Hard drive are cheep, recovery is not!

[Seth]

Soooooo as most of you know my backup drive took a dive on me a couple weeks ago. During the replacement process the drive in my laptop died... today.... while I have no backup disk.... just let that sink in a bit.

Recovery is possible. It takes about a week and will run me $1,600-$2,400. Let that sear into your brain and or pocketbook.

Now

BUY BACKUPS FOR YOUR BACKUPS. And then back that up again. I went the past 10 years without so much as a hiccup with hard drives then two die at the same time.

P.S. I retract my former statement that Steve Jackson has a backup sickness.

 

[Tacoma]

oooooouuuuuuuuch!

I need to buy some backup drives. As it stands, I keep stuff on discs mostly. And nothing has ever crashed on me yet, probably for that very reason.

 

[scoutabout]

As it stands, I keep stuff on discs mostly. And nothing has ever crashed on me yet, probably for that very reason.

Exactly, you only need a backup when you don't have one. That seems to be the way it always goes.

Seth, good luck with the recovery.

 

[Caleb]

What kind of laptop and what died? If your drive is still able to be used I can get your data off it for you, I've got a couple programs (one for PC and one for Macs) that can recover even your deleted files. If the drive is dead then you're SOL (unless you pay for the recovery). We had to do that once with a company I do IT for, total bill was about $3K if I remember correctly and they still couldn't get it all. Utah Disaster Cleanup is who we used, local down in Draper and we feel they did an excellent job considering the circumstances.

 

[Caleb]

oh, and if anyone is interested I can point you to a cheap way to get offsite backup. www.dreamhost.com offers 400GB of storage (and it grows weekly) for only $20 a month. Yes they are a web host but I've been using them for my backups as well (I've got the space, why not ). They have all their data fully backed up, support SSH, Rsync, SCP, etc so I figured why not. I still have my externals that I back up to but nothing beats offsite backed-up back-ups for $20 a month

 

[cruiseroutfit]

Thanks for the reminder Seth, I'm horribly about backing up as often as I should... gonna do it right now!

 

[mbryson]

oh, and if anyone is interested I can point you to a cheap way to get offsite backup. www.dreamhost.com offers 400GB of storage (and it grows weekly) for only $20 a month. Yes they are a web host but I've been using them for my backups as well (I've got the space, why not ). They have all their data fully backed up, support SSH, Rsync, SCP, etc so I figured why not. I still have my externals that I back up to but nothing beats offsite backed-up back-ups for $20 a month

Hmmmmm.......... Very interesting pricing and WAY decent sized signature.

 

[Seth]

What kind of laptop and what died? If your drive is still able to be used I can get your data off it for you, I've got a couple programs (one for PC and one for Macs) that can recover even your deleted files. If the drive is dead then you're SOL (unless you pay for the recovery). We had to do that once with a company I do IT for, total bill was about $3K if I remember correctly and they still couldn't get it all. Utah Disaster Cleanup is who we used, local down in Draper and we feel they did an excellent job considering the circumstances.

It's my Mac Book Pro. I spent several hours down at the apple store working with the techs. It is a physical problem with the drive itself. We could drill down to the files but could not pull anything out.

I called Drive Savers. I am sending it in on monday. They said $600-$3,000 depending on how much they can recover. A lot of the stuff is backed up in other places but the key stuff was being backed up to my nice new lacie drive the died. I thought I would be okay for a week. Just goes to show ya.

I am going to check into the off site backup though. I have 130gb of music backed up a few drives but I had a fire a few years back and I know that if that happens, of if you get broken in to you are s c r e w d e d. I have been using dot mac for some stuff but it is not real useable. It likes to fail on big (60mb) files.

 

[mbryson]

...........I spent several hours down at the apple store working with the techs. ..........

One word for you........ MACDOCS (14thish South State)


Apple store = iPod store

MacDocs = Apple computer store that knows there junk and will even sell you an iPod if you want

The Apple store is just across the street from my office and I go WAY out of my way to get solid service at MacDOcs. At MacDocs, I don't even have to call in at midnight to get an appointment at the Apple store. I support 9 G5 Power Macs. I can't afford to have them not working and don't have time to play the Apple stores games.

 

[Spork]

I usually do a backup about once a month. I'm still able to fit everything I care about on one DVD so it just takes a few minutes to do it. I ought to start hauling it to work and leave it in my drawer there so I have an offsite copy in case the house burns down. :greg:

 

[Caleb]

One word for you........ MACDOCS (14thish South State)


Apple store = iPod store

MacDocs = Apple computer store that knows there junk and will even sell you an iPod if you want

The Apple store is just across the street from my office and I go WAY out of my way to get solid service at MacDOcs. At MacDocs, I don't even have to call in at midnight to get an appointment at the Apple store. I support 9 G5 Power Macs. I can't afford to have them not working and don't have time to play the Apple stores games.

We also use MacDocs for a lot of our stuff we buy if we need it quick. I will say that a few of the "Geniuses" at the Genius bar in the Apple Store really know their stuff but it's a crap shoot to get the right person. We took my Dad's laptop in there because (IMO) the logic board failed. The guy (you could tell he was new) was having a hard time with it, I pointed out a few things and then he went and got his supervisor, his supervisor looked at it and for only a minute and concluded the same thing as I did. He took it to the back, ran a few tests back there and came back and confirmed it was a bad logic board. They did have it repaired in only a day and a half and didn't loose any of his data. I like the Apple Store but they do have their place.