Jay3fer Posted October 5, 2012 Share Posted October 5, 2012 Our second internal hard drive (the one where we keep all our data! :-o) has been flaky for a while. It started disappearing from the drives list in My Computer, but usually a restart, with a token checking/tightening of the cables, would put it back in place. I doubt the cable thing actually did anything, because sometimes just a complete shutdown / poweroff would do the trick. Anyway, I ordered a new drive and it arrived last week and we have been SO busy with nonstop Jewish holidays so it's still sitting in the box. You can see where this is going, right...? :lol: (I am posting here rather than on a tech forum because they'll just hit me over the head for putting off switching, but hopefully other busy parents can relate a BIT...) So last night, Windows popped up a "The file or directory F:\$Secure is corrupt and unreadable. Please run chkdsk utility" and the same message for G:\, the virtual hdd on the same drive. And I resolved to change the drive the minute the holiday was over. The drive was still visible at that point and I was able to read/write files, albeit with performance issues. And then this morning, the drive is gone. Reboot, cable check, everything... and nothing. C:\ drive is fine, everything else is normal. F:\ and G:\ are simply vanished into the ether. Please don't hate me. When I say "busy with Jewish holidays," I don't mean one family meal here and there - I mean stretches of days at a time when the computer, lights, phone etc are off-limits, to the extent that we can't touch them. And before that, days of preparation, ie cooking and cleaning. It's barely possible to sit down and breathe at this time of year. Is there anything I can try besides paying exorbitant data-recovery type fees to get back some of the data on this drive???? The really critical stuff (family photos, school ebooks, printables etc) is backed up to Dropbox, but there is other stuff we could really, REALLY use, including some very old applications I can't get copies of anymore. (like my default image editor, a free beta version of a mainstream program) Help? :-(((((( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AK_Mom4 Posted October 5, 2012 Share Posted October 5, 2012 Since it has been flaky.... I wouldn't give up hope yet. Go through your routine about 10 more times - reseat cables (totally remove and reattach) and reboot. It's painful and tedious, but more than once I have gotten the going-bad hardware to give me one more dying gasp - just long enough to grab that data to a safe location. ETA - and if you've got a spare cable try using that one time. Maybe you are lucky and it's just the cable gone bad. Not likely, but worth a try. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jenn&charles Posted October 5, 2012 Share Posted October 5, 2012 Since it has been flaky.... I wouldn't give up hope yet. Go through your routine about 10 more times - reseat cables (totally remove and reattach) and reboot. It's painful and tedious, but more than once I have gotten the going-bad hardware to give me one more dying gasp - just long enough to grab that data to a safe location. ETA - and if you've got a spare cable try using that one time. Maybe you are lucky and it's just the cable gone bad. Not likely, but worth a try. :iagree: You might get lucky if you keep trying. Sorry you are having to deal with this. It stinks to lose a hard drive. Also - do you have another computer you can try it with? It might be worth a shot, if you do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spy Car Posted October 5, 2012 Share Posted October 5, 2012 Our second internal hard drive (the one where we keep all our data! :-o) has been flaky for a while. It started disappearing from the drives list in My Computer, but usually a restart, with a token checking/tightening of the cables, would put it back in place. I doubt the cable thing actually did anything, because sometimes just a complete shutdown / poweroff would do the trick. Anyway, I ordered a new drive and it arrived last week and we have been SO busy with nonstop Jewish holidays so it's still sitting in the box. You can see where this is going, right...? :lol: (I am posting here rather than on a tech forum because they'll just hit me over the head for putting off switching, but hopefully other busy parents can relate a BIT...) So last night, Windows popped up a "The file or directory F:\$Secure is corrupt and unreadable. Please run chkdsk utility" and the same message for G:\, the virtual hdd on the same drive. And I resolved to change the drive the minute the holiday was over. The drive was still visible at that point and I was able to read/write files, albeit with performance issues. And then this morning, the drive is gone. Reboot, cable check, everything... and nothing. C:\ drive is fine, everything else is normal. F:\ and G:\ are simply vanished into the ether. Please don't hate me. When I say "busy with Jewish holidays," I don't mean one family meal here and there - I mean stretches of days at a time when the computer, lights, phone etc are off-limits, to the extent that we can't touch them. And before that, days of preparation, ie cooking and cleaning. It's barely possible to sit down and breathe at this time of year. Is there anything I can try besides paying exorbitant data-recovery type fees to get back some of the data on this drive???? The really critical stuff (family photos, school ebooks, printables etc) is backed up to Dropbox, but there is other stuff we could really, REALLY use, including some very old applications I can't get copies of anymore. (like my default image editor, a free beta version of a mainstream program) Help? :-(((((( Tell me about the holidays. Anytime you can drive around Los Angeles without traffic you know the Jews are too busy to be dealing with hard-drives :tongue_smilie: Can you load the drive in anoter computer to see it it boots (and thereby isolating the problem?). If you can get it to boot you may want to run a directory repair on the drive. I'm a Mac guy so I don't know what the favorite utility is for Windows, but if you can back up your files ASAP. Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay3fer Posted October 5, 2012 Author Share Posted October 5, 2012 @bill/SpyCar - Thanks for the support about the holidays! It's not the current OS drive, thank goodness. It's actually the hdd from our LAST computer, xplanted into this computer, so it's kinda vintage. The good news to come out of all of this is that there were some other flakiness issues that had me almost convinced that the motherboard was dying. But the system is running lightning-fast and flaky-free with the sick hdd gone. Just want all my movies, music, etc back. (All "school"-related music was backed up on Dropbox, which btw, I highly recommend - you get a lot of space free, plus space bonuses when your friends click your links (like mine, above) and sign up! There's a web interface, but the PC and Ubuntu interfaces are utterly seamless, and glitch-free over the 2 years we've been using them. It's a tremendous way to share the same files on multiple computers.) My ds17 has a hdd carrier / converter usb thingy downstairs somewhere... just have to convince him to find it, perhaps by withholding the WiFi password. ;-) If he can dig it up, we may be able to try it with the laptop, which is running ubuntu, and may have more powerful disk tools. I'll also try switching the cables around, but probably not 'till the holiday is over, on Wednesday or Thursday. :-((( Keep the suggestions and encouragement coming...! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay3fer Posted October 7, 2012 Author Share Posted October 7, 2012 OMG, just wanted to update that it's working and I'm currently backing up whatever I can. There is always the chance of a shoddy cable connection; one of them does seem a little wiggly. :-( (in which case, we could have skipped the expense of a new hdd, but the new one was cheap, and much bigger...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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