OHHH NOOOOO !!!!!

[Amphissa]

 
My 1 terabyte external hard drive with all my music on it died a couple of nights ago. After all the support calls and work-arounds, I'm forced to accept its demise. It was only 6 months old and seemed to be doing fine. No signs of any problem. It just quit.

The first response, of course, is denial. It didn't really happen. The Eternal Muse would not do this to me. But the disk recovery shops are quoting me bills of $1,000 or more to extract my files. I've seriously flirted with thoughts of paying the steep fare. But I cannot justify it to myself, much less to my wife.

My practice in recent years has been to buy CDs, copy the music to my drive, then sell or give away the CDs. Space is a problem. So how do I recover? Gone are my full sets of Atterberg, Bax, Arnold, Tubin, etc. My collections of Ries, Roentgen, Reinecke, etc. And all my unsung bits -- Rufinatscha, Petersen, Busch -- I can't even list them.

In the future, I think I will maintain a back-up hard drive that mirrors the music drive. But then, I may never again have such a collection. I'm still looking around to see what I might still have on CD-R. But many of the CDs are long out of print, some of the recordings were from digitized LPs, obtained from others long ago and who knows where.

Blech! I think I'm still in denial. 

[Kevin Pearson]

How sad! 

If the computer geeks are quoting you a price of a $1000.00 to recover the data that means there must be a way to do so. If you could just figure out how to do it yourself then the only expense would be your new drive. I don't know if this link will be of any help to you but you might take a look:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/how_to/4294038.html

EDIT: I would for sure read through all the comments and the one about putting your hard drive in the freezer for a day might be worth a try. A couple people had luck with recovering data doing that.

Kevin

[mbhaub]

Bummer. I say something stupid like, well, you could have backed it up on cd-rom, but then that's kind of silly since the music was on cds. But next time you should certainly consider an online backup service. I use Carbonite and it has come to my rescue more than once. It's also a reason I use a small mp3 player (only 16 Gb) so if something does happen, it's not going to take hours to rebuild the files.

[Alan Howe]

I'm really, really sorry to hear about this nightmare situation. In fact it's precisely this sort of event that has prevented me from giving up on my (nearly out of control) CD collection. I just don't trust computers - in the end they all go wrong.

However, that's all well and good for me to say. It's not much comfort when the technology has let you down.

[Mark Thomas]

Huge sympathy! It's a wretched feeling, but don't give up and don't throw away the failed drive.

The same sort of thing happened to me this April. I too was quoted around £500 ($800 or so) to restore the data. It's because they are focussed on businesses, not individuals. Then I found a local guy who did it perfectly for around £50! which, franlkkly, was a lot less than I was prepared to pay to get my (non musical) data back. Don't give up. Ask around your friends, work colleagues and in the neighbourhood. Look at local 'phone directories etc. You will find a small local guy who can do just as good a restore job for an affordable rate.

Secondly, buy a second external hard drive and back up overnight, every night. I started doing this and, after just one month, my replacement hard drive failed but as I had my backup I lost nothing. It's a hard lesson to learn, though.

[sdtom]

It certainly does make one stop and think.  I like Alan have the CD's which have turned into a bit of a nightmare.  Storing thousands of them in a 400 sq. foot apartment turns it into a used CD shop.  And three of the first CD's I purchased in 1984 no longer work.  Is that a sign of something?
Thomas

[HerbieG]

Don't despair too quickly.  These external drives come in two parts - the container and the disk itself. Sometimes the failure is in the enclosure and sometimes it is the disk. One can open the container carefully and extract the disk and then connect it to the PC with a special adapter.  If it was the container that was faulty, then you should be able to see all your files again this way.  This is not the kind of thing that you should attempt unless you are technically competent, but if you don't feel able to do it, a good repair centre should be able to do this very quickly.  The only snag is that once you open the thing, you void the guarantee, unless you are able to put it together without any sign that it was dismantled.

A friend of mine was in exactly the same predicament a few weeks ago.  We extracted the disk but unfortunately we managed to establish that it was the disk and not the enclosure.  On the other hand, a client of mind had the same problem and in his case it was the enclosure.  It's a pretty sad reflection on the state of IT that hard disk failure, which was quite rare a few years ago, is becoming more common.  It's probably because the more data you can cram on to the disk, the more critical are the operating parameters; I stall have a few 10Gb disks that are several years old and still work fine.

My friend and I were able to put the thing together again and send it off for a replacement, but he lost loads of music.  I hope that this will not be the case for you.

[Ilja]

It's a pretty sad reflection on the state of IT that hard disk failure, which was quite rare a few years ago, is becoming more common.  It's probably because the more data you can cram on to the disk, the more critical are the operating parameters; I stall have a few 10Gb disks that are several years old and still work fine.

The problem is that hard drives have become much bigger in the pas years, but files haven't. Therefore many more movements of the writing 'heads' are required - and they, being the moving parts of the contraption, are the pieces that tend to go awry.

Every hard drive will eventually expire - be it from corrosion, material stress, humidity or another reason. Backing things up properly is crucial, as I (along with apparently many others) have also experienced to my cost. Luckily, hard drives have now become so cheap that it's not that expensive to have a second drive 'mirror' the first one. Online solutions are still pretty expensive generally and, worse, typically slow.

[Peter1953]

Amphissa, I can only symphatize with you and hope that the suggestions by fellow members will help. If you were here, I should take you to a true computer wizard living nearby, who is able to solve all kinds of (to me) hopeless problems. So maybe nothing is lost after all. Keep us informed.

[Amphissa]

 
Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I've taken apart the external drive and now have the bare drive, which I will try to access directly. The idea of trying some recovery tools is a good one. And I'll try to identify a talented computer guy as an alternative for the expensive shops.

In the meanwhile, I've ordered an external drive housing that holds 2 hard drives, and will format them as mirror drives (RAID 1). Both drives will be mirror images, constantly updated. That way, if one drive fails, the other remains operational and contains everything that was on the one that failed. (Since hard drives are relatively inexpensive these days, the cost of this solution is less that the online storage option.)

I've always been concerned about the degradation of CD-Rs. I have thousands of them and just don't trust them. But I should have paid more attention to my hard drives. Thing is, this one gave no sign of being on the verge of failure. One minute it was there, the next minute, gone.

Well, now I know. Thank you all for your notes of condolence. I'll recover from my grief -- someday -- I suppose -- maybe.

[thalbergmad]

I cannot imagine what it must be like to lose everything. The thought that what takes years to accumulate can be lost in seconds is horrid. I am in the habit of backing up every week onto 2 external harddrives.

I would like to say that discovering a place like this is wonderful. There is nothing more interesting to me than discussing neglected composers.

Thal

[Peter1953]

Welcome, Thal. Yes, this is a wonderful Forum. I'm sure you will discover some great unsung composers, like most of us did. The Forum enriches your life.

Off-topic, I like your username very much, because... I'm crazy about the magic and virtuoso piano music of Sigismund Thalberg. Still much too unsung, I think. Maybe an idea for a new thread?

Amphissa, any news?

[thalbergmad]

Thanks for the welcome Peter.

This is the kind of forum i have been looking for. I do belong to other piano forums, but forgotten romantic composers rarely get a mention and they are my passion.

The great love of my life is the romantic concerto, so i look forward to some stimulating  and Grieg/Schumann free discussion.

A thread about Thalberg would be of interest to me.

Thal

[Mark Thomas]

Yes, welcome indeed Thal.

[violinconcerto]

To avoid such massive loss of music, I recommend:

1. Rip the CDs and keep them
2. Make several back-ups on different portable drives and place them on different locations

Thats what I do and I hope I will never come into this situation. I express my deepest sympathies!

Best,
Tobias