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question about crashed HD's (internal and external)

Foute Man

Foute Man

Charter Member
Throughout the past 12 months several of my internal HD's crashed with a lot of CFS3 data lost. About two weeks ago the external HD (USB) I used to park all saved bits and pieces, sourcepictures, sourcefiles etc does not get recognized anymore by Windows. It's LED is lit, but I do not hear the disk anymore.

The reality is I've lost all the CFS3 data/project I worked on the last 7/8 years, including templates, 3D models, standalones, betaversions etc etc

Pat Pattle advised me to post a thread about this subject here, because more or less the same thing has happened to one of this forum's members. More than happy to recieve any suggestions that might lead to recovering some data...

My second request to all members of this forum I once sent betaversions of any project I work on (for testing or observation), could you please contact me, I would like to have a copy of those files...

groeten!!!!

Foute Man
 
Wow, that really sucks friend. I think it's usually possible to fetch the data from a bad drive. You'd have to find a computer repair place that can do this and pay them your hard earned money. I know these places exist here, not sure how common computer repair places are in your land. Good luck.
 
Ton,
I have most eveything you've posted online stored on CD over the years..
I don't have any special projects, What I have I am very willing to dig out and send to you if you need it..
My freind, I do understand..
I've lost alot over the years to computer problems..
You have my e-mail, I send an answer to your e-mail at Gmail also..
 
My electrical engineer son-in-law put his dying hard drive in the freezer, and got one more access out of it to transfer the data to a new drive. Google it, and you might find some instructions on how it works.
 
Thanks to all who replied

I think I'll try the tric with the frozen disks, have to do some reading googling for instructions and I have to buy myself a new USB HD.

ndicki you have a PM
Hobbit you have email

groeten

Ton
 
Worse case scenario, is to pull the platers (rotating disks) from the non-working drives and place them into another HD that does work. Hook it up and quickly transfer as much as you can from it, you may get some, all or nothing off of it. I've used the method to recover data in the past and it does work, all you have to lose is the good working drive as it is destroyed as well, so it's best to do that with an old blank back-up HD. Handle everything very carefully, even after you put the HD back together and are installing it.

Work in an area that is fairly clean, preferably in a room without carpet and ground yourself against static. I've had pretty amazing results with this and as a matter of fact just as an experiment, I've got one disc here that I use as a redundant back-up to my real back-up that is a 300 GB internal HD that died a year ago and had the surgery performed on it and it is still working a year later. This HD is just an experiment that I was doing just to see how long it would last. Let us know how it turns out for you.

CAD
 
Foute Man said:
Throughout the past 12 months several of my internal HD's crashed with a lot of CFS3 data lost.

Foute Man
Click to expand...

Can you remember the make of the drives? I've had awful troubles with Seagate and Maxtor (which are the same company.) Googling leads you to page after page of "Don't buy them" stories...
 
The internal HD's are indeed by Maxtor and Seagate (4 x 80Gb and 1 x 200 Gb), the usb disk is a Packard Bell

The newest one was the 200 Gb disk, I had it running for about 2 years or so, the 80Gb disks were a little older, but all the same type
 
hi fout about 10-12 months ago a nasty bug was released that hijacked your computer and made it a zombie.because M$ no longer supported online game play their quick cure was to shut off auto play.cfs3 has to have auto play active or nothing will happen.even with the unspeakable program installed.to cure it you had to go back to a restore date before you installed M$ quick cure.then never do another M$ upgrade or your rig won't run cfs3. the time frame you describe and the results coincide.i'd do that before i tore apart the comp.hope this is the problem not all your hd's.
 
Foute Man said:
The internal HD's are indeed by Maxtor and Seagate (4 x 80Gb and 1 x 200 Gb)
Click to expand...

Did I guess or did I guess.

At school they use Western Digitals - I've inherited a few when the computers are declared surplus, and despite all the wear and tear they get all day, every day, for years, they're still very reliable. I use them as not-quite-external backup drives, when I remember. They aren't really big enough any more - 20GB or so - for much else, but as big DVDs, they're brilliant!
 
All that I use are Western Digitals, I have the same opinion of Maxtor/Seagate of has been mentioned. Also it's a good idea to rotate your HD's out as they get older. When I was working and could afford it I bought a new HD every year and swapped it out with the oldest one in my tower. (I was running 2 internals.) So I was neve totally relying on a HD that was older than 2 years. The old ones I used as back-up drives for less than important stuff or when I built donated computers I'd use one then.

CAD
 
Hi Ton,

you have a PM.

the external drive, I had a similar thing happen, the drive was not recognised etc etc. anyway a mate suggested I take the drive out of its case and mount it into the computer as a second hard drive. this worked, it turned out to be the cables in the external case were fualty and once I plugged the drive directly into the system as an internal drive it was recognised again.

hope you get a lot of your files back one way or another.

regards Rob.

(Maxtor no good, hmm better back up my terrabyte drive, its 18 months old now, be just my luck it will spit the dummy)
 
There is a commercial package GetBackData that I have used to recover customer's data from crashed disks.

If there is some life in the disks, this program will search for data and recover it to another disk.

They have a demo version that will let you see if the data is recoverable. The demo version will not let you recover the data but you can see if it can read it.

There is two versions, one for NTFS and one for FAT file system disks.

If the data is there the program is fairly good, one of the drawbacks that I see is that you may get several copies of the same file, so you may have to do some file clean-up
 
The HD story continues

An update:

I took the USB HD out of it's case and connected the HD part to my PC and I have acces again to the data, including all my templates and (source) material

Sad news is the HD itself is by Seagate....:)

Thanks all for your feedback so far, became a little wiser last weeks

Keep you in touch about the internal HD's.

This weekend I'll have more time to check for missing files, those of you who were so kind to offer me copies of missing files, I'll contact you this weekend

groeten!!!!
 
Crashed HD's and data

After some trial and error I managed to access the crashed USB HD. Capt Winters suggested to get the disk out of it's case and connect it directly on my computer. I got it out and connected it with an usb hd adapter (so again as a external disk) to an Apple and copied the stuff to a new usb hd.

The good news is I have all my 3D stuff, templates, source material like ebooks and images back. I still miss the standalones I made for testing etc, because they are in various cfs3, eto and maw installs on (crashed) internal HD's (by Maxtor)

The bad news is my present PC is having some troubles (this is one of many systems I had through the pas 12 months). I'm fed up with having troubles, so now I'm saving some money to buy myself something new

Keep you in touch

Ton
 
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