ANOTHER hard disk failure - backup now!

jhob

jhob

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Some of you may recall that about 4 months ago my hard disk died, fortunately not totally fatally and I was able to recover all of my important files and photographs.

Well the replacement hard disk that I bought has now also died, this time terminally. Fortunately after my lucky escape first time round I got a lot more careful about backing up and, all things being well, I should not have lost anything important.

I have been backing up my photos to dvd after every shoot and sending them to my Dad for off-site storage. I also use carbonite to back up my 'my documents' folder where I store all my photos. So all being well I should be ok.

Let this be a warning to the rest of you, if you don't yet have a reliable backup process - get one now! If you don't backup then at some point you WILL get stung. I would never have thought that an almost brand new hard disk would die on me, or that 2 would go in 4 months, but it does happen. Hard disks are not a technology that can be relied on.

Still a right pain in the rear mind as I now have the joy of restoring my system which will inevitably eat up hideous amounts of time that I currently don't have.

And finally, that warning again:

BACK UP YOUR DATA!!
 
What the heck are you doing to your poor HDDs? I have been using PCs for about 12 years now and never had a HDD fail (though I have one that clicks and doesnt work sometimes). Maybe I am just lucky.

But yeah back-ups are always good in my book :D
 
I learnt that lesson a while ago too. :( Now I run five HDD's, one for the OS and programmes which is cloned so a reinstall shouldn't take too much time and four 320 GB disks, two copy the other two. Anything really important (not much) gets copied to DVD.
 
god knows why they keep dying on me, I do use them moderately intensely with all the photo editing and a lot of bittorrenting, all the same it's not like I'm running a web server or something - the disks there would get really hammered. And dead after only 4 months - that's just crazy. It was a head crash if anyone's interested, disk just keeps clicking and can't access anything.
 
A valid posting - just remember

There are two sorts of digital photographer

1) Those who back up thier images &

2) Those who wished they had backed up thier images :'(
 
I've had 4 HD failed on me.

3 Deskstars (or Deathstars)
1 Maxtor

I know the feeling, I keep my photos on a seperate HD from my Windows/Programs so it doesn't put under as much stress plus i back up to DVD for photos that are important.
 
well that's one maxtor and one samsung dead now. I think I will start putting my photos on an external drive, seems a sensible option as it will get hammered less and should last longer. Having the slower USB interface as opposed to fast SATA might be a bit of a pain though.
 
taxboy said:
A valid posting - just remember

There are two sorts of digital photographer

1) Those who back up thier images &

2) Those who wished they had backed up thier images :'(
Click to expand...

In exactly the same way there are two sorts of harddrives

1) A dead hard drive
2) One that's about to die
 
I do back up my work resonably regularly (2 internal HDDs, 1 external HD & DVDs for RAW files). Have you got a surge protector? I've had a Deskstar for about 6 years that's still going strong, a Maxtor for 4 and a Samsung for 2!
 
I'm having to touch a lot of wood here :D but I haven't had a drive fail in 15 years although I *do* back everything up. Usually, if I remember. :p

I wonder if the problem is brown-outs in your mains supply? We get the occasionally power outage here, and I've always used a UPS. It's surprising how often the thing beeps because there's been a slight glitch in the voltage. A UPS may also help to smooth any transients and make life easier for you pooter's power supply.

'Scuse me while I run the backup routine.... ;)
 
I've got a raid 0 setup with two 80GB Seagate for primary storage for pics & editing, backed up on two other interal HDD, 300 Seagate, 400 Spinpoint and they're backed up on my xbox with 320GB Seagate. Hopefuly i've coved myself!
 
I used to kill disks all the time, i've probably killed 5-6 over the years only once or twice with any actual dataloss though.

Eventually I stopped video editing :p I couldnt afford the scsi drives I really needed for transfering about 100's of gb's but the ide/sata drives couldnt take that much work at a fairly constant pace.
 
good idea on the surge protectors, I think I actually have one lying around unused that was here when we moved into the flat. I had intended to put it on the computer but never did. I will now.

I think you are probably onto something with suggesting external factors may be involved, 2 drives in 4 months is abnormal although there is the chance I could just have been very unfortunate.

I'm hoping this will have scared enough people who don't currently backup to do so, I hate for them to lose data when it is avoidable.

I'll let you all know how it goes with my carbonite reinstall too once I have the replacement drive back.
 
The build quality of hard drives falls in line with the price (as with everything else) as I've said often before, do not trust your important data to any kind of mechanical medium.
 
I really need to get on top of this, I back up *rarely*, and one day I'll pay for it :(.
 
That would also make sense - I have a small form factor pc although it doesn't appear to get that hot inside. Would leaving the sides off help with cooling at all?
 
Steep said:
The build quality of hard drives falls in line with the price (as with everything else) as I've said often before, do not trust your important data to any kind of mechanical medium.
Click to expand...

Yes Yes Yes to the above. I would never buy anything technical without reading up on it (user reviews, not the techno babble the guy in PC world will tell you off a spec sheet) and it having had a good exposure to the market (which usaully means a bit more pricey), as you've also got to remember cutting edge technology can sometimes turn out to be a squidgy donut that squirts jam in your face.

So if its a major piece of tech hardware and lets be honest if your hard drive goes its game over so this has to be #1 priority for extra cash.

And do some admin on them, run defrag now and again as you'll make its life easier retrieving files and prolong its life - love you hard drive :love:
 
Glad you havent lost anything, ive just finished building a system specifically for the task of backing up all my other computers, a nice 3.5tb raid array... im now concerned about that failing that the drives in all my other computers.. :S

Only drives ive ever had fail on me are the IBM Deathstars, bought 10, 8 for myself and 2 for systems I was building to sell, 6 of mine went within the first 12months, I pulled the other 2 out of my rigs and also replaced the drives out of the systems id sold.
 
In another 10 years, while we're saving stuff to a 10TB solid state card the size of a postage stamp, we'll all be wondering how on earth we coped with unreliable mechanical drives. :p

At least they're better than the Philips Compact Cassette recorder with the Dragon 32. :lol:
 
jhob - sorry about your woes but thanks for the reminder - I have spent a few hours today backing up my pics & docs instead of playing golf (frickin' English summer :bang:)
Paul :thumbs:
 
Jhob a little. Touch the hard drive if its warm to the touch it could do with cooling really. Hard drives tend to be crammed in nowadays with no airflow. I see it all the time at work, people losing their x years of memories/work, you open their case and 70% of the time the drives are crammed in often with a "backup" drive wedged in which has generated more heat and helped kill them. but they have never got round to backing up to the other drive anyway. My hard drives have 2 80mm fans cooling them, lowish powered as not to be screaming in volume.

This is my advice to all.
Cooling hard drives is often overlooked and is now probably as important as cooling the CPU in the long run, and remember hard drives are mechanical and can always fail without warning, back up to a permanent medium as well such as DVD-R.

If my English is poor I'm sorry I've not long woke up. (darn night shift)
 
I'm a bit stuck for cooling as my case is small. The HD has a bit of space below it down to the motherboard 4/5cm below and above it is the fdd and then cd-rom. The cpu has fans on it as does the graphics card.

Do you think leaving one side off the computer would help? And yes, the HD is normally warm to the touch.
 
My main HD has no fans but the 2 Data HD has a 80mm fan blowing onto it from the side...touch wood.
 
The (replaced under warranty) drive is now being shipped back to me. When it arrives I will be getting a low profile fan to get the drive properly cooled. I'm pleased there actually exist such low profile fans. That should get me covered for the time being anyway.

I'm going to need a whole new computer in the not too distant future so will get one in a bigger case and better cooling this time around.
 
jhob said:
Do you think leaving one side off the computer would help?
Click to expand...

No, cooling works best with the case closed and the correct amount of fans working. If you leave the side/s off it disrupts the airflow through the case sometime making fans worthless.

Your case should hopefully have a fan or a space for one at the bottom front, this should be the cool air input, the power supply fan extracts hot air out of the back, the airflow helps keep the whole pc cooler.
 
I've got a case with 8cm front fan and rear fans, a CPU intake fan (that blows air onto the CPU fan itself) plus the two fans in the PSU. I've learnt the hard way that heat is a killer for PCs.

So is turning them off and on a lot. Continued heating and cooling can "do for" a lot of PC components, but in the days of green power usage that's the norm. Bit of a quandary for me though.
 
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