Ah, yes.  It's that problem common to us all.  The drive will fail.  The only question is when.  I learned that in 1980 with our first computer.  It was the first day with a Unix system on a 8080 intel platform at a blazing fast 4 mHz.  While the tech was still making small talk with our pretty receptionist, the op.sys. drive crashed.  Back to the shop.  That lesson that we learned paid off in the late 1980's when our main CAD computer at work refused to start one morning.  We only lost the last 30 minutes of work I did the previous evening.  Thought I'd get a jump start on a new project, so I spent 30 minutes setting up files for the morning's work, but didn't back up:  all gone.

So, back up everything of value.  Back up what you don't want to re-type or re-develop.   End of the day:  back up to that second drive.

At home, now that drives are so cheap, we have an external drive that is backed-up-to often, or immediately if something is really important.  Our oldest son, the computer eng'r, runs twin drives with the second having a mirror copy of the first.

Dan, I have had good luck with PC Inspector File Recovery, http://www.pcinspector.de/Default.htm?language=1. You will have to slave the drive in another PC to do the recovery. I have been able to recover files from drives that are showing as Raw. The best thing about this software is it is FREE. Hope this helps.

Foster Brennen

North Texas Freemo

Been there, done that, have the T shirt. I bought my first external drive after that happened. I only power it up when backing up data.

At one time my thinking was, that happens to "other people" but I became one of the "other people" eventually.

External drives have really come down in price while capacity has increased a lot. No good reason not to have a external drive. Many people could get by with a Flash Drive. Flash Drives are increasing in size. I just picked up a 16gb flash drive for $22.00.

Lex

Ok work hat going on. I'm sorry for your loss, Dan; hardware's replaceable, some files are not.

1. back up early and oftern.

2. employ both geographical and methodological diversity when it comes to backups. Confused? Use different forms of media, and make sure it's not all in one location, especially for things that are NOT replaceable, such as family pictures.

3. All hard drives and flash drives will fail eventually.

4. We don't have any real data on the life of home burned CD's and DVDs, but multiple copies of your vital files in multiple places still represents a good option.

5. Online storage is fine, but there are concerns about whether the company that provides you with 2 free gb will be around in 10 years.

6. Don't discount the free backup software that comes with the OS; the latest versions of MS Windows and Mac OSX come with some good stuff.

No matter what option you choose, any backup is better than no backup.

Cheers.

You may be able to recover the data from a failed hard drive if it still runs with a program called Spinright from the Gipson Research Corp.. I have used it and works great. But the drive has to run.

As a service  tech I've resorted to swapping the HDD electronics card ( the one in the hard drive that is).  This  has saved the life of several clients in a pinch.  If the faillure is in the moving parts; read heads,voice coil,  motors, then that was the end of it or they  send the drive to some place that has a clean room who could replace the parts and recover the data.  

But if it was the card it would usually all come back to normal.   But this requires 2 identical drives and from the same manufacturer to work.  Once done they recover the data, low level format, and then format the drive for the O/S and re-install to make sure all is as it should.

On to the real issue, do you want the extras if they are not availlable. 

Marc Fournier, Quebec