PC Crash - lost it all
 

I'm always telling others to have backups and always be prepared for a pc crash. If only I had followed my own advice :mad:

Sorry to hear that. But you reminded me that I haven't backed up in quite a while.

*Cries for you*

Been there, done that. On my next pc I'm definitely buying two identical hard drives and setting up raid so the primary is cloned.

Good, maybe something good will come out of my pc's demise.

I can't even begin to describe what all I lost! Not only that but I have always relied on my account info to be remembered by my browser so, I have NO access to anything until I go through all the headaches of having account info reset.

Graphics, about 250 gigs. Old photos to be retouched, at least 200 gigs. Programs (registered) about 30 different programs I use for graphics, video editing, sound editing, and more.

Makes me want to throw up!

If it's important enough to you, there are places that will recover data.

So are you saying your HD crashed, rather than the PC ?

In that case, as Kevin states, if its imprtant enough, there are data recovery firms that can work wonders on so called crashed drives.

The hard drive is toast. It actually burnt the board that is visible on the underside of the hard drives case. After killing the power to the pc I could still detect the burnt electrical smell. I tried a usb hard drive adapter on two different lap tops. Neither of which could even detect the hard drive.

The pc was 9 years old. I should have known better that to trust that it would last much longer.

Well, I don't think that would stop them. They would hook up another controller board. But I guess it probably isn't inexpensive.

I'm taking it to town tomorrow to see if anything can be retrieved from it. If it's very expensive, I'll just take the loss. Spring is coming so maybe I'll just spend my time at the lake and not worry about it :)

Mmm...I don't know a lot about it, but if it's got burnt electronics it probably would need to be sent away somewhere. The lake idea is probably good.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go start that backup...

I upload my important photos ONLY to Drive, Dropbox etc... Videos upload to Youtube...

After doing a bunch of research online, I'm junking the possibility of any recovery. Live and learn. Thanks for the suggestions and ideas.

I had the same thing happen to me early last week, where my HD was basically just a humming hot plate inside the case. Giving off alot of heat, but no other action. And no longer even detected by the system.

Most everything though, I did have backed up. BUT, there was a major silver lining you should look into. It's a new day for drives.

Long story short, I took my PC tower to a computer repair shop owner friend of mine, and saw on his counter something I had been reading about but had forgotten - Solid State Hard Drives.

Sandisk 120GB SSHD - 60 bucks. I popped for it, had him install Windows XP Pro on it, and ain't looking back at all. (I will NEVER give up my XP Pro - they will have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.)

Quick review of the SSHD - wonderful. I have never seen a computer boot up this fast. It boots up completely and is ready to work, faster even than my monitors. But then after the bootup, it also operates greasy fast. Everything happens NOW with it... Everything runs blazingly fast, every program without exception. Even processor intensive ones like video editing and audio production, (Samplitude) run faster now.

Ya bring up Firefox? POP - it's there immediately with all tabs already loaded and ready to go in a eyeblink. How about Windows Media Player? BAM - there in less than a second with all your media already populated.

Because, the computer now doesn't have to "hunt" through the hard drive to find all the files it needs. I was able to back up my files and folders from the server I save everything on, in just a few minutes and we're talking ALOT of data.

There's no heat generated by this and it is immune to shock or vibration - so you don't even have to mount it, in your tower. (I did though, anyway) It's also of course, completely silent.

My only regret is I should have shopped online and got the bigger drive - they make these with capacity up to 2TB now - that's Terabytes.... I WILL do that, when my other HD takes a powder. It's a Western Digital 1TB drive that's only a couple of years old at this point. The one that locked up was about 8 years old.

So, take heart when your HD crashes - and yes eventually it will - and get yourself a SSHD to replace it. You'll be glad you did. Say goodbye to 7,200 RPM spinning platters - they're SO 20th Century...

I upgraded from windows xp to windows 7 long ago. If you guy haven't tried it you should.

I have 4 internal drives on my main pc and I have 2 externals, 1 is 5tb. I try to make image back ups to one of the internals every month and I have a program called Memeo that copies my files to my external.

When I upgrade I will also do the raid thing to have a couple drives mirrored. I wish there was a way to do it on an existing system but I believe it can only be done from the start when installing fresh.

Good luck OP. That is a nightmare. I have data going back to 1999. I would die if I lost all my data.

I tried using RAID mirroring a couple times in the past with bad results. One time I tried using the software option built in to XP (I think) and the second time I got a hardware controller. Both times the drives eventually got out of sync and couldn't be resynced for some reason. But I'm not saying it shouldn't be used, only that I had bad luck. But also, having that protects against a drive crash but not against accidental or malicious deleting of things, so it's good to have a back up as well. I think RAID mirroring is more of a thing to prevent downtime than a backup solution.

I stayed with XP for as long as I could (just like I held on to NT before that), but you have to give it up sometime. I mean, you're talking about something that's almost 15 years old, that's like an eternity in the computer world.

Use a service like BackBlaze for$5/month you can back up unlimited data to their services. It may take weeks for the initial data to upload but eventually once it gets fully synched it will keep a near real time backup of whatever you want. Photos, videos, documents...

I have too many memories to risk losing- I have them backed up to a network storage drive in my house and an off-site service like backblaze...and my digital photos- the things truly irreplaceable I copy onto any family's computers I work on. (Not to mention the copies on Picassa and Facebook.)

My backup PC is Win7. Hate it.

skin it to like like xp! http://winxp4life.tk

It ain't the appearance I dislike.

what do you dislike?

What are you using that you do like, and why do you hate 7?

8 is significantly better (under the hood) than 7, and 10 is better than both, in most respects.

I could not agree more!

I used XP for years. Windows 7 is better all around with more features, more security and much, much better memory management.

Windows 8.1 is pretty awesome and 10 sounds amazing though I haven't used 10 yet.

What is it you do not like about windows 7?

10 is coming without IE and is free for all 7 and 8 holders, because IE, and 7 and 8 really suck that much.

Most everything one might get in the registry, comes in through IE. And that's regardless of the Win version, up until 10.

I've never run any type of anti-virus, firewall, or any other such crap and have never been infected in any way.Same reason you love 7 and 8, and vB5? BLOAT. Bloat, and not any better or any more secure.

They've finally done away with IE and I say good riddance to that generational piece of crap. Only hoping the replacement isn't nearly as bad for security.

The rendering Engine that powers IE is still there, and hasn't gone anywhere. Its called Trident, and its again, still a underlying powerhouse of Windows. Sorry to burst your bubble.

What bloat is there in 7 or 8? You do realize that major security and performance enhancements are in both 7 and 8, and more are coming in 10, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_8

If you really knew me I don't think you'd say the things that you're saying. I stand by vB5 as a progression of the vBulletin software. I've always noted that its performance is not where anyone wants it, and I was always a major player in pushing it to be in a better place. I'm sure Paul, Lynne, or Joe will vouch for me on what I did during my time.

I hate to say it, but windows 7 and 8 are less bloated than xp.

If you were infected with a properly written piece of malware you would never know.

This is true. Hackers can do all kinds of nasty tricks and exploits. I've always used comodo and it tells me when a program tries to use the internet, what the program is and the ip address it's headed to.

Also alot of good AV's have trust ratings for files, for unknown files it finds you can tell it if you want it to be allowed or blocked. Comes in very handy.

Heres an example of what I mean by their tricks.. And that below is only a portion of their post on a subforum with over 600 other threads selling similar services.

http://www.refud.me/results/61867db7...68edb72aff.png

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2015/03/21.png

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2015/03/1.gif

First shop I took hard drive to told me the hard drive was to damaged to read. So, I took it to the only other place locally to get a second opinion. After checking the HD they told me the same thing. The first shop said there are techs that specialize in hard drive recovery but it would cost a pretty chunk of change. So, I'm writing this off as a lesson learned ... follow my own advice from now on!

Well that sucks, but at least you know now. If you wanted to bother you might try to find exactly the same model of drive (like on ebay or something) and switch the controller boards yourself, but I suppose if it's old that would be difficult.