The bloggo is back after a 36 hour absence. It may take a few days to get back to full strength again, but we will get there.
I would like to thank everyone who sent us messages of support, and hopefully Dan Holdsworth (God bless 'im) will be able to retrieve the lost data when he comes down on Thursday. As many people kindly pointed out to me, yes I am aware that I should have taken back-ups. Indeed some of it was backed up, but not enough. Because of events within the CFZ and in my own life over the past year or so I simply do not have enough time to do everything that I should do, and I have had to cut corners. On this occasion it backfired badly.
I need more help, more manpower and more assistance. And I need the people who pledge to do stuff for the CFZ to actually follow through with their promises. Don't get me wrong, people like Lizzy and Gavin do bloody wonders. People like Naomi go the extra 9 yards for us, and we have a lot of regular contributors. But there are also people who come swaggering in full of big promises and singularly fail to deliver. I and the CFZ need these people like we need a hole in the head, or rather, like we need a busted hard drive...
But enough of the bellyaching, on with the show....
Well, I'll do what I can but if the disk is physically broken then there's not much anyone can do, or not cheaply at any rate. Data recovery companies do exist, but they charge an arm and a leg for their services.
ReplyDeleteAll I was intending to do was check the connections inside the machine, and see if the disk was physically spinning when powered on. Then I was going to boot the machine with a Linux recovery disk, and see if any of the recovery tools I have could detect data on the disk. If the machine can see data, then I will copy it somewhere else to preserve it and hope that the original disk lasts long enough to do so.
Finally, Jon, do you know if the disk is an IDE type or a SATA type? IDE connectors are large flat ones with lots of pins, with a wide flat cable a couple of inches wide; SATA connectors are much smaller with a cable only about half an inch wide. I only ask since I have a spare IDE disk sitting at home, still in its antistatic packaging, that I don't need since all my kit is now either SATA or SCSI, not IDE.
Retrieving 'lost' data from hard drives is actually quite do-able.There are various freeware apps. available.
ReplyDeleteWhatever happened probably only had a very superficial effect on the hard drive :- it's probably still got everything that was ever entered on it, including data you had deleted.Data was successsfully recovered from the computers in the World Trade Center!
Don't give up hope!