Misery, misery, self-pity and data recovery

[paperdream]

This morning (which also happens to be my sweetie's 21st birthday! Happy birthday Dylan!) I turned my computer on... and it wouldn't start. Tried again. Same.

I traced the problem to my secondary drive - it doesn't boot the operating system, just holds all my data - programs, files, games, pictures, designs, everything (except the os and email). The harddrive is completely, totally bust. It makes a funny noise like a dog barking, and I have tried everything I can think of to get it to work. To no avail.

So, I have lost everything digital (that includes designs for cards etc. on current LMAOs...) and being the pathetic dork I am, I feel as if a pet has died...

*sigh*

If anyone has any tips on data recovery I would be very grateful. Especially since everywhere Ive looked seems to assume you can still at least *access* the drive...

~Erica
(feeling very sorry for herself)

[stephen]

There's a number of different ways that drives can fail, but one of them is 'stiction', where the read head has accumulated so much dust and cruft that, when you stop the drive spinning (by powering down the computer), it sticks to the platters so hard that they can't start spinning again.

The solution to that problem is -- and I kid thee not -- to wrap the drive in an antistatic bag, and put it into your freezer for an hour.  If stiction is in fact the problem you should be able to take the hard drive out of the freezer, hook it up, and recover all of the data.

You should, of course, have another hard drive on hand to transfer the data to, or a CDR and a generous helping of blank discs.  Move all the data off the drive, and then put it into your stack of drives that have died from this problem.  If you don't already have such a stack, you can start one now.  http://nervousness.org/forum/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[BreezyK]

Eek, paperdream! That sounds bad. Oh, I can only imagine how that'd feel. Sound like something mechanical, and unfortunately yur best bet is to probably take it in somewhere and see if they can fix it. Something similar happened to one of our external drives at work, that held our entire archive of past design. It made a funny noise, and basically died. They were able to open it up and get it running again. At the very least, they might be able to retrieve your data and save the important stuff to disk. (Though it'll cost $$$).

[paperdream]

Stephen that sounds completely ridiculous! You know what's even more ridiculous? I am prepared to try putting my harddrive in the freezer.

It'll have to be tomorrow now - it's 1am and I have to go to sleep and go to work in a few hours.

Thank you both for not telling me to get a grip on reality and stop being so melodramatic and self-centred. It is a crisis dammit!

PROMISE me it'll work tomorrow...

~Erica