by Carla S. Cawlfield
Well, it finally happened. After about ten computers, I had my first hard drive crash this summer. Yes, we were aware of the horrors of losing fifteen years of data. Yes, we had backup plans. Yes, we were careful to store the backup tapes in a safe and secure environment. But, no, we did not backup everything each time or often enough. Therefore, several months’ worth of email and other data is gone forever. Please read further for the lessons learned from this tale of woe.
The Problem
When my computer locked up, I noticed that the hard drive was making a funny, ticking noise and I could not correctly step through the Windows 98 shut down sequence. I tried the famous three finger reboot (CTRL/ALT/DEL) and got an error message telling me there was a hard disk error, and the computer could not boot. I was still hearing the funny ticking sound from the hard drive. IMMEDIATELY, I flipped the power off of the computer. I knew I was in big trouble.
One of the many benefits of being a HAL-PC member is that you get to know so many people with so many useful talents. One of the longtime HAL-PC members I know is Frank Jaggers, of CPE Associates at 713-780-9035. He makes his living recovering lost data from crashed hard drives. Frank told me to leave the power off. That funny ticking noise was the drive head chewing the hard drive surface into aluminum sand. He can’t recover data from grains of sand.
About this time, I started pawing through our collection of backup tapes. The last full system backup was several months old. We had done incremental backups since then, but overlooked some critical, albeit obscure, data directories (such as email, which I use as my to do list).
The Analysis
That day, I contracted with CPE & Associates to do a formal analysis of my old, dead drive. Their charges are similar to the other data recovery businesses I have since learned about. There was an initial, non-refundable, evaluation fee of $100 plus tax. For this sum, they “listened” to the drive to detect any obvious, immediate remedies. In my case, it was definitely mechanical failure, and the drive had to be sent to a “clean” room in Minnesota for further testing. As still part of the evaluation fee, Minnesota produced two ASCII files—the first one contained the list of the files and directories that could be saved, and the second was the list of non-recoverable files and directories. This gave me the opportunity to review the file lists to determine whether or not it is worth it to spend the $600 to $2,500 for them to send me the recoverable data on this 2.1GB drive. If you think this is a lot of money, think about what your time and the value of your business records are worth. I got similar quotes from two other recovery businesses. Computer Repair Center at 713-664-3500 quoted me a $250 non-refundable evaluation fee and $75 per hour for data recovery, and a company in California quoted me no evaluation fee, but recovery fees of from $875 to $2,700, depending on the speed of service I selected.
After reviewing the ASCII text of good and bad files, I opted to forego any more attempts at recovering data from my bad hard drive. Unique to my situation, most of the files that were recoverable were operating system or applications files; I can reload those programs from the original software. Some interesting facts—If I had printed out the list of good files, it would have taken 161 letter-sized sheets, showing 11,385 files containing 270MB; the list of bad files would have taken 117 letter-sized sheets, showing 6,925 files containing 1,362MB. In addition, there were 8,377 files with no name.
The Solution
I contacted another computer pal of mine, explained my problem, and asked if he had any extra hard drives laying around that I could use temporarily, till I figured out what to do. He did have an extra drive, was very gracious in spending a couple of days tweaking my system, and reloading my most recent full backup tape and the incremental tapes. This restored about 90% of my data. This fellow is now my friend for life. He restored about ten years worth of financial and business records, as well as digital photos that I could not replace. (Under no circumstances will I reveal this friend’s name, or else he would be inundated with requests for free help.)
Ironically, I had been planning to buy a larger hard drive(s) anyway. This crisis just advanced my timetable. My old system was very flaky, with years and years of various operating system migrations and upgrades, application programs additions/deletions (some of which leave litter behind and do not cleanly uninstall) and lots of ?help? from rushed technicians in busy computer repair shops. (About this time, my husband got scared over the less-than-fully-protected nature of his own computers, and rushed out and bought more hard drives to use as backups for his own machines.)
I chose twin 8GB drives. The C:\ drive is now my main drive, and D:\ is solely a backup drive; I also still have the separate tape drive backup system. Once I installed these new drives, I started loading the full install version of the Windows 98 operating system (no patchy upgrade versions), and current versions of my applications software. Because I use about thirty different programs and because I am proceeding very methodically, this process is slow.
“How often should I backup my system?”, is a frequent question asked by computer users. How heavy do you use your system? How valuable is the data you are creating? Is this a business computer? If your computer is critical to your daily productivity, then you probably should have some type of daily backup plan, including full and/or incremental backups. If you are a very casual computer user, and really don’t use the computer for much more than surfing the web, you probably don’t need much of a backup plan at all. Once a month is probably enough for you. Most of us fall somewhere in between. It is a good idea to have a plan, a routine, a regular day and time that we schedule our backup.
There are now many software utilities that can automate the process. Our tape backup is driven by Seagate software. It is very user friendly, and you don’t have to be very computer literate to follow its backup wizard. It is easy to choose the options you want, be it full backup, incremental, identifying your backup tapes, assigning dates, etc. The restore sequence is equally as straightforward. It is imperative that you test your backup plan. This involves creating a backup and then attempting to restore your data from it. All your backup efforts are no good if there is a glitch in your plan, and you can’t get to your data.
I am now practicing seriously safe computing with my main drive, identical backup hard drive, backup tape system (the tapes are locked in a fireproof safe), and I also am backed up on a network server. Maybe, just maybe, I am covered from data loss in the event of drive failure, fire, or theft of the computers. I did not plan to test my computer safety quite so soon, but during Tropical Storm Frances, part of our house flooded. Our lights and phones still don’t work worth spit, but my computer is solid as a rock.
This tale is offered up as a warning to my fellow computer enthusiasts. Be careful and don’t put off taking proper backup precautions, for this could also happen to you.
Carla Cawlfield’s current position is HAL-PC’s VP of Communications. She has been dazzled by computers since the earth was flat, and is still amazed at the “magic in a box.”
E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.