Uh-Oh
I woke up this morning to a click-click noise coming from the computer room. Sometime during the night, the main hard drive had failed. And it seems to have failed in a big way. It's not just corrupted, it's dead. The motherboard can't see it at all. I'm afraid that I've lost years worth of work. All my old stuff is gone. Well, I guess the worst thing is all my Christmas music. All of the stuff I've recorded in the past couple of years is gone. It's gonna be a lean sharing season this year... :(
Don't toss that hard drive yet! Maybe one of those professional data recovery services can save some of that data. It will cost a few bucks, but it would be worth it if you have the kind of song collection I imagine you have. You made me happy by putting some great music up here that I enjoy, and the photos are always interesting. Hope you can save that data! And I'm going to back up my hard disk right now! Good luck!
ReplyDeleteDude, I don't have everything, but I've downloaded a lot of Xmas music from you over the years. I could stick it on a thumb drive & mail it to you or something.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear that Ernie. Seriously. It's happened to so many people that it always has me a bit paranoid. I tend to agree with John Coombs Jr. when he suggests not pitching it just yet. Heck, there are so many people who follow your blog, there may be a computer guru among us who can help.
ReplyDeleteI hope things turn out in a positive way for you Ernie. I really do.
All the best,
Bob
Echoing John Coombs, it would definitely be worth finding out of the drive can somehow be recovered. It may cost some money, but maybe you'll get lucky and can offer to trade a ton of Christmas mixes to whomever fixes it. :)
ReplyDeleteErnie, that's bad news - but I think most of your Christmas music that you posted here is still alive; also the set of Hi-Fi For Living.
ReplyDeleteI hope you'll be able to recover most of the stuff you lost on your hard drive, though, or it'll be a lot of hard and time-consuming work for you to to download your own posts...
I wish you the best of luck.
Oh, my God--I'm so sorry to hear.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely take John Coombs Jr.'s suggestion.
That's awful news! You're one of my favorite and most reliable sharing sites. Good luck on hopefully recovering the drive.
ReplyDeleteHey Ernie - Let's hope the glitch in your hard drive doesn't turn into the Grinch that steals your Christmas. Best of luck!
ReplyDeleteWell, I don't have any good news. Plugging the drive into a different PC doesn't yield any new results. It just sits there and clicks. So I'm convinced it's a hardware issue. I even tried cooling it in the fridge for hours, but it didn't perform anything different when it was cold. I need to get another HD and rebuild my PC, then I can concentrate on playing with this drive. Sending it in to a recovery company is prohibitively expensive, I'm afraid.
ReplyDeleteI've got all of my shares backed up to a few places, though I appreciate the offers. What I lost is stuff that I've worked on and never finished. Lots of records that I recorded for my own use, and never converted to MP3. There are a couple hundred of those at least. Plus all the stuff I'd recorded for this Christmas. Oh, well. At least I didn't loose any of my pictures. :)
Man, Ernie. I'm sorry to hear that. Let me know if I can do anything to help.
ReplyDeleteI figured it was the pending stuff that you'd lost. My MAGIX folder gets stuffed with projects in progress--unearthing them makes for an exciting adventure.
ReplyDeleteSomething (experience?) tells me you'll get a bunch of stuff ready by airtime, regardless.
Well, it was a lot of pending stuff, stuff I'd recorded last year and this year but not shared yet, but it's also a lot of stuff I ripped for my own personal listening. Stuff I couldn't share, or stuff I was collecting. I try to always record the whole LP even if I'm only sharing a single track. Both sides of the single even if I only do something now with the one side. Then I rarely go in and convert all the WAV files to MP3 and burn them off to DVD. The more I think about it, the more oddball stuff I remember was on there and that I've now lost. Of course, I've still got all the vinyl, but it's an ocean of time and effort.
ReplyDeleteThe start of the Holiday season is too close to do much. Plus I've got the big shuttle launch a week from today. Pulling anything together is going to be tough. You might see a lot of reruns at the blog this year. :(
Ernie,
ReplyDeleteJust went through a similar situation - lost 250 GB of music files and 75 GB of photos. Couldn't afford standard recovery company services (quoted somewhere between $1000-$2000).
A friend pointed me to GCR's SpinRite, and a few days later everything's recovered using a $90 software package. Can't guarantee it''ll work in your situation, but well worth checking out. If you're not comfortable using this yourself, maybe check with a local (but respectable) computer repair shop.
http://www.grc.com/
Whether this particular solution works for you or not, I know your pain, and I hope that some solution will ultimately help you recover these files.
Unfortunately, I don't think a software program is going to help me. I used something similar a couple of years ago to recover data from a broken array, and it worked well enough. However, my drive doesn't respond to the low level commands being sent from the motherboard via the BIOS. I'm thinking it might be the onboard controller gone bad, and I'm in the hunt for an identical drive so I can try swapping out the controller. I thought I had one, but it didn't have the same board numbers on it. I may have to rob Peter to pay Paul on this one. but I haven't given up all hope yet...
ReplyDeleteThanks for the advice, though.
(If anyone has access to a large stack of older drives, it's a Western Digital Caviar SE WD2000 model, 200G SATA. BUT, it's got both SATA power and regular old molex power connectors, which I think makes it a little unique. The info on the controller board says 2060-701336-003 REV A. I found a nearly identical one in my pile of stuff, but it was IDE, not SATA. Close, but no cigar...)
Ernie - Happy to provide some items from my collection so you can keep on sharing this season. If you are interested, I'll take a look around and see what might be suitable.
ReplyDeleteIf you do decide to try to recover the drive I am ready to donate. You have made my last Christmas so special and was looking forward to this one to be the same. Just let me know! We Love what you do out here !!
ReplyDeleteOh, Ernie,
ReplyDeleteSo sorry to hear this news. I had a similar problem a year or two ago. Same quotes for recovery. Nothing I could afford.
Your shares make me happy. Wish I had something to offer you to make you happy after this.
Please,don't apologize for re-runs! It's all a gift, and I appreciate it.
P.S. Ernie, I named my new kitten Ernie.
You named a poor kitten Ernie? Did you name the puppy Bert?
ReplyDeleteI need to make a post about the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street today...
Geez, Ernie, I'm sorry to hear that. I lost a hard drive at work a couple of years ago, and it was no fun to recover, even after paying a company to do it.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear about your loss. The private stuff is a small percentage but has the most value.
ReplyDeleteI can send you a dozen or so DVDs of music and comedy albums to kick start your collection. If you send your email address I can give you access to private blogs.
jimgweb@gmail.com
vintage standup comedy
Also, please don't be upset about the following suggestion, I had the same thing happen to me. A terabyte backup drive sells for about $140 and I run backups automatically every day - USB connection.
Also: aero data recovery has a flat fee $279, no charge if they can't recover data. I Used them they were excellent.If they can't fix your drive, they will forward it to http://www.datarecovery.com/ (if you choose to do so), they are higher priced but better tooled data recovery company.
Good Luck
Ernie,
ReplyDeleteI'm really sorry about your hard drive. I'm praying for a Christmas miracle for you! I know there's lots of people out there just like me that enjoyed everything you've done for the music of Christmas. I really look forward to what you have in store. Your shares have become such a big part of my holiday season and I thank you for that. I'll bet a lot of your supporters out here could send you some interesting holiday albums to post. Or maybe send you some donations towards a recovery effort. It is rather close to the start of the season.
Good luck and again many thanks for your shares!
JimG, thanks for the suggestions. I know they were meant for Ernie, yet they are solid comments for everyone.
ReplyDeleteThe selfish part of me however wants to see Ernie get his music recovered for all of us!
Well, I have a 500G external and a 1T external drive. I use both of them for backups pretty regularly. It's just a matter of I didn't back up everything. The stuff I lost that I'll miss the most are the original WAV files of all the stuff I've recorded, and plenty of Photoshop files that were being worked on. Every day I think of more stuff that's gone. I guess a sloppy backup is better than none at all, but still not ideal. At least I didn't loose any of the hundreds of thousands of pictures I've taken over the years. :)
ReplyDeleteYeah, if it'll help any, I've got a couple or three old Christmas albums too that I could rip and donate to the cause. Who doesn't like Christmas music, and I have no way of disseminating them on my sites.
ReplyDeleteOy, Ernie! I feel for you. I have been through 2 Mac disasters myself -- one a hard drive crash, and another when I accidentally put all my work files in the trash and emptied it.
ReplyDelete(Yes, I'm that dumb, though I caught my mistake before it was finished emptying -- we used one of those $100 recovery software packages to salvage some of it.)
We were eventually able to get our crashed hard drive up and running just long enough to copy much of it onto another drive. I hope someone can help you get yours moving long enough to do that, too.
Your holiday bounty would be much missed by many aficionados/as!
Diane Werts
"Christmas on Television" author
Everyone, think of all the enjoyment Ernie's brought you over the years.
ReplyDeleteThe Mexicali Brass and their cover. Tijuana Voices and their cover. Blue Barron and His Orchestra (there was a programme on Maryland Public Television tonight about his sister, apparently a noted Baltimore philanthropist) (I think that was one of Ernie's).
Now, isn't it worth kicking in $10 to try and save Ernie's day?
The Mistletoe Disco Band. Muzak. Bunny and Buddy Burden.
If a couple of dozen people stump up just $10, we'd have a start towards saving Xmas [and beyond, but that doesn't fit just at the moment].
The Snap-On Male Chorus. Avon. NORAD.
Without Ernie (Not Bert), we'd be asking Mamacita ¿dónde esté Charo?
Edith Gormezano. Connie Landers. The Harmonicats.
The Brute Force Steel Band of Antigua, B. W. I....
I'm willing to send money to Ernie to support this cause. You've done some great, great things for me the past couple of years. It's the least I could do.
ReplyDelete