[AT] OT: Computer crash and data loss

[charlie hill]

Dean,  I'm sure you know all the tricks but just in case here goes.
Put the hard drive in an external case and see if  you can see any
of the files on it from another computer.  If not, put it in the freezer
for a few hours, pull it out and see if it will boot long enough to get
some key stuff off.  Might not work but it won't cost you much.
Sorry for your trouble but I dare say everyone on the list has been there
and the ones of us that luckily have not been will be before it's over.

Charlie

-----Original Message----- 
From: dean at vinsonfarm.net
Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2014 5:22 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: [AT] OT: Computer crash and data loss

A few days before Christmas I was using my six- or seven-year-old desktop
computer and went to open some particular file or other, but couldn't get to 
it
because the "My Documents" folder was inaccessible.  The computer was 
otherwise
working fine at the time, but okay, no big deal, some glitch or other, time 
to
Restart.

Upon restarting, I saw some error messages about disc sectors being 
corrupted,
or something ominous like that, and the computer launched the CheckDisk
program.  A few minutes later it was done and began to start up Windows like
normal...but never made it.  Kept looping back and forth between the initial
Dell screen and the Windows start screen, without ever really starting 
Windows.
I was eventually able to boot up from a utility disc I'd kept from when I 
bought
the computer years ago, but couldn't read anything on the C: drive.

Two weeks and two visits to computer-repair places later, I'm resigned to my
fate:  The hard drive simply crashed for some reason, and cannot be 
repaired.
After some web searches and phone calls, it appears that data-recovery 
services
involve big bucks:  Likely at least $1000, perhaps $1500 or $2000 depending 
on
the nature of the problem.  I'm reluctantly concluding that there isn't 
anything
on there that's worth $1000 to recover...but doggone it, after several years 
I
had a bunch of stuff that I'm not happy to lose.  Financial planning 
documents,
spreadsheets, web browser bookmarks annotated with password reminders, old
emails I'd wanted to keep, address and phone number records for friends and
family, photos, a whole series of periodic reminders entered into a calendar
function, etc.

The ironic part is that about a week before it crashed I ran across the 
external
hard drive I'd purchased about four years ago specifically for data backup
purposes, but which I'd quickly abandoned because its automatic-backup 
feature
was a huge memory and CPU hog and bogged everything else down.  I did have 
the
presence of mind and discipline to regularly back up my one most critical
financial-records file, using a thumb drive, but everything else is just 
gone,
out of reach.  Dag nab scagaraggit anyway.

So, just a reminder to folks, don't forget to back up anything you don't 
want to
lose.  I'm not a big fan of "cloud" backup services, but will be a lot more
disciplined about using that external hard drive or making backup CDs or
something.  Meanwhile, back to the drawing board...

Dean Vinson
Dayton, Ohio (soon to be Saint Paris, Ohio!)

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