Tech Debug

Someone sent me an email which asked what to do since:

one of my external hard drives, the one with EVERYTHING I REALLY, REALLY WANT on it has died…

Im sure this happens to many people, and often. What is one to do in a case like this?

Did you backup?

• OPTION 1: If it’s your backup drive that failed, the data will most likely still be on the related computer. Make another copy or backup. Problem solved.
• OPTION 2: If it’s not a backup drive that failed, do you have a backup of it? If not start backing up in future. Think about your recovery options, and the cost involved.

Data recovery options

Ok so you didn’t have a backup, and it’s critical data. If you manage to recover your data, you should consider that prevention is better than a cure.

• OPTION A: If it’s a mac, I use and can recommend Data Rescue by Prosoft Engineering. This software allows you to recover data from the HDD and costs about USD$100. You will need another external HDD (preferably two to clone your corrupt drive first) to recover data to. DON’T use the broken hard drive until the software and new HDD(s) are ready to go. This will cost about $300 for two new disks and the software but has no guarantee it will work, especially if there has been a catastrophic hardware failure.
  • if it’s windows, I can’t and/or wont be able to help or give free advice. Try a windows data recovery program as per option 3. If you want to engage the services of a professional to recover on windows expect $150 per hour.
  • Is it Linux, BSD or UNIX? If you disk is unmounted then try fsck -fy <yourdiskdevicename>
• OPTION B: Pay a professional data forensic service company upwards of $1000 to recover your data. Some companies, such as Prosoft Eng, may perform this task at a budget rate.

How much is the data worth to you?

If it’s not worth between $300 (for the software + new disk solution) to $1000+ then a last ditch effort is put the HDD in the freezer for 10 mins and see if it works long enough to get your essential data off it. Freezing it may permanently destroy the disk so I accept no liabilty for offering this advice.

Future prevention

Disks fail, it’s just a matter of time as to when. Always have at least one backup of ALL your data you can’t afford to lose. On a Mac, it’s as simple as buying an external disk that is about 1.5 times the size of your computers Hard drive, and plugging it in. The Mac will ask if you want to start backing up – and all you have to do is leave it plugged in when you use your Mac.

Even better is to backup in duplicate or triplicate with a copy “offsite“, e.g. at another location. Update backups regularly, with time between backups as long as you an afford to miss data. On a Mac, you can have one hard drive always plugged in, backing up with Apple’s Time Machine. Introduce a second Hard drive that you “clone” once a week using Carbon Copy Cloner, and leave that drive locked up at work. Now you have a primary backup and an offsite secondary backup.

Use paid “cloud” backup services such as dropbox (which I use for free), mozy, BackBlaze or iDrive. These will sync or backup your valuable data automatically into the “cloud”, and even in some cases between computers.

Good luck!