If this can happen to a really smart guy like me. . . well...

[ponytug]

FWIW: hard drives do have lubricant, and often fail when the lubricant/bearings get too stiff. Freezing them helps (gently) break things loose, but it is a one and done thing. Freeze the drive, turn it on, and be prepared to off load the data ASAP. If it was something else like a head crash or a blown electronic component, it won't help.

In the same vein, in former times, I have successfully shaken (radially!) more than a few drives to get them spinning one last time, but no idea if it would work with more modern drives. For me, it fell into the "nothing ventured, nothing gained" category. If it was dead when I walked up to it, I couldn't make it more dead.

Good luck!

All the best,

Peter

 

[MossRoad]

I wouldn't stick the frozen drive back in the same PC and try and boot it. I'd stick it in an internal drive case and try and access it from a different PC if possible. I've had decent success in the past with IDE drives that way. But it is usually a one time shot, so be sure to have a way to copy (never move) the data to another device once it's up and running.

 

[Grumpycat]

In the same vein, in former times, I have successfully shaken (radially!) more than a few drives to get them spinning one last time, but no idea if it would work with more modern drives. For me, it fell into the "nothing ventured, nothing gained" category. If it was dead when I walked up to it, I couldn't make it more dead.

I too have done that. 3.5" Quantum 80MB drives were notorious for failing by not being able to start spinning first thing of the morning. Could feel it kicking, trying. Counter twist to one of those kicks and it could start spinning. I've taken the cover off and used a finger on the center hub to get it spinning. Immediately copy data off. Then make a clock out of the old mechanism.

 

[blee03]

Also you don’t need to boot the pc in order to try the software recovery tools... you just need a 2nd pc you can connect the bad hard drive to. Then you run the software from the good pc and point it to the bad hard drive to recover data from

 

[beowulf]

Thanks again for the additional advice. All I know about computers is how to turn them on and off and now I also know to have a back up plan. So, I am a bit apprehensive about trying a DIY to recover my hard drive data. But, I have read all of your advice and so will get the cables needed to connect the hard drive externally to my new desk top, and get some recovery soft ware, and try the freezer recommendation and see what I can do. I won't be getting to town to get the cables and such for a few days, and by that time perhaps I will be a bit more confident that this will all work out. Again - my thanks to you all.

 

[RalphVa]

I bought a USB drive adapter that allowed me to plug an old hard drive into it. Don't recall whether the hard drive had actually failed or just had a few failed sectors, but I could read it and recover old data from it.

I do backup all data immediately on this machine to a thumb USB drive and weekly on my wife's machine. Base case, we're working from cloud storage; so that is always backed up.

About once every 3 months, I bring in a USB thumb drive and back up data on both machines. Thumbs have so much capacity, can do it from both machines to a single thumb. This thumb goes into a fire proof box in a more-or-less fireproof basement of our carriage house.

 

[Yogi05]

I'm not very knowledgeable about this stuff but Doesn't cloud storage sit on a HD somewhere?

What if those servers (HD) go down?
I'm thinking this is a silly question and someone has thought of this given the millions of people that would lose their sh**. Both figuratively and literally.

 

[ponytug]

I'm not very knowledgeable about this stuff but Doesn't cloud storage sit on a HD somewhere?

What if those servers (HD) go down?
I'm thinking this is a silly question and someone has thought of this given the millions of people that would lose their sh**. Both figuratively and literally.

Cloud services generaly have redundancy via RAID systems, which tolerate some fraction of failing (1 drive in 2, 1 in 4, 1 in 8 are common), but they then typically have your data distributed over multiple drives, so even if multiple drives in one disk subsystem failed, it would likely only have a small portion of your data.

But having lots of drives, under well defined conditions makes it very easy to keep statistics on drives, and notice when the drive starts drifting out of "normal" (e.g. error rate, speed, power draw, etc.) and then preemptively replace it. Lots of smarts go into tracking it, so unplanned drive outages are very very rare.

Home use is really the worst case; intermittent use, often low price, and often borderline specification drives, lots of temperature changes, vibration, the list goes on.

And yet, these days drives generally run, and run, and run, and we forget that they do have 100,000 hour MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) I.e. 11 years or so.

All the best,

Peter

 

[Macinnis]

I'm not very knowledgeable about this stuff but Doesn't cloud storage sit on a HD somewhere?

What if those servers (HD) go down?
I'm thinking this is a silly question and someone has thought of this given the millions of people that would lose their sh**. Both figuratively and literally.

Yes, silly question indeed.

 

[Torvy]

Magnetic storage is susceptible to electricity, and tangentially, magnetism. (Shocking, I know) pun intended. Thumb drives are handy and all, as are fancy RAID systems, bit @oosik has it right. Optical back ups are susceptible to heat and scratches and age. You can help with 2 of the 3. More importantly, short of a fire, the same incident will not kill your backup.

Cloud storage is fine if you want the world to have access to your files. I only use that for pictures and only objects, no people. Sure, maybe I'm paranoid, but that doesn't mean people aren't out to get you, too.