Yesterday, my laptop’s removable hard drive failed!
I have no idea how or why this happened, but without any warning my laptop was suddenly denied access to the hard drive. I tried all the recommended methods of repairing this … but none of them worked.
This could have been a massive disaster, but luckily I’d done a backup before Christmas and I’d only lost about a month’s work … which made it somewhat less of a disaster!
However, I’m so long in the tooth that I dredged my memory and remembered that I could get access to the files on the hard drive by using command lines, and that once I had done that, I should be able to copy the missing files onto a new hard drive or USB memory stick. The only problem is that this is not the quickest method of copying files and it looks as if I have a couple of days of laborious work ahead of me.
I suppose that I could have avoided this by putting everything in my cloud memory, but every time that I’ve tried to do this, I’ve failed. I have now learned a very valuable lesson, and once I have salvaged what I can from this mess, I will try again, hopefully with greater success!
Thank you for sharing this experience. It is a reminder to us all just how fragile our seemingly secure computer memories are. I backup to a hard drive every few months, but even losing three or four months does not bear thinking about.
ReplyDeleteI don't use cloud backup either, but perhaps I will reconsider now. No idea how much it costs, but well worth it to avoid losing all that work and memories
regards
Paul
Thistlebarrow (Paul),
DeleteI regularly backup my files every month or so, but going away at Christmas, followed by a bout of the lurgy meant that I didn’t do it on schedule … and now I’m rueing the fact that I didn’t.
Unfortunately, I’ve lost an odd collection of files that I’d been working on recently. I am currently trying to recover the ‘lost’ files but I’m not holding out a great deal of hope that I’ll be successful.
I thought that I’d activated my cloud backup, but apparently I hadn’t. I have now!
All the best,
Bob
Oh no, Bob. Happened to me a few times over the years. Now everything but everything is backed up on the cloud. I honestly do nothing now without it on the cloud. Most highly recommended!!
ReplyDeleteSteve,
DeleteI thought that I had a viable disaster recovery plan in place … but apparently, it didn’t work. I’ve now made sure that my cloud backup is now working and I’ve got a file recovery program scanning my faulty hard drive in the hope that it’ll recover some - if not all - of the ‘lost’ files.
All the best,
Bob
Hi Bob
ReplyDeleteDid you try putting the hard drive into a sealed plastic bag, pop it in the fridge for 30 mins, and try it again, might work for long enough to transfer some files. Jim
Jim Duncan,
DeleteThanks for this suggestion. I’ve not tried that … but if my recovery program doesn’t work, I’ll give it a go!
All the best,
Bob
At least it's still salvageable. One of the trials and tribulations of the modern age.
ReplyDeleteMark Cordone,
DeleteI’ve managed to ‘save’ about 95% on the files on the faulty hard drive … but it’s the missing 5% that are the important ones!
All the best,
Bob
Awful news. It serves as a prompt for me to do my annual big back up (which I generally do at the New Year). So it doesn't help you much, but at least some good may come of your troubles since it will get me to take care of this precaution myself, which I've been putting off. The cloud is not for me (for many reasons). I back up on a physical USB drive.
ReplyDeleteEd M,
DeleteIf my problems prompt my regular blog readers to take steps to avoid this happening to them, then something good will come out of this.
All the best,
Bob
BOB,
ReplyDeleteI tend to store my Photos and Files on USB Sticks- that way if the computer crashes I'll be able to upload from the USB. Regards. KEV.
Kev Robertson (Kev),
DeleteI started using the hard drive that’s stopped working for exactly that reason, which is why its failure has been such a problem.
All the best,
Bob
Bad luck Bob. I dumped my external hard drive some years ago and now back all my files up to both Google and Microsoft cloud services. The MS OneDrive backup is pretty easy - just copy the files across manually to the OneDrive folders (you can automate this but I'd rather do the version management myself), similarly I just upload the files to Google Drive after review. It isn't the most secure as it doesn't do transaction logging so you can't roll back in the event of file corruption/ransomware attack, but you can pay MS and Google money to get those services.
ReplyDeleteMartin Rapier,
DeleteI thought that I’d set up my Microsoft cloud to act as a backup, but when I had this hard drive failure, I discovered that it had a copy of my folders .. but when I looked, they were all empty! (Have no idea how this happened, but it did!)
I intend to move over to using the cloud as my file main storage but retaining some files on my computer’s small internal drive plus some USB drives in the hope that I won’t suffer this sort of problem again.
All the best,
Bob