Psst, Back Up That Hard Drive

from the ah-yes dept

I'll admit that this one only caught my eye because my wonderful laptop had its second hard-drive in less than nine months commit suicide on Friday, and I had the exact same experience when I spoke with the tech support folks as the guy in this article had. They told me, based on what I was telling them, that the hard drive was probably deader than dead, and they were sorry, the data was probably gone. I told them (as did the guy in the article), not to worry, I had all my data backed up. The repair folks were shocked. Despite years and years of people saying, "you need to back up your data", no one ever does until it's too late. Even I'll admit that my religious backing up of local data only started after the last hard drive died. In the meantime, if anyone has any idea what would cause a laptop to fry a hard-drive every four months or so, and can come up with a suggestion for what needs to be done to prevent another fried hard drive four months from now, I'd appreciate it.
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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 4 Aug 2003 @ 4:10am

    What about computerphile bacteria?

    One of the reasons the Russians were so stubborn about keeping the Mir space station was because they accidentally discovered microbes thriving on the outer surface of Mir, chewing up the metal. It holds future potential as a weapon of war, to rot out tanks and planes.

    There are bacteria out there that thrive in battery acid. Is it not a matter of time before a bacteria arises, accidentally or intentionally, that thrives on computer circuits? Computer keyboards are more dirty than the surface of the average toilet seat, so the opportunities for transmission are there.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    MLO, 4 Aug 2003 @ 6:53am

    No Subject Given

    I wouldn't know how to help you on that one, but I guarantee that these guys, http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=frm&s=50009562&f=24609792, would.

    MLO

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    rama r, 4 Aug 2003 @ 8:05am

    bad drives

    was the replacement drive of the same make?
    if so, I heard of entire productions of a model of drive being defective. If your replacement was the same model, that's a possibility- and I would ask for a different brand/make if you can.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    ben, 4 Aug 2003 @ 9:39am

    install utilities

    wouldn't a utility (that actually works reliably) to roll back intsalled software help to a large degree? for me, HD crashes are most often from badly installed/written/used programs leaving detritus around. as well, and i think more importantly, defrag/scandisk (daily, nightly, weekly, what have you) can help prevent more problems.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    SCK, 4 Aug 2003 @ 10:01am

    Clicking Hard drives...

    Normally, a clicking hard drive is from the drive adjusting to thermal issues.
    In my old Thinkpad laptop, the drive began clicking and then stopped working entirely. I rigged up some 5 inch muffin fans to force alot of air though the laptop, and dropped the CPU and HDD temps down, and could do a final incremental backup, and then did a full ghost onto a new drive.
    The culprit was a dead fan on the CPU, which caused the drive to fail before the CPU.
    Scott

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    Mike (profile), 4 Aug 2003 @ 10:43am

    Re: install utilities

    wouldn't a utility (that actually works reliably) to roll back intsalled software help to a large degree? for me, HD crashes are most often from badly installed/written/used programs leaving detritus around. as well, and i think more importantly, defrag/scandisk (daily, nightly, weekly, what have you) can help prevent more problems.

    This isn't a software problem, but a hardware problem, where the drive starts clicking and then dies completely. I don't think any utility is going to help with that.

    The only thing I've heard from tech support people is that they think it may have something to do with the power supply, saying that will often cause hard drive's to start clicking and die.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Al, 4 Aug 2003 @ 11:47am

    Re: install utilities

    I hope the tech guy didn't tell you that you were like a little child asking for a piece of candy this time around when you ask for repairs Mike ;)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. icon
    Mike (profile), 4 Aug 2003 @ 11:56am

    Re: install utilities

    Ha! No, that was another computer company whose name rhymes with "Hell", but starts with a "D".

    This time, the computer company, whose name rhymes with "Hoshiba" but starts with a "T" has so far been much friendlier. However, the fact that the hard drive has already died twice (and the docking station and screen have each died once) in a nine month old laptop, doesn't make me particularly thrilled with them either. But at least they've been friendly about it.

    Anyway, new hard drive is in the laptop, and now I'm starting the process of restoring my backed up data. Fun stuff.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. identicon
    Richard NC Arsehill, 4 Aug 2003 @ 12:19pm

    No Subject Given

    Hey Mike,
    If you're in the midwest, you probably know about the storms we have lately. The last big one fried my network card and knocked out the power in my house. Last year a similar storm blew out my power supply twice (in like two weeks)! So I have no doubts that such a storm could have easily killed your hard drive.

    The solution:
    1. Replace your surge protector every two months

    I know it sounds lame, but that's what they're made to do.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. identicon
    Patrick, 4 Aug 2003 @ 2:48pm

    HDD failure

    Are you running XP? Haven't seen this myself, but I've heard it's (fairly) common to have XP corrupt whatever passes for NTFS's file allocation tables, and this appears as a drive failure (if it boots and recognizes the drive, boot from install CD, choose 'repair', and try 'chkdsk /f').

    On power protection--I suppose you know this, but your average 'power strip/surge suppressor' is less than useless; all they do is provide 6 outlets from one. My criteria: any surge suppressor that has a disclaimer for lightning strikes is junk. The good ones (APC, Tripplite, etc) never have such a disclaimer--i.e. "This is a surge suppressor, not a lightning arrestor; it is not meant for..."

    Finally, if the drives are actually having mechanical failures, I would suspect either 1--bad run of hard drives, or 2--some problem in the laptop causing excessive heat buildup.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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