, my DVD-burner fizzled and died. So I ordered a new one. And my data lay waiting on this new hard drive.
Well, a few weeks ago, I got the DVD Burner and installed it. FINALLY! I could get everything onto a permanent format and be done with it. Well, I wasn't quick enough to the punch. Two days ago, I started to hear some grinding noises coming from my hard drive. Those noises got progressively louder, and quick! I knew something was wrong, so I tried right then to move all of the data over to another external hard drive. It slowly churned to try and begin the request. 10 minutes later (and many loud noises), my computer froze. I did a hard restart and sure enough, because one partition on this hard drive belonged to my OS, my computer wouldn't boot up. Nothing worked. It just kept clicking at me. And then to my horror, it's stopped doing that. Which told me "this drive ain't even alive anymore."
Thanks to Veronica Belmont, I checked out DriveSavers. This is where things got really scary. Alright, people. Two key things you should learn from my mistake here:
1. Just cause it's a new drive doesn't mean it won't fail. It's the stupid assumption I made, and I tell you, I'm paying the price for it. Of all the data that fizzled and died are all of my music projects from 2000-2005. Probably around 80 different music projects. Gone! My whole CD collection? My iTunes library? Gone! Who knows what pictures from the past year? Gone (Luckily, I had been a bit better at backing up my photo library so I have most of my pictures from before 2007) Other things that I have absolutely no idea anymore cause I thought nothing of moving them to this backup receptical only to watch them disappear? Gone.
2. Just cause it's technically possible to recover data after the fact doesn't mean you'll be able to afford the operation. I mean, I always heard that this stuff was expensive. But I never realized just HOW expensive it really is! So check this out. When you agree to have data recovered from a hard drive, you are asked what data is the most important to you. If they recover no data at all, that's $200 just for trying. That's your entrance fee whether you enjoyed the show or not. If they recover any data, your looking at a $900 entrance fee. The more data that they recover that you listed as "important to you" the higher the cost. So if I tell them that the most important pieces of data on my drive are the audio projects from 2000-2005, and they recover all of those files, I'm out the maximum of $2700.
Cuh-shing!!!!!!!! That's right. I knew this was pricey. I never imagined it was THAT pricey?! My god, it took my breath away. A company with mission-critical data on damaged drives might be able to justify that kind of money but I... Mr. lowly independent music producer with hardly enough money to buy a new hard drive for that matter, can not. Sorry to say.
So I find myself trying to figure out how much five years worth of work is worth to me. What WOULD I pay to recover the data (in the best case scenario, mind you, where the data is actually recoverable)... What am I willing to pay to even see if it's worth it?
To be clear, I have most of the actual final products of each audio project. But I am a pack rat. I like to know that I have all of my time and effort filed away to turn to ten years from now when I want to try to remix an oldie. Now I can not.
Learn from my mistake. If your thinking about backing up your shit, chances are it's cause you really need to. And if you really need to, then chances are you've already waited long enough. Get... it... done. NOW!
OK, some background here. A few months back I purchased a brand spankin' new Seagate internal drive. 300gb of storage, to replace an older 150gb drive that was starting to show it's age. I decided to take this new found space to dig through all of my other five hard drives to consolidate and create one unified place for all data that I NEEDED to backup to DVD. Then, once I had everything moved to this new drive, I would begin the process of burning it all. Well, wouldn't you know it, my DVD-burner fizzled and died. So I ordered a new one. And my data lay waiting on this new hard drive.
Well, a few weeks ago, I got the DVD Burner and installed it. FINALLY! I could get everything onto a permanent format and be done with it. Well, I wasn't quick enough to the punch. Two days ago, I started to hear some grinding noises coming from my hard drive. Those noises got progressively louder, and quick! I knew something was wrong, so I tried right then to move all of the data over to another external hard drive. It slowly churned to try and begin the request. 10 minutes later (and many loud noises), my computer froze. I did a hard restart and sure enough, because one partition on this hard drive belonged to my OS, my computer wouldn't boot up. Nothing worked. It just kept clicking at me. And then to my horror, it's stopped doing that. Which told me "this drive ain't even alive anymore."
Thanks to Veronica Belmont, I checked out DriveSavers. This is where things got really scary. Alright, people. Two key things you should learn from my mistake here:
1. Just cause it's a new drive doesn't mean it won't fail. It's the stupid assumption I made, and I tell you, I'm paying the price for it. Of all the data that fizzled and died are all of my music projects from 2000-2005. Probably around 80 different music projects. Gone! My whole CD collection? My iTunes library? Gone! Who knows what pictures from the past year? Gone (Luckily, I had been a bit better at backing up my photo library so I have most of my pictures from before 2007) Other things that I have absolutely no idea anymore cause I thought nothing of moving them to this backup receptical only to watch them disappear? Gone.
2. Just cause it's technically possible to recover data after the fact doesn't mean you'll be able to afford the operation. I mean, I always heard that this stuff was expensive. But I never realized just HOW expensive it really is! So check this out. When you agree to have data recovered from a hard drive, you are asked what data is the most important to you. If they recover no data at all, that's $200 just for trying. That's your entrance fee whether you enjoyed the show or not. If they recover any data, your looking at a $900 entrance fee. The more data that they recover that you listed as "important to you" the higher the cost. So if I tell them that the most important pieces of data on my drive are the audio projects from 2000-2005, and they recover all of those files, I'm out the maximum of $2700.
Cuh-shing!!!!!!!! That's right. I knew this was pricey. I never imagined it was THAT pricey?! My god, it took my breath away. A company with mission-critical data on damaged drives might be able to justify that kind of money but I... Mr. lowly independent music producer with hardly enough money to buy a new hard drive for that matter, can not. Sorry to say.
So I find myself trying to figure out how much five years worth of work is worth to me. What WOULD I pay to recover the data (in the best case scenario, mind you, where the data is actually recoverable)... What am I willing to pay to even see if it's worth it?
To be clear, I have most of the actual final products of each audio project. But I am a pack rat. I like to know that I have all of my time and effort filed away to turn to ten years from now when I want to try to remix an oldie. Now I can not.
Learn from my mistake. If your thinking about backing up your shit, chances are it's cause you really need to. And if you really need to, then chances are you've already waited long enough. Get... it... done. NOW!
posted by Jason Howell at 1:40 PM
7 Comments:
You might consider looking into a program called SpinRite (grc.com). It has worked pretty well for me and is CONSIDERABLY cheaper than $2700.
Great post. I need to get a 500G external hard drive to back up my 200G hard drive.
Oh man - I'm sorry dude. Point noted about backing up. Couple people have talked about Amazon S3 and Jungledisk. Perhaps online is a solution?
Ouch, thats just shit. i have all my data on 2 external drives and some dvd's ;. Backing up is the first step to world domination :D,anyway, maby try some donation of some sort, 'Save Rayguns Music?'
Saw your twitter that the drive mounted. I would run SpinRite on it ASAP. SpinRite has saved at least two drives of mine that I thought were toast. As long as there is not major physical damage to the platters, SpinRite should bring your data home. I am sure that Tom Merritt has access to a copy.
WooHoo I read on twitter that you got your drive working again;) congratulation's on thhat
Jason Check out Scott Moulton's Hard Drive recovery service at http://www.myharddrivedied.com/
I heard him interviewed on the Computer America talk radio show and it sounds like his prices for Hard Drive Data recovery are much cheaper than most of the other services. He has a flat rate to diagnose the drive and if data can be recovered his rates are about a quarter of what the other hard drive data recovery services charge simply based on the size of the drive not on the value of the data recovered.
I have no experience with this company but Craig Crossman and Carey Holzman of Computer America seemed to think highly of his service.
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