For you non-geeks, please, leave questions in the comments and I'll reply.
For the rest of you:
I've been backing up my data for years. I've been saying "Hit "Save" every minute or two" to anyone who'd listen. But then...
About two weeks ago, my external, backup drive was booting slower than normal. When I noticed it, I said, "That is going to fail, better do something about it," and then I went back to whatever I was doing. As it was my backup drive, I didn't sweat it much.
Except it wasn't *entirely* my backup drive. See, some long time ago, I noticed that my iPhoto library was getting big, and rather than clear out space on my internal drive, I just moved the entire iPhoto library to the external drive. So now my internal was getting backed up to my external, but my external wasn't getting backed up at all. Doh!
So, there I was, having my drive boot slowly, ignoring it. Could I have immediately ran out to the all-night hard drive emporium and picked up a new drive? Yes. Did I? No. I didn't even grab some of the important data and burn it to a DVD. I fiddled while Rome burned.
And burn it did. Last night, the drive wouldn't boot, and nothing I could do would bring it back. Nothing.
Now, normally I would just blow it off, as all drives die. But this was the drive with the only copies to almost 9,000 family photos. I am numb from the thought of losing them all.
Does the story end here? No, it does not. See, I've got one last trick. After a full 12 hours (no lie) researching, experimenting, making phone calls, sending emails, all to no avail, I have one last ace up my sleeve.
I'm putting the drive in the freezer...
The Gift
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[Christmas, 1965 or thereabout]
The boy was very young; perhaps 7 or 8 years old. He loved everything about
Christmas - the lights, the music, Santa ...
9 months ago
14 Comments:
It is indeed sad. Maybe you can call Apple (if you haven't done that already)
Dear Stu,
you write soooooo well.
oh no. oh no no no.
i back things up, although not as religiously as i should. as a consequence, i have a box of 5.5" floppies, 3" disks, a few zip disks and several flash drives full of important stuff. currently, the flash drives are the only ones i can still access - BUT a friend called last week and told me he found a working computer with a 5.5" drive and a 3" drive and he thinks we can pull from there straight to a laptop. i'm very hopeful.
good luck with your last chance!!
Ugh. There isn't too much as aggravating as losing stuff you thought was utterly safe and secure. Good luck and G-d bless, Stu!
Oh god I hope that works. 9,000 family photos! I would be heartsick. Thanks for reminding me to back mine up!
Thanks to all of you for your thoughts, wishes, and prayers.
Mom, thanks for the compliment and support. Let anyone who reads this know what a fabulous mother I have!
Ericka, Good luck with your data. Thanks for the luck, I'll need it!
Sully, as always, Thanks! You're a really good pal. Thanks for the prayer, I'm sure He's next to me as I deal with this.
Cry It Out, Yeah, you nailed it, yesterday was either focused on problem-solving or encased in heart-sickness. I cried a bit with Leslie, but mostly I tried to numb out to it, until I know for certain how this all plays out.
Hey, Stu-
Sorry to hear about the drive. I know how crushing that can be.
Were you able to get your data off of it?
Did it make sounds or simply not allow you to access it from the Mac?
If it was quiet, and inaccessible, you might try some other hacks to bring it online.
If you can pull the drive the external enclosure and hook it up directly to your Macs internals, it would at least eliminate a bad controller in the enclosure as the problem (and may allow you to pull the data off). I have had one experience where an enclosure's power cable slowly wiggled off the drive over time. Upon opening it, I just plugged it back in the the drive worked flawlessly.
At that point, you could also try looking at it with a bootable linux CD (ubuntu has one that works for Macs). See if you can see the drive once linux boots. It may well then allow you to read the data off of it (and post to something online as an interim backup... or burn CDs/DVDs of the data). The Linux filesystem drivers may not choke on errors that the Mac may be seeing.
Drop me a line if you want to give these routes a try (linuxactivist at gmail dot com)? I have had some success with these approaches when I did desktop support for a college of science and humanities in a mid sized university. I have pulled data from non-booting Windows and Mac drives that still had the data accessible, just not accessible to Windows of Mac OS.
If you heard "chirping", that's usually a head crash. The freezer should help in that case. I haven't tried that one personally, but I have heard lots of success stories.
I don't want to give you false hope, but I do want to give you a couple of options that you may not have stumbled across.
Good luck.
I've heard of the freezer method for restoring life to dead drives. It'll be interesting to hear how it works out for you. Best of luck!
Jim,
Fellow Parent Hacker!
Thanks for the uber-thoughtful comment. To answer your questions: I wasn't able to access the drive at all with any Mac software, save Terminal, which allowed me to see the drive using BSD. However, it only showed me one directory, and the drive with neither mountable nor unmountable. As the drive is a LaCie D2, my guess is that one of the platters is unhappy. I'm hoping the freezing will fix it, at least long enough for me to get the important photos off of there (my guess is that if I get any data access at all, it will only be for about twenty minutes before it crashes again from the heat of use). Also, no chirping or clicking, just a regular spinning sound.
Anyway, we'll see. My money says that because the drive is neither mountable nor unmountable, something else is also going on. So we shall see.
The Universe tends to unfold as it should.
Thanks again for the comment and the offer of assistance.
Stu
James,
Yeah, me too. I've been using computers since 1982 and the Mac since June of 1984, and was a paid tech weenie for over 13 years, so I've been familiar with the freezer method for a while. This is my first attempt at it.
By the way, to all who are reading this, you really need to check out James' blog, where he writes short fiction pieces that are simply gorgeous.
Good Luck Stu.
You know if this doesn't work ask George Bush to come and give you a copy of everything...since the patriot act there is someone in Langly with all of our personal data.
And doesn't trudym gush as only a mother can.
hmmm I can't tell which of us is more unhinged. At least she has Motherhood as an excuse.
Oh by the way, if you don't retrieve all of those cherished items...I am sure your wife will have no problem replacing you after she stows you in the freezer next to that hard drive.
Thim Of The Belles,
Thanks so much, you are so awesome! Yeah, as you've probably read by now, it wasn't a stuck disk, at least not that I can tell. It's possible it's a massive (and weird) hardware failure on one of the two internal disks on the drive, but who knows. So keeping it cool probably wouldn't affect this particular problem. However, I have read of others who did exactly what you suggested (or double-ziplocked the drive and put it in an ice bath) and got success.
Meanwhile, there's the chance that a Unix geek may be able to walk me through rebuilding the drive somehow. We shall see.
Thanks, Thim, you really are a friend. :-)
Dar,
Thanks. I hear ya, all the way back to 1st grade. I wouldn't have used the plastic bags to protect the drive if your big black briefcase had survived the time capsule.
As for my Mom, yep, nobody gushes like Mom, which is an awesome thing. My Dad's pretty cool in the gushing department as well.
Thanks for the wishes and keeping me in your thoughts. I'll let you know what's what when this is all over.
And I'll also listen to the crisp audio of The View, even if they never put your name up on the screen.
2nd grade
See, that's what I thought as well, but I think that either my mom or your mom or a teacher or somebody said we met in 1st grade. But in first grade I had Ms. Cleary and you had somebody else (I think). As for second grade, I can still name almost every student in that class photo (which is, I believe, at my folks' house)...
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