Hard Drive Crash

[Scott & Lai 12]

Same thing happend to me a while back. I had a storage drive (D drive) with all my pictures of Luz, thousands of MP3's and all my tax records. One day it started giving me weird "file not found" errors when I tried to access it. Then it started clicking. I rushed right out and bought a new drive. After my old drive cooled off for an hour it would let me access it long enough to copy a gig or so over to the new drive. I repeated that until I had all 50 gigs copied. Very close call. Now I burn stuff I can't afford to loose to a DVD. That reminds me, I need to back up again!

Another thing to keep in mind. The DVDs (and CDs) that you "burn" on a PC are not as long-lasting as we once thought. Professional pre-recorded DVDs/CDs have a thin metal plate inside which has pits burned into it by a laser, so are essentially permanent, unless they are not properly sealed at the factory (which is pretty rare). DVDs/CDs that you burn at home are different. Instead of a metal plate, they have a disc with a kind of ink which, when exposed to a laser, turns dark. The dark spots correspond to the pits on professional discs. The problem is, over time the ink fades, making the disc unreadable. Instead of decades, the useful life is measured in years. It is highly recommended to make copies of your home-burned DVDs/CDs every couple years or so. I also make at least two copies whenever I burn a DVD, just in case one fails prematurely.

[MrMrsKnight 0]

Same thing happend to me a while back. I had a storage drive (D drive) with all my pictures of Luz, thousands of MP3's and all my tax records. One day it started giving me weird "file not found" errors when I tried to access it. Then it started clicking. I rushed right out and bought a new drive. After my old drive cooled off for an hour it would let me access it long enough to copy a gig or so over to the new drive. I repeated that until I had all 50 gigs copied. Very close call. Now I burn stuff I can't afford to loose to a DVD. That reminds me, I need to back up again!

Another thing to keep in mind. The DVDs (and CDs) that you "burn" on a PC are not as long-lasting as we once thought. Professional pre-recorded DVDs/CDs have a thin metal plate inside which has pits burned into it by a laser, so are essentially permanent, unless they are not properly sealed at the factory (which is pretty rare). DVDs/CDs that you burn at home are different. Instead of a metal plate, they have a disc with a kind of ink which, when exposed to a laser, turns dark. The dark spots correspond to the pits on professional discs. The problem is, over time the ink fades, making the disc unreadable. Instead of decades, the useful life is measured in years. It is highly recommended to make copies of your home-burned DVDs/CDs every couple years or so. I also make at least two copies whenever I burn a DVD, just in case one fails prematurely.

Cool information.... thanks!!

[Ban Hammer 12,836]

Same thing happend to me a while back. I had a storage drive (D drive) with all my pictures of Luz, thousands of MP3's and all my tax records. One day it started giving me weird "file not found" errors when I tried to access it. Then it started clicking. I rushed right out and bought a new drive. After my old drive cooled off for an hour it would let me access it long enough to copy a gig or so over to the new drive. I repeated that until I had all 50 gigs copied. Very close call. Now I burn stuff I can't afford to loose to a DVD. That reminds me, I need to back up again!

Another thing to keep in mind. The DVDs (and CDs) that you "burn" on a PC are not as long-lasting as we once thought. Professional pre-recorded DVDs/CDs have a thin metal plate inside which has pits burned into it by a laser, so are essentially permanent, unless they are not properly sealed at the factory (which is pretty rare). DVDs/CDs that you burn at home are different. Instead of a metal plate, they have a disc with a kind of ink which, when exposed to a laser, turns dark. The dark spots correspond to the pits on professional discs. The problem is, over time the ink fades, making the disc unreadable. Instead of decades, the useful life is measured in years. It is highly recommended to make copies of your home-burned DVDs/CDs every couple years or so. I also make at least two copies whenever I burn a DVD, just in case one fails prematurely.

also plan on the expected life of that cd/dvd to be about 4 years.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Same thing happend to me a while back. I had a storage drive (D drive) with all my pictures of Luz, thousands of MP3's and all my tax records. One day it started giving me weird "file not found" errors when I tried to access it. Then it started clicking. I rushed right out and bought a new drive. After my old drive cooled off for an hour it would let me access it long enough to copy a gig or so over to the new drive. I repeated that until I had all 50 gigs copied. Very close call. Now I burn stuff I can't afford to loose to a DVD. That reminds me, I need to back up again!

Another thing to keep in mind. The DVDs (and CDs) that you "burn" on a PC are not as long-lasting as we once thought. Professional pre-recorded DVDs/CDs have a thin metal plate inside which has pits burned into it by a laser, so are essentially permanent, unless they are not properly sealed at the factory (which is pretty rare). DVDs/CDs that you burn at home are different. Instead of a metal plate, they have a disc with a kind of ink which, when exposed to a laser, turns dark. The dark spots correspond to the pits on professional discs. The problem is, over time the ink fades, making the disc unreadable. Instead of decades, the useful life is measured in years. It is highly recommended to make copies of your home-burned DVDs/CDs every couple years or so. I also make at least two copies whenever I burn a DVD, just in case one fails prematurely.

also plan on the expected life of that cd/dvd to be about 4 years.

There are DVD/CDs that should last 100 years plus. The problem is the format will have changed by then. There are online data storage options available that will update the format of your data as time changes.

ATT online backup

Gold media for 300 years of storage

[brtlmj 0]

Oh - the hard drive is toast. Bummer.

Sorry about that! It's happend to me too many times in the past. Now I won't touch a computer without a RAID array.

Bartek