External Hard Drive knocked - 2 years gone

foodpoison

foodpoison

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Just moved my PC screen slightly, and some tangled cabling caused my hard drive to slide carefully, gently and quietly off the desk - BANG.

The film I was watching stopped, and my computer crashed. I sorted my computer out and turned off the exhdd. When I turned it back on, it just beeped at me until I turned it off. Looking this up, it seems that these hard disks beep at you when something has failed. It's likely that it's completely destroyed, with the heads crashing into the disk or something and causing 'catastrophic failure'.

I don't have enough space on my internal hard drive to back up all the stuff on my external hard drive, so I was going to buy an internal 1tb hdd for backing up. I never got round to it.

2 or more years of photography, 2 years worth of university work (including some assignments I received firsts in - useful for a portfolio), music, documents, websites I'm building - everything gone.

I'm pretty sure it can't be fixed (unless I'm willing to pay a specialist the best part of a grand to attempt to fix it - money I just don't have).

Moral of the story? Just because it's digital, doesn't mean it's not meaningful - back it up :(
 
My advice, don't give up on it, there is many routes to exhaust with this sort of thing.
 
Exact same thing happened to my cousin. Had a huge music collection on an exhdd, dropped it, started beeping and nothing was readable. After some research I did I found he could get it recovered for £200-300 by a small local company otherwise as you say, ££££'s.
 
If none of the above work serch google for data recovery.
It no longer costs a grand and many places will quote and recover for a fixed price. Ring them and ask.

It may be a couple of hundred but you have to decide how muvh the data is worth.
 
PsiFox said:
If none of the above work serch google for data recovery.
It no longer costs a grand and many places will quote and recover for a fixed price. Ring them and ask.

It may be a couple of hundred but you have to decide how muvh the data is worth.
Click to expand...

It's not how much I value the data at, it's that I literally don't have any money to pay for any recovery over £100 :( it's pretty depressing being a student in the negatives sometimes :(

I will have a look failing fixing the hard drive. It's likely the heads have crashed so, not looking hopeful :(
 
foodpoison said:
It's likely the heads have crashed so, not looking hopeful :(
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not really, you cant tell that at the moment. could just be the controller in the enclosure has cracked.

ive dropped a few bare hard drives in the past and they survived. granted yours was spinning when it was dropped so yes the heads may have banged into the platters but unless there is a scraping/grinding noise id suggest the drive is perfectly servicable (or at least the data recoverable) when removed from the enclosure.
 
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+1 for removing it from the enclose before attempting the proffesional route.

If you have alot of data in the futre, 100% reccomend a NAS with a RAID. Pretty cheap these days to be honest ie. 1Tb NAS with a RAID back up for £150 ish.
 
neil_g said:
not really, you cant tell that at the moment. could just be the controller in the enclosure has cracked.

ive dropped a few bare hard drives in the past and they survived. granted yours was spinning when it was dropped so yes the heads may have banged into the platters but unless there is a scraping/grinding noise id suggest the drive is perfectly servicable (or at least the data recoverable) when removed from the enclosure.
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Is that so? I'm really not a computer buff, I know basics.

I read a quote from an explorer: Always prepare for the worst, in the knowledge it's not going to happen.

In this case I just assumed the worst had happened haha.

the888account said:
+1 for removing it from the enclose before attempting the proffesional route.

If you have alot of data in the futre, 100% reccomend a NAS with a RAID. Pretty cheap these days to be honest ie. 1Tb NAS with a RAID back up for £150 ish.
Click to expand...

My Dad uses a NAS system at home, 5tb in RAID 1. I think a small NAS would be a perfect backup to use, but at the moment I can literally not afford it. Gotta prioritise unfortunately. Welcome to real life I guess haha :lol:
 
A tiny little ray of sunshine on this dark period - I remember that I hadn't yet removed the photographs I took from the lake district from the memory card, so I still have them, which I'm really pleased about, as they're some of the best photos I've ever taken :)
 
foodpoison said:
My Dad uses a NAS system at home, 5tb in RAID 1. I think a small NAS would be a perfect backup to use, but at the moment I can literally not afford it. Gotta prioritise unfortunately. Welcome to real life I guess haha :lol:
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just stick to 2 external drives both with the copies of your files on, should do for most issues (other than fire, theft). cheaper too.

remember a NAS is still vunerable to the same issues such as hardware failure, file deletion and/or corruption. so even with a NAS keep a 2nd copy iof your data on another device.
 
Have PM'd you with the guy who recovered data from my completely crashed hard drive. Even the manufactures code said it was unrecoverable, he is amazing. he may be able to transfer onto another remote drive for you, well worth at least a phone call.

Realspeed
 
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After loosing all my files due to drive failure have invested in few 2tb drives...
one for photos and storage of apps I use, music etc, 2nd drive is in PC but used only as backup drive mainly for photos. Last drive is in external icybox and keep backup of photos on it as well...

So I have photos in 3 locations.
 
I was at a recording studio once and they had a hd fail with some recent work of a band on it, they almost had to record it all again but they managed to find some software, cant remember what its called, which pretty much got all of it back.

It had to be left running for about 48hours but it worked and saved a lot of time.
 
Tyler138 said:
I was at a recording studio once and they had a hd fail with some recent work of a band on it, they almost had to record it all again but they managed to find some software, cant remember what its called, which pretty much got all of it back.

It had to be left running for about 48hours but it worked and saved a lot of time.
Click to expand...

im surprised something like a recording studio didnt have a backup solution in place.
 
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