A tale of me, my edit, and an old hard drive

This is a difficult post for me to write. I'm going to tell you something that might sound silly or bizarre to some of you, but please bear with me.

Back in mid-2002 (probably July) my hard drive on my second computer (which I got in May of 2001, I believe) crashed. While my computer had a CD burner, I wasn't in the regular habit of backing up my files (the latest back-up was in January), and I certainly didn't expect the drive to go that early.

Among the things that I lost were conversations with friends (I saved my chats to look back on them later), an archive that I'd made of an Enterprise fanfic Yahoo! Group that I'd belonged to, and a number of Sailor Moon fanfics, some of which I'd re-found since then, others of which I'd hadn't).

I kept the old drive - as I had various other drives that had crashed - in the hope of one day recovering the data.

I've been able to use various "crashed" drives as external drives, thanks to a SATA-to-USB hard drive enclosure that I'd gotten a few years ago. The drive in question, however, was an IDE drive. I finally went ahead and ordered an IDE-to-USB enclosure, and I got it yesterday.

First, I tried a drive which I wasn't sure what it was (it turned out to be my mom's drive from 2012). I recovered and backed up everything just fine.

Then I tried my drive from my second computer. I had no way of knowing if this drive would work or not. If it didn't, I'd simply accept the loss and move on.

However, it did work. The windows (one for each of the drive's two partitions) opened, and I was joyful to see my long-lost files before me.

Then I screwed it up.

I wasted time by trying to determine the total data size on each partition, which didn't matter, because I had 1 TV external drive ready for stuff to be copied onto. Then I decided to copy the secondary partition first while also trying to unhide all files on the primary partition (the old C drive), assuming there were any hidden files on there (I didn't want to miss anything). Big mistake. The files stopped copying after a while. I unplugged the USB cable and plugged it back in. The windows didn't re-open. I shut off the power to the enclosure and turned it back on. Nothing.

I managed to recover around 6 GB worth of lost files, but I haven't gotten the drive to start up again since then. I hadn't gotten around to copying my Sailor Moon directory, my Star Trek directory, or anything else. This has been very devastating to me, and I'm beating myself up over wasting time instead of immediately copying over what I was hoping to save. I had insomnia last night, and I feel angry at myself and apathetic about pretty much everything. I had the perfect chance to save what are possibly the only remaining copies of old fanfics and reintroduce them to their respective fandoms, and I blew it!

Is there ANY way to get this hard drive working again? Or at least retrieve the data off it? Are there companies that specialize in this sort of thing? I'll gladly pay to have this data retrieved.

This has taken an emotional toll on me. It's like suffering the same loss from fourteen years ago all over again, but there's less hope this time. I've been switching the enclosure on every so often, hoping the drive has one last use left in it (after all, I couldn't get it started fourteen years ago), but it's not looking good.

So what does this have to do with anything? I don't know what to do with myself. I have no interest in doing pretty much anything. So I'm cancelling my "Target: Sarah Connor" edit. I hadn't really thought about it beyond melding the Tech-Noir scene with the Priss concert, so I'm just ending it.

As for my Highlander edit, that's been on hold, because I haven't bought the other season sets with the required flashback footage. It's postponed indefinitely, because I'm behind on buying Sailor Moon Blu-rays. Those take priority.

I am going to start up a new Sailor Moon-related edit. The loss, near-regain, and second loss of one Sailor Moon fanfic in particular has been unbearable for me (I remember really liking it back in the day, even though it was just a vignette), so it seems fitting that I work through my grief by working on a Sailor Moon edit.

Mark Moore said:

so it seems fitting that I work through my grief

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I'm sorry for your loss.

I mean really, that's a bummer, but give me a break.

I'm in a similar boat, Mark, in that I have a "dead" drive.
The first crashed without warning and there are some files I would like.
Neither the tech shop, nor any of my tech friends were able to access it.
I hold onto it, hoping one day recovery methods will improve.

The one "solution" I read over and over was the "freezer technique."
I did not try that myself, nor do I recommend it.
If you try this, and again, I do not recommend you do so, control your humidity
and work in as cold an environment as possible.
Avoid heat at all costs.

Good luck.

Vultural said:

The one "solution" I read over and over was the "freezer technique."
I did not try that myself, nor do I recommend it.
If you try this, and again, I do not recommend you do so, control your humidity

Click to expand...

I froze an iphone once (in a sealed bag) and it did indeed fix the problem. Freezing scratched CDS/DVDs also works. It's a crazy world.

TVF - a little more sympathy perhaps? Not sure Mark needs a snarky comment. Emotions are often not smart, but they are real.
However, Mark, if it's been 14 YEARS - maybe you don't need the data? You haven't used it or missed it for so long, so maybe it's not such a loss?
However, if you really do need the data, you CAN recover it - but to get a company to do it costs an absolute bundle. Beofre contacting a data recovery company, I'd try a couple more times to read the data. You may suddenly get lucky - drives are temperamental.

dangermouse said:

However, Mark, if it's been 14 YEARS - maybe you don't need the data? You haven't used it or missed it for so long, so maybe it's not such a loss?

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I have missed it - at least some of it. That one specific Sailor Moon fic, six months' worth of conversations with a friend that seemingly dropped off the face of the Earth (I have no idea what happened to her), and perhaps some other things. I was looking forward to re-reading those things yesterday as I started copying files to my external drive, unaware that I had made the stupid mistake of grabbing random stuff instead of the in-retrospect-obvious method of cpoying the directories that mattered the most to me first.

dangermouse said:

However, if you really do need the data, you CAN recover it - but to get a company to do it costs an absolute bundle. Beofre contacting a data recovery company, I'd try a couple more times to read the data. You may suddenly get lucky - drives are temperamental.

Click to expand...

That's what I've been trying. No luck so far.

sucks, dude. been there.

it can cost $800 to several thousand bucks for a successful recuv. and the professionals can't recover anything from some drives.

but way more important: if things get truly hopeless, seek some help. hang in there, dude.

ssj said:

seek some help

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Yeah, I think that's gonna be the only thing that works in this case.

dangermouse said:

TVF - a little more sympathy perhaps? Not sure Mark needs a snarky comment. Emotions are often not smart, but they are real. 

Click to expand...

Sorry but no.  I'm not gonna go into details but I lost my first daughter 10 years ago.  That's real grief, not losing a bunch of fanfiction.

As you said, emotions are real, and I'm feeling a lot of them at this particular moment.

Mark, I have a few questions.

1. When you hook up the drive, are you still able to power it up (in case it comes with a power adapter) ?
2. Or is it USB Power Delivery (i.e. no adapter necessary, like USBs and smaller flash drives) ?
3. Do you work on Windows or Mac? Windows has Command Prompt, and OSX has Terminal. There are application specific commands that can verify if the operating system can at the very least see the disk. It's not because the OS won't mount it that it is effectively dead. If the OS can see it, you're already one step closer to possibly salvaging your data.
4. Let's start with that and go from there, see what answers you come up with.

TVs Frink said:

I'm not gonna go into details but I lost my first daughter 10 years ago.  That's real grief, not losing a bunch of fanfiction.
As you said, emotions are real, and I'm feeling a lot of them at this particular moment.

Click to expand...

You're absolutely right, TVF. Plus, I can't even begin to imagine what you must feel. For starters I don't have any children yet, so that's that (I'm turning 30 this month). But nevertheless, as they say, nature shouldn't work that way. Parents aren't supposed to bury their children, whatever the cause.

My deepest condolences and I hope you can find some measure of peace/calm in your beloved memories.

No worries and thank you.  10 years is a long time and usually I'm in a good place but every once in a while something like this will pop up and smack me in the forehead with a 2x4.

...

Now then, let us have no more discussion of that.  What I will say, on-topic, is that this is yet another reminder to everyone to back up your data and do it frequently.  Be it fanedits, project files, music, pictures of your dog, whatever...back it up.  Data storage is too cheap these days not to do so.  Buy a couple of inexpensive external HDs, and keep one in another location (I keep my second one at work).  Heck, you can even use flash drives to back stuff up, especially if you're talking small filesize items like word docs.

Cloud services like dropbox and google drive also make very good temporary backups if you can't afford more external harddrives.

A bit off-topic, sorry.
I have noticed price creep on external drives.
1 TB is now around $60 - £49 - €60.
About a third more than I used to pay.

I back up monthly, but the drives run constantly.

Other than the marquee names, any suggestions on more reasonable storefronts?

PCPartPicker.com is a great resource, it's meant to be used to make building a new PC easier but a pleasant effect of its functionality is it tells you when almost any computer parts or accessory products are on sale or have a deal going. It checks amazon, newegg, and dozens of other hardware sales websites and shows the lowest current price available. The page you'd want to check out is here: https://pcpartpicker.com/products/external-hard-drive/

You can choose what brand, size, rating, price, etc that you want to filter or sort by, and you get a handy list of results that apply to your selection. It's very well put together. Disclosure: I don't work for that site, they don't pay me, I just like it.

My enclosure comes with an external power adaptor. I can still power it on (a blue light comes on). It makes a low humming noise, but it does nothing, and Windows isn't detecting it (it doesn't show up under This PC in the menus, and trying to go to the drive letters won't work). It's not making the "drive working" sounds that I hear when I hook up another (functional) hard drive, but it still does more than when I hook up my first hard drive from my very first computer (absolutely nothing except the light blinking every so often).

I'm running Windows. What command should I use to see if my computer can detect the drive?

I currently back up my files daily on an external hard drive, every so often on a flash drive (for often-updating files or projects in progress), and around once per month on DVD-Rs.

Another route you may try is going Linux.
I suggest Puppy, a Slackware distro.
This is a very small OS - 100 MB, sans Open Office.
http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview and Getting Started.htm
Download the system then install on a flash drive using Yumi or Lili.
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/
http://www.linuxliveusb.com/
Either will reconfigure the flash to a multiboot tool.
If you have anything precious on that drive, be sure to copy elsewhere.
And don't worry, afterward you can still load the drive with movies, tunes, haiku, hummingbird photos.
Install the drive into your computer's USB and reboot your computer.
Hit F12 and reboot from USB.  Follow prompts - - -
Linux will call the main drive sda1 or sda2.
If - and this is a big if - the drive is visible, look around for your files.
If they are there try to copy to an external drive - or to flash if they are small.
I have used Puppy on many a "dead" computer.  There are other uses, too, you might realize.
Good luck, Mark.

The problem with that is seem to have only two USB slots on my computer. If I use one for the flash drive and one for the enclosure holding my "dead" drive, then I'll have no room to plug in my external 1 TB drive (which I'll need, because there are many gigs worth of stuff on my dead drive, probably not all of which I'll need, but it would be nice to copy as much stuff to the external drive (important files first, of course).

Can you use a usb hub to expand?

Maybe.

I just tried the drive again, turning the enclosure on every few seconds, hoping the drive will run. It's definitely making a noise, but it's not running. I have a feeling that I squandered the last use of this drive two days ago. The only thing that might indicate otherwise is the fact that I didn't even expect the drive to work then, since it had been declared crashed back in 2002, and I certainly didn't have any luck getting it to run back then.

I said no more comments about the grief thing, but that was a bit unfair to dangermouse as it gave him no chance to respond to what I said to him here.  I think it is only fair to let everyone know that he sent me a very nice PM that I really appreciated.