My laptop decided to crash on me for the first time ever. It's a Toshiba Satellite A505. Has all the bells and whistles, and WIN 7.

Long story short, because of the annoying backup utility, I was able to recover everything on my laptop, except that in the process, I decided to upgrade to WIN7 Ultimate, so I could run XP programs that I have lying around.

Lesson learned for me. I was always putting off the backup for later because it's a RAM hog. Now, I always let it do its thing. I would have lost a lot of stuff. Not just my runtime, but a whole slew of other things: a thousand plus pictures of my kids growing up over the last 10 years, nearly 500GB of music, all the renders and short animations that I have done trying to learn Poser, background pics and other textures and maps. There was a lot of stuff on this laptop. I would have been decimated if I lost it all.

Always backup your files. I am sure glad that I did.

And make a recovery disc...

I recently lost 123GB of Poser data / content because my external hard disk drive died.  Sigh.

Happened to me some years back, I now have 3 sets of back ups. Two HD's in my box and an XHD as well.

I nearly lost client files with that problem, my main drive and back up drive failed at the same time, how rare is that!! That is the reason I now have 3..

Backup Backup Backup! Do your weekly backup! I'm months behind schedual!

Well, even with backups on DVDs which store up to 4GB of data, my case of 123GB worth of lost content means popping a lot of DVDs in and out of my DVD drive - hope it holds up !

Wondering if I should use a cloud-based solution....

I recently lost 123GB of Poser data / content because my external hard disk drive died.  Sigh.

That much data might justify the cost of a data retrieval service.

Because the cloud is comprised of someone else's computers, I wonder if it is a license violation to load your Poser stuff to it?

I've had a few HD crashes; it's the main cause of component failure, btw.  I back my stuff to DVD although it'd take a while to restore everything.

When it comes to client files, I always keep at least one back up to off site storage. 

I have multiple external HD backups of my Runtimes, and  keep DVD backups of my content in a fireproof box in the basement.

Multiple backups are in violation of many EULA's, but as far as I'm concerned, that's just too bad.....

The hard drive which failed was a Seagate external, in my case.  I ran their diagnostic app from their website, and it advised that the device had failed physically, so cannot retrieve any data.  Sigh.

Even DVD's have a finite life and can go bad. 

Quote - Even DVD's have a finite life and can go bad. > Quote - **

There's nothing worse than a DVD gone bad!**

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With the cost of large drives being fairly cheap I use an external Sata caddy and keep one drive at home and another in a second location.  Each Drive has an image of the 'C' drive and then all the data is in another folder.  I use DVD RAM disks for some data as they are supposed to last longer and even then I copy them to new disks every 3 years.

I still use the PC I had for my Poser work up to a year ago and last week one drive stopped without warning.  All I could hear was the sickening tick of a dead drive, I suspect the drive is not spinning at all but thankfully the DVDs served their purpose.   The drive was 6 years old so I guess I have had my monies worth. 

Backing up can be a pain but sooner or later it bites if you don't. 

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Quote - Even DVD's have a finite life and can go bad. > Quote - **

There's nothing worse than a DVD gone bad!**

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hehehehehehehe

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Quote - Even DVD's have a finite life and can go bad.

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There's nothing worse than a DVD gone bad!**

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Oh I want that Emoti outfit!

DVDs do go bad, huh...

heh heh

sad but fact of life, in that case

imo backing up to DVD's is a slow and tedious process, the perfect excuse for not doing it. Mac users have no excuse since the introduction of the on board Time Machine, a very user friendly backup app.  hmm, guess I better go backup my files, um, maybe tomorrow!

Quote - The hard drive which failed was a Seagate external, in my case.  I ran their diagnostic app from their website, and it advised that the device had failed physically, so cannot retrieve any data.  Sigh.

Well, since you have nothing to lose you might as well open the case, extract the drive and hook it up to your internal harness to test that theory for yourself.

That's what I would do as well before just taking their word for it.  There is some really good retrieval software out there.  It has helped me retrieve things off a harddrive that was in RAWdata

If it's making a noise that's something different.  There are different things you can do to try to get the data off of one that is even clicking, but with those scenarios, you usually have just one or two shots to get what you can off of them.

Not being a hardware type of person, I'd probably not try dissasembling the external drive myself.  Probably could take it to a workshop that does data retrieval.  Now still rebuilding runtimes from DVD-roms, as my time permits.  

The Geek Squad helped me retrieve a lot of data when my old laptop decided that it didn't want to get along with the motherboard anymore. Cost me $75, but they got everything I needed of the laptop. Nothing I tried was working, because the motherboard got corrupted, and that's something a bit beyond my expertise.

Attached Link: http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/free-data-recovery-software.htm

Used an earlier version of this a few months back when my 2nd HDD curled up it's toes. Got well over 90% back.

That taught me to backup better as well. Now my approach is to do stuff in in 2 or 3 working folders. Never the my documents folder because it's tied to a user account that can get corrupted.  Also 1st place nasties will look at.

End of every day I back the stuff over to the new 2nd internal drive and one of 2 external drives. Then couple of times a week backup to CD (not dvd). Can make it hard to find stuff sometimes , but it's better than losing things totally.

Quote - Not being a hardware type of person, I'd probably not try dissasembling the external drive myself.  Probably could take it to a workshop that does data retrieval.  Now still rebuilding runtimes from DVD-roms, as my time permits.  

Got any friends that know how to install a hard drive?

For a test all that is required is to open the external enclosure unplug the cables to the drive then plug in the cables from the internal harness. After booting up the computer the drive will be recognized if it's accessible.

If the drive is visible you should have full access to your files. If it's not visible then it's time to spend money at a shop.

@ bob1965 - I might grab a hold of a rather busy young cousin and twist his arm...

Meanwhile, DVD burning appears to be the practical method of backing-up for most of us here, even if DVDs deteriorate over time.

On a side note, re-installing content has helped remind me of a lot of items which I'd forgotten about.  I should try using them again !

I've had dvd's go bad am now in the process of gathering all on the external in some kind of order then backing up from there to dvd. Had a terabyte external go bad a year ago and still trying to replace everything.