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I'm not getting the data back from my hard drive. I had a couple of people look at it and tell me it was a hardware problem, so it would have to be reassembled to get the data off. The Geeks Squad tech indicated that it could be around $1200, give or take a couple hundred. I had convinced myself that it would be worth spending $1000. I figured that three hours of work per week for ten months at a going rate of ten dollars an hour would be well over $1000, so it would be worth it in the time it would take to replace my work. Then add the stuff I couldn't replace. But the final estimate from the Geek Squad was more like $1600 to $1800. That's over my limit.

I keep remembering things I've lost. The pictures from our trip to the Chicago Botanical Gardens with Mike and Lynda, which I never fixed up (I'm surprised those are gone, sine that was relatively recent). 75% of the pics from the airshow. Pics from the family reunion. Those were ones which I never fixed up. Everything between Thanksgiving and midsummer is gone too, but I had fixed up most of good ones and uploaded them to the internets, so I've got those. But to get them back on my computer, I have to download them back, and then probably have to rename them all, and many of their properties are gone. I can rescan the Polaroids and found negatives, but that was a lot of work. And I spent a lot of time making templates from the Polaroids.

I just realized I lost the files for the photos that I had printed for the show I was in. I still have the originals, but not the work I put into getting them ready for the show. Oh well. I probably won't print them again.

I've lost a whole lot of work in my Scotch info. Every tasting I do, I spent two or three hours writing tasting and distillery notes. Now I have to start over. The lists of what the groups have tasted already. I got lucky that I had recently sent my own tasting list to my phone! That would have been a huge loss. My dad has a lot of info that he can send back to me.

Music. I ripped a lot of CD's last year. Now I'll have to do those over again. And a few songs that I had bought online. I wonder what they were. One thing I did this past year was go through my music collection, song by song, and weed out the ones I didn't care for all that much. And then I went through the ones I kept and corrected all the file info. That was a lot of work!

I lost all my e-mails. Okay, I'm not really missing those. It's kindof a scrapbook, so I wanted to keep the stuff, but there's nothing I'm really missing. It's inconvenient to lose all my contacts, though. My internet favorites are gone too, but that's not a big deal.

People struggle with loss all the time - real loss - so I can't be too upset about this. The only thing is that I could have it all back for "only" a couple thousand dollars.

Date: 2012-10-06 08:01 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] ranunculus.livejournal.com
I'm really sorry to hear that.

Date: 2012-10-08 03:56 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] low-delta.livejournal.com
I've made peace with losing photos and the like. What's more difficult to deal with is the stuff I'm going to have to replace or remake.

Date: 2012-10-06 08:32 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] lonewolf2.livejournal.com
Sorry to hear that your hard drive has died. It's happened to me a couple of times.

You might care to take a look at these folk:
http://www.carbonite.com

They saved my sanity back in May when my whole PC crashed and blue screened. After having the PC rebuilt I was able to recover all of my saved files by downloading them back from Carbonite for free.

Date: 2012-10-08 03:55 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] low-delta.livejournal.com
Thanks. I've had a lot of suggestions. There are a couple of online hosts like that. I have two external hard drives that I just back everything up on. I just didn't! Now I'm going to do it every month. Does Carbonite have any sort of automatic backup?

Date: 2012-10-08 10:50 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] lonewolf2.livejournal.com
You can configure Carbonite's back-up schedule to match your requirements.
I have mine set to back-up continuously. Having access to a fast internet connection means that the backing-up happens in the background with little or no impact on processing speed for what I'm doing at the time. If you are dependent upon a dial-up connection you may want to set it to back-up once a day or "not during certain specified hours".
Carbonite have recently introduced a new feature whereby you can back-up your software programmes and operating system with a Mirror Image for an increased subscription. I haven't looked into this at the moment, but will consider it at my next renewal.

Date: 2012-10-06 08:47 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] pondhopper.livejournal.com
That really makes me sad...
:(
it's a lot of money...

Date: 2012-10-07 03:11 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] mellary4.livejournal.com
That sucks.
When you posted about this when it was first happening I took notice because I happened to be getting those memory notices too at the time.

Date: 2012-10-08 03:53 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] low-delta.livejournal.com
What kind of notice?

All I can suggest is backing everything up, if you have anything worth saving. You can get an external hard drive for $90.

Date: 2012-10-08 10:44 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] mellary4.livejournal.com
That is exactly what I did except for the backing up part because I just really don't have anything on here that I need to save. I tried putting a bunch of stuff on the external but it wasn't making a difference. Then I went in and set my memory level setting higher. I'm removing programs that I don't need and I started getting rid of some unnecessary things in my task manager processes area. I google it first to make sure I can get rid of it. I stopped getting the messages so far.

Date: 2012-10-08 05:17 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] low-delta.livejournal.com
Do you clear out your temporary internet files? IE has a setting that you can clear them out automatically (I always set mine on a week), but Firefox doesn't.

Date: 2012-10-08 06:26 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] mellary4.livejournal.com
I did that almost right away but I hadn't done it in a long time and I should make a habit of it.

Date: 2013-03-10 07:07 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] low-delta.livejournal.com
How about now? :-)

Have you been backing up? Or cleaning out your temporary internet files? Or just cleaning up your files? Or defragging?

Date: 2013-03-11 04:48 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] mellary4.livejournal.com
Yikes! I haven't done any of that lately! Not even defragging. We bought a used tower for me but haven't hooked it up. We don't know if it'll work but it only cost $10 so it won't be a huge loss if it doesn't.

Date: 2012-10-07 03:38 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] vocalista001.livejournal.com
This makes me sad.

It's so convenient having everything digital, but when the digital goes belly up it can be gone in a flash.

Date: 2012-10-07 02:09 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] likethebeer.livejournal.com
I'm sorry for your frustration.

Date: 2012-10-07 09:24 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] ruderod.livejournal.com
does the hard drive spin up? can you hear the motor and it spinning? Or does it not make any noise at all?
I think it should be like aroung $500.00 to get the data back, maybe 900 at the most.

if the hard drive fails to spin up, sometimes even amateurs can fix those. using simple clean room procedures, you can open the drive and manually get it spinning up. once spinning, you can get the data back off. But that is only one problem of many that can happen with hard drives. unsure what your problem is, can you post more info?

Date: 2012-10-08 03:52 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] low-delta.livejournal.com


One night, when I tried to boot up, I got a no-disc-available error. I shut ti down and tried again, and it worked. (I didn't understand how serious this error was, and didn't back up.) The next night, I got the error again, and never got it going again. It makes a kind of clicky sound, when you try to access it. I don't know much about it, but the clicking sounds to me like whatever it is that tries to spin the discs. Kind of a hollow metallic sound. ping, ping

One acquaintance tried freezing the drive, which didn't help.

The Geek Squad tech told me that due to the clicking noise it made, it's a hardware error, and would have to be sent out for disassembly. I sent it out, and the actual quote (with no work done, apparently), was $1600 to $1800.

Date: 2012-10-11 04:52 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] hinterland.livejournal.com
Do you mean your acquaintance actually put the hard drive in the freezer?

I am sorry you lost so many photos and music etc. Life goes on though and I am glad you can re-create much of what you lost.

Date: 2012-10-11 04:55 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] low-delta.livejournal.com
Yes, in the freezer. He said that worked for him once. Everything tightens up and the bearings spin better, or something of that nature.

Yeah, life goes on. But I'm still hoping a cheaper option manifests.

Date: 2012-10-10 03:35 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] specificocean.livejournal.com
The pictures might make it worth it. I MUST start doing extensive backups....

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