Crashed Hard Drive

[Brent Willis]

Lost it all when my Hard drive crashed. I was able to reload a lot of my music but could not get back some things I rec'd from Cafe Members. Someone sent me a conversation between Bill Monroe & Lester Flatt. I think Bill Monroe s voice was done by Ronnie McCoy,
Another item was a bus tape with Monroe. If anyone has a copy of these I would really appreciate a file copy.

[MikeEdgerton]

The only copy I can find that's still live is here.

[robert.najlis]

there are services that can retrieve lost data from a hard drive crash. It depends on the nature of the crash I suppose.. You could search google for something like 'hard drive data recovery' I am guessing

[Ivan Kelsall]

Hi Brent - I understand how you feel. I inadvertently 'erased' several really important files from my hard drive about 3 years ago. I bought a 32GB Flash Drive & copied every single item from my PC onto it. It took some time,but it was worth it. I up-date the important files once a week. It's well worth doing. It took me hours just to get some of the info. i needed to put some of my files back together,once was enough !!!.
The 'interview' is on YouTube - https://youtu.be/-GPRyNFkNH8 Bill Monroe's part is played by Glenn Duncan,Lester Flatt's voice is done by Charlie Vaughan & Ronnie McCoury is 'Lance Huskey'.- https://youtu.be/TT1w1N5fgKY - Glen Duncan,
Ivan

[MysTiK PiKn]

did the drive die or did windows lose it's mind

if windows boot drive, get another drive, and reinstall windoze on that.,
Then add the dead drive; then all your files on the disaster drive might be accessible - only it won't be C - it will be D,E,F, etc.

don't ask how I know this.


- there used to be a tool called spinrite that sometimes helped. Lots of others, some freebeez pack free trojans. lots of fun.

- really, it depends how it died, more info? might help. Is safe mode an option? Things have changed, kinda. It's been a while.

- maybe u use linux?

[Petrus]

Back up often ... word to the wise from harsh experience. I keep most of my music in MP3 format (maybe 100GB?) and also have a lot of pics (about 3,500 in my music-related images folder and maybe 10,000 self-taken photographs from my travels.) I've had several crashes which were not disastrous (the computer freezes occasionally for no discernible reason and I actually have to unplug it and remove the battery in order to get it to shut off, and sometimes have to do this two or three times before it reboots.)

Eventually I went out and got two 500GB My Passport external drives (about $60 each) and back up from my main 'puter at least once a week, or the same day if I add substantial new material on a given day, such as new photos or a music album. Get whatever size external drive you think you need and even more to allow room to grow. Note that I could just as easily have gotten a single 1TB drive, but went for two 500GB drives instead, so I have a redundant backup in case one of the drives dies. You may need more than this, but unless you have tons of video this seems to be a basic minimum that's fairly cheap to acquire.

If you do a lot of video work or are into filmmaking you will need a lot more; probably a RAID (redundant array) of multi-terabyte drives. If you just have documents, still photos and music, you can get by with just a terabyte or two.

[Douglas McMullin]

Not that it helps your current situation, but 1TB USB 3.0 external drives are down to $60 or less these days. It has never been cheaper to backup. Also, many newer routers will allow you to add a drive to them, so it is easy to share use if you have others in the household, or even to access your data remotely.

As posted by MysTiK PiKn, if you are dealing with a windows boot issue, your data may be intact. It would be really easy to test this if you have access to another computer.

[Larry S Sherman]

Hi Brent...I sent you a PM with a link.

Larry

[Rob Roy]

+1 to what Douglas says. Terabite drives are cheaper and faster now. Carbon Copy Cloner is a great program and their customer support is fantastic for the small price of the program. It'll make a bootable clone of your hard drive and after the initial backup, it only updates any files that are new or changed since the last backup. Peace of mind.

[Ivan Kelsall]

My whole PC is on one of these - a Sandisk 32GB Flash drive. Simply plug it into a spare USB port & 'copy & paste' all your hard drive info. onto it. After that up-date any info.that requires it,
Ivan

[Colin Lindsay]

My whole PC is on one of these

My PC might - might - fit on one of those since I rarely use it except for cheap photo editing or music editing; my Mac is a different matter with over 150 GB of a 500 GB disk used - it holds all my video, photos and music including recording software. I was considering an external drive the other day but in the UK they’re much more expensive… however the thought of burning over 30 DVDs of backup doesn’t appeal…
With regards to the OP’s problem - I’ve just rebuilt my PC yet again (I do it regularly and update components) and installed a new hard drive with the Operating Software on it; then as MysTIK PiKn says reattach the old drive as a secondary drive and use any of the very good value - and FREE - recovery programmes to recover the data. Recuva is excellent. Just remember not to format the drive when installing it!

[Petrus]

My whole PC is on one of these - a Sandisk 32GB Flash drive. Simply plug it into a spare USB port & 'copy & paste' all your hard drive info. onto it.

I've got a 32GB SD card in my smart phone and it's almost full with music already ... about 200 albums give or take!

[Ivan Kelsall]

Hi Colin - My flash drive might be more full,but i copied a whole boat load of stuff to CD's a while back. The only stuff i have on my PC / Flash Drive are files/folders & Docs. that i use everyday & 100's of 'shortcuts' to YouTube clips. Storing a 'shortcut' to a YT clip is less space consuming than the actual YT clip itself & they open up just as quickly. Unless there's a real need to keep photos. / music etc. on your PC,then off load it to a few CD-R's (or a Flash Drive) & free up some space & keep them 'safe'. CD-R's are pretty inexpensive these days as well. I have a Flash Drive dedicated to MP3's that has close to a 1000 pieces of music ( including whole symphonies) on it. My Hi-Fi Pre-amp has a USB port to take a FD,so it's a convenient way to store music for easy playback
SanDisk make a 128GB 'Cruzer Blade' Flash Drive costing £30 UK ($46.50 US) for anybody needing
one with more storage capacity,
Ivan

[Brent Willis]

Thankyou everyon! Your help is very much appreciated.