EDIT: see post 12 for final update.

 

Recently, with absolutely no hint prior (that I picked up on, at least), my laptop's hard drive failed. Just happened two days ago. At 8 in the morning it was working fine. At noon, nothing. Just a laptop that couldn't boot and a hard drive making a sickening click sound. Took it to my college's tech support center (also where I work). No good. Took it to a professional. Their opinion? It has catastrophically, mechanically failed. The thing was just barely 3 years old, and I've always taken good care of it. My laptop has been dropped maybe twice since I've had it, both times it was a dog knocking off where I had set it. Neither of those occurrences were recent.

 

The only hope I have to recover the data is sending it in to a company that specializes in recovering data from hard drives. This will cost $700. 

 

The professional that I talked to told me that he had seen hard drives that had been run over by cars be recovered, so mine (having been decently taken care of) has a pretty good chance of being recoverable. But the possibility of failure still exists. Most, if not all, of the money will be refunded if data recovery is impossible.

 

I wouldn't even consider paying that much, but... All of my writings that I've done over the course of two and half years were on there. They are a diary of sorts. I thought I had them backed up, I did. But I've gone through every flash drive I own, and its not there. Thinking it's all gone makes me sick. I poured so much of who I was, of what I've felt into that. I had meant it to be something I would keep for years to come. There's some other data on there that I still want as well, but it pales in comparison.

 

I can pay the price, but it's just so much. I feel short of breath just thinking about it. Any thoughts on what I should do? 

If you feel like that your diary is dearly important to you,(Trust me, I had the same situation before) I believe you should pay the price.

If those diary entries are truly important, and you REALLY need/want them, then you should. I will pray that it can be fixed!

(And also, I know it will be okay! Having faith is better than just having luck. If, I mean, When, it gets fixed, print off all the Entries that you possibly can, and store them in a folder or a scrap book, anything!)

 

I have no experience, but I have heard situations like this many times on here, and the highest advice I can give is this: PRINT. PRINT. PRINT. Or write entries in the future on paper, then if possible, scan it onto your computer.

 

I have faith in you, lad!

 

 

Rock on!

I was in your EXACT situation a few months ago. Computer was working fine one afternoon....then, suddenly, POOF! Without any warning at all, just gave up the ghost.  I took it to an IT company, who told me that my motherboard was gone, and that it would cost 60 bucks for them to create my hardrive into a portable one. (Take it out of the computer, so that I can use it elsewhere) Which made me relieved, because I had pretty much lost everything within that brisk 3 seconds. Family/friend Pictures from years ago, all the originals of my Digital art, as well as art I was working on, documents, expensive programs, you name it...For me, paying such a price was worth it, due to how much all of that was worth to me.... Didn't work out (I don't think the IT was experienced enough, to be honest) But I still keep the hardrive in my room, just in case another opportunity comes up to save it...

 

Long story short: pay the money.  

Ouch....we've all been there at some point. Sorry to hear that happened.

 

Best thing I can recommend you to do from now on is get yourself an external hard-drive and back-up your files regularly. Depending on how much data you have, these days a 2TB drive can cost anything between $100-200 but it holds a lot of data and is more than enough for most people including myself. (That is unless you have heaps of data then you might need something with more capacity and that means more expenditure...but that aside).

 

That way if your laptop fails again in future (hopefully not), but IF it does and you have an extra copy of your data somewhere; you should be fine letting go of an old laptop and using that $700 on something else more worthwhile (perhaps a new laptop?) rather than repairing an old laptop that has its one foot in the grave.

If you feel like that your diary is dearly important to you,(Trust me, I had the same situation before) I believe you should pay the price.

 

If those diary entries are truly important, and you REALLY need/want them, then you should. I will pray that it can be fixed!(And also, I know it will be okay! Having faith is better than just having luck. If, I mean, When, it gets fixed, print off all the Entries that you possibly can, and store them in a folder or a scrap book, anything!) :)I have no experience, but I have heard situations like this many times on here, and the highest advice I can give is this: PRINT. PRINT. PRINT. Or write entries in the future on paper, then if possible, scan it onto your computer.I have faith in you, lad! :)Rock on!

 

I was in your EXACT situation a few months ago. Computer was working fine one afternoon....then, suddenly, POOF! Without any warning at all, just gave up the ghost.  I took it to an IT company, who told me that my motherboard was gone, and that it would cost 60 bucks for them to create my hardrive into a portable one. (Take it out of the computer, so that I can use it elsewhere) Which made me relieved, because I had pretty much lost everything within that brisk 3 seconds. Family/friend Pictures from years ago, all the originals of my Digital art, as well as art I was working on, documents, expensive programs, you name it...For me, paying such a price was worth it, due to how much all of that was worth to me.... Didn't work out (I don't think the IT was experienced enough, to be honest) But I still keep the hardrive in my room, just in case another opportunity comes up to save it...

 

Long story short: pay the money.  

Thanks guys. Right now I'm leaning towards paying the money. They said they'll give me the broken drive back if I decide not to, but I'm afraid that just letting it sit might make it less likely to be recoverable (don't know if that's something that can actually happen, but...). 

 

I'm trying to remain hopeful about this, but honestly it has already reached nightmare level. The last option I have is basically the ultimate desperation choice. If this fails, it's all over. If the discs have been damaged (which is a possibility whenever a failed hard drive makes clicking sounds) it's all over. It sounds like there's a very good chance this will work, but with how everything's gone so far it's hard to find hope...

 

 

Ouch....we've all been there at some point. Sorry to hear that happened.

 

Best thing I can recommend you to do from now on is get yourself an external hard-drive and back-up your files regularly. Depending on how much data you have, these days a 2TB drive can cost anything between $100-200 but it holds a lot of data and is more than enough for most people including myself. (That is unless you have heaps of data then you might need something with more capacity and that means more expenditure...but that aside).

 

That way if your laptop fails again in future (hopefully not), but IF it does and you have an extra copy of your data somewhere; you should be fine letting go of an old laptop and using that $700 on something else more worthwhile (perhaps a new laptop?) rather than repairing an old laptop that has its one foot in the grave.

Oh, I'm already on top of that. The day I took the laptop in to the professional, I also bought a 3TB external hard drive. It was on sale, so it cost $100. It's enough space for both my brother and I to store backups on it. I'm also going to have a jump drive where I save important documents (like the writings I talked about in the opening). 

Data recovery aside, it's only about $100 for them to install a new hard drive in my laptop. So I'll just do that for now. If I do try to have them rescue my data, then a new laptop won't be in the cards for awhile. But now that I'm going to be paranoid about this stuff for the rest of my life, I won't have to worry about this situation from happening again.

if those entries are dearly beloved (no pun intended)to you then you should pay the price i mean i certainly would...

Something similar happened to me a few years ago, and I didn't pay it, but I did have my most important project on an external device (although it wasn't updated, so I did lose part of it).

 

 

It depends on how important those things are to you, everyone here is saying that you should pay it, but we can't really help, we don't know if you want to spend that money on other things, how hard it is for you to earn it, if you can really aford it with no problem, nor do we know if those files are really that important, like, seriously, if you're not going to use them anymore, it might be better to leave them behind if it's too much of a problem.

 

To make it short: it's completely up to you, but 700$ may be quite a lot (I'm not from there, so I don't know how much you get paid and that sort of stuff, but 700€ (my coin) is ceirtanly an awful lot). If what we say to you may help, I honestly don't think I would pay it.

Something similar happened to me a few years ago, and I didn't pay it, but I did have my most important project on an external device (although it wasn't updated, so I did lose part of it).

 

 

It depends on how important those things are to you, everyone here is saying that you should pay it, but we can't really help, we don't know if you want to spend that money on other things, how hard it is for you to earn it, if you can really aford it with no problem, nor do we know if those files are really that important, like, seriously, if you're not going to use them anymore, it might be better to leave them behind if it's too much of a problem.

 

To make it short: it's completely up to you, but 700$ may be quite a lot (I'm not from there, so I don't know how much you get paid and that sort of stuff, but 700€ (my coin) is ceirtanly an awful lot). If what we say to you may help, I honestly don't think I would pay it.

Your currency is a bit stronger, so 700€ ends up being more than $700, but it is still a very large amount. Could buy a decent laptop with that much money.

 

I thought I was in the same situation as you, having an older version on an external device. But I searched through every single jump drive we own, and its not there. I would have just accepted the lost data if I at least had some version of it, but nope. 

 

Honestly, I don't really know if these files are worth the price. I mean, I never thought I would have to put a price tag on them. I do have enough to pay right now. Since my job is part time, it will be four paychecks (one every two weeks), before I've regained all the money.

 

.... *sigh* I definitely need to think about it more. I know that know one can truly give me a definitive answer on what I should do, but I thought hearing other people's inputs would be helpful nonetheless. I feel like such an idiot, I know very well that I should've backed up my files, but I just didn't. Now, either way, I'll pay the price.

Your currency is a bit stronger, so 700€ ends up being more than $700, but it is still a very large amount. Could buy a decent laptop with that much money.

 

I thought I was in the same situation as you, having an older version on an external device. But I searched through every single jump drive we own, and its not there. I would have just accepted the lost data if I at least had some version of it, but nope. 

 

Honestly, I don't really know if these files are worth the price. I mean, I never thought I would have to put a price tag on them. I do have enough to pay right now. Since my job is part time, it will be four paychecks (one every two weeks), before I've regained all the money.

 

.... *sigh* I definitely need to think about it more. I know that know one can truly give me a definitive answer on what I should do, but I thought hearing other people's inputs would be helpful nonetheless. I feel like such an idiot, I know very well that I should've backed up my files, but I just didn't. Now, either way, I'll pay the price.

Don't say that! You didn't know it was going to happen, actually, when it happened to me, I wasn't expecting it, it was on an external device because some days before it I had to move the project to another computer momentaneously.

 

Anyway, I think that if it's really that important, you might as well pay it, you've got the money, and it does seem like this is the thing where you most want to spend it on.

Don't say that! You didn't know it was going to happen, actually, when it happened to me, I wasn't expecting it, it was on an external device because some days before it I had to move the project to another computer momentaneously.

 

Anyway, I think that if it's really that important, you might as well pay it, you've got the money, and it does seem like this is the thing where you most want to spend it on.

Thanks.  

 

They called me back today, and my laptop has been fixed (I'll be picking it up tomorrow). I told them to go ahead and send in the broken hard drive to see if the data could be recovered, after the technician I was talking assured me that the possibilities of success were very good. At this point, it was either regret the data loss, or regret the money spent. In the long run, I think the loss of my files would have cause much more regret than the loss of the money. At least this happened at a time when I had a lot of disposable income, a few years before or from now and I probably wouldn't have been able to afford it.

 

Thanks to everyone whose responded. While I'm still pretty upset that this happened, and that I didn't have back ups of the files that are so important, I feel better about it. I'll keep you all posted on what happens. I'll know in about a week if they data recovery was successful or not.

Sorry for double post, but I did promise to keep you all updated.

 

It took a lot longer than anticipated, but tonight we've finally been able to close up this issue.

 

Ultimately, they were not able to recover my data, and I will be getting refunded the money. The initial examination of the platters (the actual discs of the hard drive) seemed optimistic, but the company's original attempts to create an image of the drive (basically copy all the data from it) were not working. I don't know the specifics, but they then ordered parts that they were going to use to try a different way to read the platters.

 

Again, I've no idea of the specifics of this process, but from what I can guess they either ordered a hard drive that was the same model and simply switched out the platters (this sounds like it would work, but I'm not sure if there is something about the way hard drives are programmed/operates that would prevent this) or they attempted to use parts to repair my specific hard drive.

 

Whatever it was they tried to do, it failed. They then decided to do a more close inspection of the platters, and found that they had been scratched on the undersides (which is why the original examination had seemed so optimistic). Due to the scratches, and the failure of what they've tried, it is has been concluded that the data is not salvageable.

 

It's a bit unclear whether their final attempt to save my data made the scratches on the platters worse, but it's a moot point considering that they are very certain that at least some of the scratches have been present since I sent it in, and that I am getting a full refund.

 

In the end, this was a true worst case scenario. A hard drive failure on a device that is not very old, with no obvious symptoms before the failure, and no possibility of recovering the data. Luckily most of what was on the hard drive was either also on a flash drive, replaceable, or not important. Unfortunately, my writing collection is gone. And while I do have some of it saved in various documents on flash drives, the bulk of why I wanted it back is now gone.

 

I'll survive, it was all sentimental value (thus, nothing of supreme importance, in the grand scheme of things), and while I'll certainly regret it for a time (long or short, I cannot say...), at least I tried, and have undoubtedly learned my lesson.

Oh no, I'm so sorry to hear about your lost data . . . : (  I'd been very hopeful that they could get it back for you.  I understand how you feel concerning the data loss; we put a part of ourselves into our writing, and years later it can be such a joy to reflect back on past writing.  This just reminds me how crucial it would be for me to make a backup of my current data to avoid such a scenario.

 

Again, I'm sorry that this turned out to be a flop, but I'm glad that they will at least be refunding your money.  The good news is that you have at least some of your old writing, but I understand that initial sense of pain that you're undoubtedly experiencing from the loss. : (

Oh no, I'm so sorry to hear about your lost data . . . : (  I'd been very hopeful that they could get it back for you.  I understand how you feel concerning the data loss; we put a part of ourselves into our writing, and years later it can be such a joy to reflect back on past writing.  This just reminds me how crucial it would be for me to make a backup of my current data to avoid such a scenario.

 

Again, I'm sorry that this turned out to be a flop, but I'm glad that they will at least be refunding your money.  The good news is that you have at least some of your old writing, but I understand that initial sense of pain that you're undoubtedly experiencing from the loss. : (

Thank you for the kind words.

 

Most of the work that I consider my best I do still have, with the exception of one poem. Lost, however, are all of the poems I wrote out of boredom, as well a good portion of my journal-like writings. Honestly, it feels like some of my most cherished memories have been torn away.

 

What I'm going to try to do is recreate a few of my favorite poems (I don't remember them exactly, but I know enough to create some strong remakes), as well as write down everything I remember from some of the journal entries I lost. I won't be able to recreate even half of what was lost, but trying is better than letting it all disappear.

 

Aside from my writings, I also lost many of the pictures I've collected (luckily I still have all very important pictures on SD cards and uploaded to Facebook), as well as my RPG Maker project (wasn't going to be a game I ever actually shared, but I put 80 hours into and had fun expanding it). The pictures I could refind if I wanted to, but the RPG Maker project is gone for good.

 

And yes, definitely backup your writing. And to anyone who might be reading this, if you have any files that are precious or important to you, BACK THEM UP NOW OR SOON. Better safe than sorry, I guarantee you.