Everything on my hard drive got destroyed

May 28 2004

[dennisw]

60 gigabytes. Never had problems with it. Yesterday Windows XP froze a few times. Then the computer refused to boot up again. Boot sector wiped out? I can deal with that! I then installed this drive as a slave and it wasn't recognized... was invisible.

With Partition Magic this hard drive shows up as 60 gig of (exact words) unallocated space. It had 3 partitions which are now all gone.

I used the Western Digital Utilities and the hard drive checks out as being in good shape. No errors.

I was using Norton Anti Virus. Using a firewall on a cable connection.

I don't see any references on internet to hard drives being killed all at once.

The hard drive was 50% backed up.I will consider a data recovery company if the price is reasonable.

[Revolting cat!]

"Broken lines, broken strings,
Broken threads, broken springs,
Broken idols, broken heads,
People sleeping in broken beds.
Ain't no use jiving
Ain't no use joking
Everything is broken.

Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground"

-- Bob Dylan Everything is Broken

[lowbridge]

Best Buy did mine for $60.00 last year.

Does that price include the blackmail charges for keeping their mouhs shut about what they find on the customers hard drive?

[antiRepublicrat]

The trick is to be sure that the only place you write to is the MBR cylinder, so in a worst-case scenario, you end up no worse off than where you started - with a fried MBR. If you know what you're doing, and you're careful, it's not all that dangerous.

Thanks for the tip. I've never had a fried MBR on a modern OS, so I'll keep this in mind for when it eventually does happen.

[dennisw]

Did a test run with demo version of getback. It seems to work. The files are there. Have to pay for the fully functional version to recover them


Looks good!

[LibKill]

I do use a mirrored RAID array. However, I back up the primary once a week to an external hard drive.

The reason I do this is that in a mirrored array, anything that is written is written to both drives at once. If a newly installed program trashes the OS, both drives won't boot.

I actually had that happen once.

Anyway, counting the external backup, my main computer has 3 hard drives. :)

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Well, i am a little late getting here, and I am learning , haven't had this problem yet.

I have both Maxtor and Western Digital drives and a Western Digital 120 GB drive I have has been making strange noises but is still functioning.

I am trying Datalink 7 to back it up , but first trys didn't allow the backup to boot up.

[pollywog]

2 cups butter?????? wow!!! hmmmmmm if this is a for real recipe I am tempted to try it.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks. Am trying get back right now. Hard drive does show up on bios and diagnostic utilities said it was in good shape.

Keep all your helpers posted on whether this works, if Bios sees the drive it must be a "software" problem.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Knoppix is Linux only?

[martin_fierro]

That recipe came from a newsgroup where someone alleged to have been charged $250 for the recipe by Neiman-Marcus.

Most likely urban fiction.

Let me know how they turn out. <|:)~

[LibKill]

Interesting... I got a new computer a couple of months ago & was figuring I'd just get rid of the old one, but now I think I may keep it hooked to our home network, share the hard drive root directory and just periodically back up data on it.>

Good move, Sloth.

I have two computers networked and I often copy vital data from the Primary to the Secondary computer.

When I was recommending hard drive to hard drive backup I was speaking only of my own experience. I CLONE drives. If the primary fails I can remove it and put in the "B TEAM" and boot from my last backup.

However you do it, a good backup is a good friend.

I prefer to backup to hard drive because it is easy and simple. That is to say that it is simple and easy AFTER you have it set up. While you are setting it up it can be difficult (depending on your skill level) and it is expensive. An 80G WD drive sells for about $100 at my local computer extortionist. That does not count the cost of the box that you put it in.

Removeable hard drive rack, $20.

USB case for hard drive (cable not included) $40.

Cable for same $5.

Peace of mind, knowing that you can restore your system from the last backup, priceless.

[sweetliberty]

[Petronski]

Did a test run with demo version of getback. It seems to work. The files are there. Have to pay for the fully functional version to recover them.

Great!

[Dec31,1999]

Never keep anything of importance on a hard drive. Especially if you run Winblows. That'll teach ya.

Anyway, reboot and replace Windows if possible.

[Revolting cat!]

Have to pay for the fully functional version to recover them.

Great!

Own stock in the company?

[Petronski]

Nope. But it did recover 15 gigs of highly precious data for me in March. Nothing else I could find would work at all.

[Leroy S. Mort]

My first guess would be adware/spyware/malware.

Download and run the free version of Ad-aware.

[Libloather]

Data recovery will cost about $600.

I'll do it for half that, with the Vaseline included.

New hard drives are cheap. Start there...

[Petronski]

Definitely sounds like an adware/spyware issue to me.

[Libloather]

...replace Windows if possible.

Go with Champion?