The worst thing imaginable happened to me

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Ok, this is mundane for all of you but for me this is one of the worst things I could imagine.

Today I moved to a different apartment, and after connecting my computer and hard disks, I turned it on. Poof, smoke from my disks. My heart froze to ice. I panicked. I still can’t think straight.

Now it seems like two out of three disks have burned electronics. My disk array could handle one broken disk, but not two.

For you who aren’t as tied to their computers as I am, this is the equivalent of having my house burned down. I had everything there from as far back as I can remember. All my photos, code that I’ve written, projects, reports, mails, everything, going back many years.

“Why didn’t you backup?” you’ll say. Yeah, why didn’t I backup? Well… I never thought two disks would break simultaneously. I’m a fucking idiot, I don’t need you telling me this.

I’m not even sure how it happened. Maybe the power connector to the disks was turned the wrong way, which should be impossible due to their design, but since they were tricky enough the right way, I might have managed to push it in incorrectly.

A chip is fried on two of the disks, visually. These were connected to the same power supply. The third has no visual marks, but might also be fried.

I really don’t know what to do now. Data recovery is freaking expensive. Maybe I could afford repairing one? But if two needs repairing… I guess the disk platters are fine, but electronics are poof. Two out of three would give me everything back…

Sorry for this pathetic rambling. I just don’t know what to do. I’m sitting here among all the boxes filled with clothes and other meaningless belongings. My data was my life. Why didn’t I protect it better? :(:frowning:

2

I too have learned the hard way. I now have an external drive and I use Norton Ghost each week. It has been a life safer at least once. Sorry things went bad for you!

3

I don’t want to preach but your house (or apartment) could have literally burned down and then you would be out of your computer AND all of your physical possessions which would be even worse than what you are describing. Be paranoid about that type of thing. Get an online backup service like mozy.com which is extremely cheap and mostly painless. Get renters insurance too while you are at it. It costs very little as well. Keep DVD backups in a very safe place like a safety deposit box or in a locked box at a relative’s house if the data is that important to you. I am sorry you had to learn the hard way but it happens to lots of people every day.

A recovery service can probably get your data back but it will certainly be expensive and at least in the high multi-hundred or even in the multi-thousand dollar range but it may be worth it to you and you should just bite the bullet and do it if it is that important. The things those people can do is impressive. They have sterile rooms that are literally like an ICU for hard drives.

4

Good grief. I’m sorry, Henrichek. You definitely have my sympathy.

5

er… life saver.

6

If that’s the worst think you can imagine, you’ve led a very nice life indeed.

7

Seriously. I was expecting a very, very bad story indeed. Let’s just say, “whew!”

8

True, my family and I are either some of the luckiest or unluckiest people around depending on which way you look at it. Until loved ones start dropping dead all around you tragically, houses get destroyed, jobs get lost, and you come within hours of dying yourself you won’t have the perspective to know what is really bad. This situation is likely fixable as long as you have the cash.

9

I apologize for the drama. I never intended to belittle anybody’s hardships. For a person as computerbound as me, it is nevertheless a big deal. The last half year I have used my photography hobby to help me get out of a depression, and now all of it is rendered inaccessible.

It’s just really the wrong time for this to happen. I have other unrelated problems with relations, studies, depression, and I moved to this smaller apartment to save some money on the rent since my income is mostly nonexistant until my studies are done and I hopefully can get a job. This wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t move. So I guess that after a year or two the cheaper rent will have covered the recovery costs and I break even.

And it was probably because of a stupid misengineered power plug, and of course my lack of backup precautions.

10

There may yet be hope.

Get a couple of the exact same model of drive. Best Buy, NewEgg, eBay, dumpster diving, whatever.

You will also need a set of small torx or phillips screwdrivers. Home Depot or Lowes.

Carefully transplant the controller boards from the new drives to the toasted ones. Double check your power supply and then connect only one of them back up. If there is no smoke, connect the rest.

And good luck!

11

I know money is going to be an issue but most of the big data recovery services can provide a free telephone consultation and rough estimate. They specialize in corporate data recovery and can have a virtual ER team available to turn things around within 24 hours but, they can serve individuals too, and it will be much cheaper if you give them time to work on it. I would advise not trying to fix anything yourself at this point (because it probably won’t work although stranger things have happened but it will probably make things worse). Just google them and see what you can find. The big players are very professional and competent. Don’t take your drive down to the local computer shop or everything may be gone forever.

It just depends on how important this is to you.

12

On second thought, with two failed drives, you could try to fix one yourself if you are willing to assume the risk. There are web articles on how to do it.

13

I was reading some on a recovery company’s webpage. They have different categories with different costs. The highest costs are for disks where they need a clean room to do open surgery on the disk. As Projammer said though, it might be enough to replace the circuit board. Hopefully that falls under a cheaper cost bracket, as I am not sure if I should do that myself.

I am quite confident that the platters are alright. There is a burned microchip on the circuit board. What are the chances of internal components being fried too? I think the most likely explanation is that I attached the power plug inversely. The molex connector pins were being troublesome and the plug was hard to attach even the right way, so with the heightened force I might have attached the second one the wrong way. Seems like that would feed it 12 V instead of 5V :(.

Any guesses regarding the extent of the damage? I unplugged the power within a couple seconds.

14

One problem is that I am not sure whether the third drive is damaged too, as I can’t remember exactly what happened, with the ensuing panic and all. However, the two drives have a visible burn mark on the same chip, while the third doesn’t. Supposedly it would have broken in the same pattern as the others. I know that I could just try it out, but I’m seriously spooked at connecting anything to the computer again.

15

As long as the platter is Ok, it can be saved…for a price. You have two. You could experiment with one but don’t do it with the other or everything may be gone forever if you contaminate the platter.

16

If your are comfortable building your own computer, installing ram and video cards, this should be within your ability. It should be nothing more than removing the screws and unplugging the board from the drive. You can do that much before buying anything more than the screwdriver necessary to do the job with. Judge your level of confidence from there.

Fraid I can’t give any guesses about the state of the mechanism inside the drive, there are just too many variables in construction.

17

I wonder how exact match it has to be. Of course the board must be of the same drive model, but there might be slight variations that could break the equation.

I can’t see if the board can just be unplugged or has to be soldered.

Of course the damn thing uses those torx screws, or whatever they are called.

18

The safest thing to do is just take out one of those drives and put it in a very, very safe place. Do what you want with the rest of it. If you have more money in the future, you should be able to recover your data if you can’t do it now.

19

You don’t have to expose the insides of the hard drive to change the controller board. Only if the other components got fried will that cover have to come off. I say get an identical drive and try a controller swap. Power up the drive not connected to the SATA or PATA interface. If it seems to do a start up sequence, try it connected on your computer. The alternative is no data or a more expensive data recovery service.

20

Amen to that.

Don’t get me wrong, hard drive failures suck. However, failure to backup your most critical files on a routine basis sucks even worse, because in a way you kinda brought it on yourself – it’s kinda like leaving your keys in the ignition and then wondering why your car got stolen. Lesson learned, always make backups!

Hope everything works out okay for you.