320gb goes bye bye

[Stoly]

My seagate just died. 320gb worth of HD movies and DVDrips gone. I was just about to move all of it to a new 500gb drive.

Drive won't even turn on, no way to get back data.

 

[vsboxerboy]

backup?

 

[Stoly]

backup?

Sort of, I have all the original dvds and BDs, but damn it, it'll take me ages to rip it all again.

 

[vsboxerboy]

yeah, thats a huge PITA. With the price of drives now a days, you can backup 3 or 4 of those drives for about $100!

Drive failure is the inevitable when - not if - so be prepared. Even a simple on site backup won't suffice in case of fire, theft, or other unforeseen events. Movies are replaceable but family photos and important documents should be backed up and have a copy stored offsite just in case.

I'm sure you don't need that lecture and are just venting, so I figure I would ask if there were any signs before failure....any clicking, sluggishness, etc.

Also check for any damage to the pins or PCB because maybe you can replace that(???)

 

[Stoly]

Nope no previous sign of failure.

Its probably the pcb, unfortunately I don't have an identical HD to replace it.

Not the first time a HD dies on me with no previous warning. A few years back a 120gb died with my whole mp3 collection. I still keep it. hoping that one day I find a pcb to fix it.

 

[thebeephaha]

That is no fun man. I have my server to where most of my movies and such would be lost in a drive failure due to budget constraints but I have multiple copies of important stuff cause lets be honest, movies I can always get again.

 

[Decibel]

Sucks. I lost a TB a few months back. Good thing I had back ups of the important stuff.

Data is only as good as it's last backup.

 

[Syntax Error]

Unfortunately most people tend not to think about the merits of keeping backups until their only holder of precious data goes kaput.

 

[JRS]

Unfortunately most people tend not to think about the merits of keeping backups until their only holder of precious data goes kaput.

Yep! My sister-in-law just lost her hard drive, along with a lot of records on her divorce and child custody fight.

Storage is cheap these days - backup backup backup!

 

[Potatocodone]

You can easily ebay a PCB replacement board. I remember theres even a forum where people would trade PCB board.

 

[Martel-fs]

You can easily ebay a PCB replacement board. I remember theres even a forum where people would trade PCB board.

These are not simply interchangeable. Most drives these days store configuration info and parameters that are unique to the drive on the PCB.

 

[FrgMstr]

Two words: raid one

 

[PC_User]

Damn, that sucks. These posts scare me...

 

[Yakyb]

have you tried the last resort of the freezer trick?

 

[Stoly]

a few years back I was a fan of freezing faulty drives.

It did work more than once on clickety claky drives. But it never worked on drives that are "dead".

 

[thebeephaha]

I have had luck swapping PCBs on newer drives but only if they are from the same batch. Maybe you can see if there is something on ebay available.

 

[Phyltre]

My data always expands to the total amount of storage I have available. I never have adequate backups for that reason--if I had more drives around, I would need them for more data! And then I would need more for backups that would just become more data, ad infinitum!

 

[Martel-fs]

I have had luck swapping PCBs on newer drives but only if they are from the same batch. Maybe you can see if there is something on ebay available.

This will also highly depend on the model and manufacturer. Samsung? Sure, sometimes. Western Digital? Forget it, unless you're one-in-a-million lucky.