Backup Your Data

[blacklabel]

The hard drive in my laptop died without warning a couple of days ago. It's warrantied through Best Buy but they're wanting up to $1,600 to pull the data off the drive. Yeah, that's not going to happen. Looks like I'm going to need to brush up on how to recover data off of a dead drive.

I've got a server built specifically to back my stuff up to but got lazy and hadn't done it in a year. Lesson learned, don't risk losing thousands of family pictures, movies and music.

Anyone know of a decent service to help me out with pulling my stuff off of this drive?

[wARmachine15]

I has several laptops stolen from my house before. Had all my data double backed up on several external drives which were hidden in the house. Those were found by the thief and stolen too. I lost everything from tax records to over ten years of digital pics.

Lesson learned the hard way. Back up to an online service.

[bigshane]

The 10,000' overview of how I usually approach it.

If the laptop is my only computer, Buy a replacement HD and install it, reinstall windows and get a running system.
Buy external enclosure (USB) for the failed drive and install it in the enclosure.
See if it can be mounted. 9 out of 10 times it can, and I pull the data off.

If it is clicking or grinding and doesn't want to mount. I put it in the freezer overnight (in a ziploc bag with a packet of silica gel, so it doesn't frost and condensate when it thaws later).

Take the iceberg drive out, plug it in and try again.

If these are a no go, and the data is that important, then $1600 is not that unreasonable for true physical data recovery. To be done properly it often involves a clean-room environment, identical hardware (large inventory of drives/parts/controllers/firmwares for all the variations), and pulling the platters out surgery style.

ETA: Don't pay too much for the enclosure (sub $20 if you shop around). Here's one from Monoprice for about $10

[HoneyBadger]

The 10,000' overview of how I usually approach it.

If the laptop is my only computer, Buy a replacement HD and install it, reinstall windows and get a running system.
Buy external enclosure (USB) for the failed drive and install it in the enclosure.
See if it can be mounted. 9 out of 10 times it can, and I pull the data off.

If it is clicking or grinding and doesn't want to mount. I put it in the freezer overnight (in a ziploc bag with a packet of silica gel, so it doesn't frost and condensate when it thaws later).

Take the iceberg drive out, plug it in and try again.

If these are a no go, and the data is that important, then $1600 is not that unreasonable for true physical data recovery. To be done properly it often involves a clean-room environment, identical hardware (large inventory of drives/parts/controllers/firmwares for all the variations), and pulling the platters out surgery style.

ETA: Don't pay too much for the enclosure (sub $20 if you shop around). Here's one from Monoprice for about $10

+1 for monoprice for cables, connectors, chargers, and just about everything else!

[KestrelBike]

The 10,000' overview of how I usually approach it.

If the laptop is my only computer, Buy a replacement HD and install it, reinstall windows and get a running system.
Buy external enclosure (USB) for the failed drive and install it in the enclosure.
See if it can be mounted. 9 out of 10 times it can, and I pull the data off.

If it is clicking or grinding and doesn't want to mount. I put it in the freezer overnight (in a ziploc bag with a packet of silica gel, so it doesn't frost and condensate when it thaws later).

Take the iceberg drive out, plug it in and try again.

If these are a no go, and the data is that important, then $1600 is not that unreasonable for true physical data recovery. To be done properly it often involves a clean-room environment, identical hardware (large inventory of drives/parts/controllers/firmwares for all the variations), and pulling the platters out surgery style.

ETA: Don't pay too much for the enclosure (sub $20 if you shop around). Here's one from Monoprice for about $10

the freezer trick has saved my butt plenty of times.

[hatidua]

http://www.g-technology.com/

[asmo]

Oh.. and store all your data on a RAID-6 (or better) NAS.

[blacklabel]

I said fuck it and told them to ship it off. Clean data start. Yay.

[cstone]

If you don't want to run a network storage device, the next best thing is to set up a back up schedule for all of your data onto an external drive. Additionally, you could keep a working copy of your data on a USB thumb drive (16GB devices are pretty cheap at MicroCenter).

Here is a simple command line script you can cut and paste to do regular backup: xcopy "c:\Documents and Settings\UserName\My Documents\*.*" "e:\Work Backup\My Documents" /d /y /s
This is from a WinXP box and can easily be modified for a Win7 or Win8 box.

IMO, the best, free backup solutions are run from a live Linux CD. "DD" is a great tool for creating disk images. I keep disk images for every machine I have in the house. After the machine is set up and optimized to my liking, I take an image. If I make any major changes to the machine I will replace the image.

Find a back up scheme that works for you and be diligent in your chores. There are those who backup and those who haven't suffered a data loss yet. Learn from the pain of others.

Be safe.

[Firehaus]

I just had a drive recovered. $850, my guess is best buy uses a similar place and marks it up.

http://www.sectorlogics.com/