Whispering sweet gigabytes into my ear
All seemed lost. I don't know why I even decided to try. But I woke up Saturday morning with a thirst to press my luck and see if for some strange reason I might be able to tap into my destroyed hard drive to salvage all of the important data that would have otherwise cost me $2700 to restore. I connected the drive to my Mac, booted up... nothing.
I restarted in Safe mode, nothing. I rebooted into Diskwarrior, it couldn't see the drive. Nothing. I booted off of my OS X install disk to try to run Disk Utility from there. Nothing!!!!!
The only reassuring thing was the fact that the drive was making clicking noises again. If you read my previous entry here, at one point the drive altogether stopped making any noises whatsoever, signaling defeat to my efforts to restore my lost audio projects on a brand new drive. But those noises that I was hearing this Saturday morning invigorated me to push ahead. And let me tell you, am I happy I did.
As I sit there, reading movie blogs on my work laptop, allowing the drive to click away on my desktop Mac for three hours, I realized after filling another cup of coffee that the drive wasn't clicking anymore. I looked up at the computer and sure enough, the drive had mounted! I mean, I couldn't access any files on it, but it freakin' mounted! More than it had done since the moment it crashed a few days prior. I'm not sure why, but by god I wasn't asking questions. I continued to try and repair the drive using Disk Utility. And finally, after another hour, the progress bar appeared, moved, and I was blessed with a "Repair Successful" message! Holy crap!
I rebooted into Safe mode, and immediately started dragging files off of the drive onto my other drives in order of importance. 25 gigs of audio projects? Saved. 7 gigs of photos? Saved. iTunes library and CD library? Saved. My Documents? Saved.
A mere gig away from the totally salvation of all important documents, the drive starts to make the noises again. Progress freezes. The drive is busted again.
I decided I'd accept the gift given to me... that I was able to nearly restore almost all of my files... But dammit, there was a gig left that I didn't get, and by god I wanted it! So I spent more time trying to gain access, and after another hour of effort, the drive decided to give me one last shot. It worked again!
So I then transferred the gig of files over, and I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that the second that final file transferred over, the drive started to make the noises again. It was done.
You know the overly dramatic scene in so many movies where the person who is about to die asks their confidant to come closer so as to hear the big secret whispered into their ear before they pass for good? Yeah, the drive was about to choke. And I was the confidant, given one last chance. The drive whispered my files (about 100gigs of files to be exact) onto the other random drives on my system... one last transfer, and then it died.
After a total of 7 hours, all data was recovered.
I can't even tell you how lucky I feel to be given this second chance. Most of this data is now backed up to DVD. I am also considering off site backup. Amazon's S3 service keeps coming up, so maybe I'll figure out a system to backup my current year's worth of audio projects off site on a regular basis. Then once January hits, take the previous year and backup to DVD. I don't know, still working on that.
I'm going to post something about all of the other data-recovery solutions that were recommended to me by far too many kind individuals who read my Tweets as well as my first blog post on this topic. Some interesting tidbits there, and nearly all of them rendered unneeded because of my sheer luck this weekend. Nonetheless, thanks for the kind words!
Oh yeah, have you done YOUR backup yet?
I restarted in Safe mode, nothing. I rebooted into Diskwarrior, it couldn't see the drive. Nothing. I booted off of my OS X install disk to try to run Disk Utility from there. Nothing!!!!!
The only reassuring thing was the fact that the drive was making clicking noises again. If you read my previous entry here, at one point the drive altogether stopped making any noises whatsoever, signaling defeat to my efforts to restore my lost audio projects on a brand new drive. But those noises that I was hearing this Saturday morning invigorated me to push ahead. And let me tell you, am I happy I did.
As I sit there, reading movie blogs on my work laptop, allowing the drive to click away on my desktop Mac for three hours, I realized after filling another cup of coffee that the drive wasn't clicking anymore. I looked up at the computer and sure enough, the drive had mounted! I mean, I couldn't access any files on it, but it freakin' mounted! More than it had done since the moment it crashed a few days prior. I'm not sure why, but by god I wasn't asking questions. I continued to try and repair the drive using Disk Utility. And finally, after another hour, the progress bar appeared, moved, and I was blessed with a "Repair Successful" message! Holy crap!
I rebooted into Safe mode, and immediately started dragging files off of the drive onto my other drives in order of importance. 25 gigs of audio projects? Saved. 7 gigs of photos? Saved. iTunes library and CD library? Saved. My Documents? Saved.
A mere gig away from the totally salvation of all important documents, the drive starts to make the noises again. Progress freezes. The drive is busted again.
I decided I'd accept the gift given to me... that I was able to nearly restore almost all of my files... But dammit, there was a gig left that I didn't get, and by god I wanted it! So I spent more time trying to gain access, and after another hour of effort, the drive decided to give me one last shot. It worked again!
So I then transferred the gig of files over, and I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that the second that final file transferred over, the drive started to make the noises again. It was done.
You know the overly dramatic scene in so many movies where the person who is about to die asks their confidant to come closer so as to hear the big secret whispered into their ear before they pass for good? Yeah, the drive was about to choke. And I was the confidant, given one last chance. The drive whispered my files (about 100gigs of files to be exact) onto the other random drives on my system... one last transfer, and then it died.
After a total of 7 hours, all data was recovered.
I can't even tell you how lucky I feel to be given this second chance. Most of this data is now backed up to DVD. I am also considering off site backup. Amazon's S3 service keeps coming up, so maybe I'll figure out a system to backup my current year's worth of audio projects off site on a regular basis. Then once January hits, take the previous year and backup to DVD. I don't know, still working on that.
I'm going to post something about all of the other data-recovery solutions that were recommended to me by far too many kind individuals who read my Tweets as well as my first blog post on this topic. Some interesting tidbits there, and nearly all of them rendered unneeded because of my sheer luck this weekend. Nonetheless, thanks for the kind words!
Oh yeah, have you done YOUR backup yet?
posted by Jason Howell at 11:23 AM
3 Comments:
I'm glad to hear that what once was lost has now been found. I am now running my nightly backup a little earlier than usual . . .
Geez. Good story. Backups are SO important. I have so many friends who have lost EVERYTHING they have every created because they have it all consolidated on one drive. Not a good idea.
With OSX it's super easy to create disk image backups. I love the fact that they have an imaging GUI built in to the OS.
Off-site backup is overkill, IMO. I would get a decent fireproof safebox and store your backup drive in there. $100 and you're good to go.
By the way - I came across your site looking for other music production blogs.
I just started one of my own, The Stereo Bus (http://thestereobus.com) that features a new music production tip a day. Check it out. Let me know if you'd like to exchange links.
Peace!
Dan
Jason... glad to hear that you recovered everything. Two things that could have helped you. 1) Put the drive in the freezer (or fridge) and if you can, run it from there. Heat kills drives and the drop in temperatures has been known to help. 2) I currently use the Mozy backup service which is only $4.95/mo for unlimited space is working great. I haven't had to restore it but the upload seems to be working. Also, get SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner and a second drive as large or larger than your current storage.
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