So my Lacie 160GB external died on me yesterday. Still under warranty from Lacie, but data recovery will cost approx. $750-$3200.

Luckily a friend here at work copied all the mp3's I had on it a few months ago, so all I'm gonna lose is some newer discog's [boston, iron maiden, ratt, etc], some reggae, and some pron. Dammit.

Anyone else ever dealt with this shit? Ever had any data recovery done? Cheaply?

Computer place I "worked" at once had a guy with a crashed drive come in, "I need this no matter the cost." We only knew of one data recovery place, and we sent it there for an estimate. Apparently this place does the government's work, etc., big credentials. Instead of calling back with an estimate, they called to say "it's fixed, and that'll be $2,015." He balked, they kept the drive.

I've actually thought of backing up my external HD on to another external. I mean, whats another 100 bucks for 120 GB at this point....

I should get into the data recovery business. I wonder what tools you need. Probably some kind of NASA dustproof room.

Wow, I can't believe how expensive it is.

i need to eventually do this too. just no $ for it. the dvd burner i received for xmas will come in handy very soon on the c:\ drive as well as my 118gig+ mp3 collection.

Yes. The entire FT music collection is doubly-redundant, as I have it stored on one internal and two external hard drives. It's all about triplicate, man.

FT - if the drives are totally redundant as is, you should consider a RAID array (unless that's what you're already doing). It would save you space and make backups way easier. I can explain if you're interested/don't know about them.

This pc is actually configured for a RAID controller, but the guy f'd it up, and that's why I wound up with it. He didn't know how to fix it, so he just gave it to us and bought a new one. So for my 3 hours of trouble, I got a P4, 40gig for nothing.

I plan on doing this when we settle into the new house and stuff. On my D-Link NSLU2 device, you can hook up 2 hard drives and it will duplicate one to the other, so any changes made on the one get backed up to the other automatically during the wee hours of the morning.

I just need the hard drive, I have the enclosure kit already. Come on Christmas!!!

Bad, bad news. Bad.

But I just need mine to hold out a little longer...

There's actually other stuff on each drive, in addition to the mp3s. One of the external drives is very small and light, so I take it home from the office with me every night, for the same reason Cheney gets whisked away before The State of the Union.

yeah, looks like i'm gonna get myself 2 externals, just in case.

damn...never thought it would happen, but...

i have 2 copies of all of my data... i may even add a third soon. HDs crap out all the time apparently.

But to be fair, if anybody actually tests the limits of an external hard drive, it's gonna be you.

Excuse my ignorance, but are hard drives known to crap out on you like that. And how often?

and oh yeah Dalen, I forgot to mention in my first post----sorry dude.

I would punch stuff

All computer parts are potentially susceptible to failure, and hard drives more than most because they contain moving parts and are in constant use. I would not depend on a hard drive to last longer than 3 years, although they may last much longer.

Do you think a HD is more susceptible to failure if you leave it on all day or if you turn it on and off...less total time on, but more 'stop and start' time.

I need a secure way to back up 120+ gigs of music from my HD. I mean, it would be 30 DVD's now, which wouldnt be that bad, but certainly a hassle. Or is there some sort of ideal setup?

My ideal setup, if I had the money, would be a three-disk RAID array. That way, when a disk crashes, you just replace it, rebuild it from the others, and move on with zero data loss. It's just 3x as expensive (well, plus whatever you spend on a RAID card/whatever).

Don't know about the start/stop issue though.

I'm gonna go on a limb and say start/stop time doesn't factor in when deciding about shutting down or not, because as soon as you've been dormant for a bit, that drive's not spinning anymore anyway. It'd only kick back up when you go to pull a file not in the cache, no?

that could be more or less true depending on what kind of background apps you have running, but part of the reason you leave your computer on is that going from cold to hot causes the circuits to expand and contract more often, eventually causing them to fry, so that is probably also the case with hd circuits. but that would be different and more recoverable than a head crash, but no physical data recovery is cheap.

that sucks dalen. sorry.

i put all my data files (MP3s, word/excel docs, pics, etc.) on a seperate internal drive. then i back that drive up on an external drive. basically a backup of a backup. it's a bit much, but i've had HDs die on me before so i decided to be extra safe.

ouch.

btw - prices are down. bought a 200 gb external yesterday from fry's for $120 (after a $50 mail-in rebate).