Last night, a transformer on a power pole near my apartment exploded and brought down power for most of the city I live in. I didn't lose any power, but I did experience a brown-out where the power fluctuated for a bit. I immediately went into the computer room to shut down my computers, but I was too late. I'm pretty sure my hard drive is fried...maybe the entire computer is. I'm not too worried, because I'm insured. However, I have everything on the drive that got fried. Years of Poser related items. I tried to hook it up to my second computer as a slave, but nothing happens. It won't even boot. When I remove the damaged drive, the second PC works fine. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to recover my data? Is it even possible? Any help is greatly appreciated!

Oh man, I would go crazy, did you back up your work on some CD's, if you had anything of ours I will go look it up and resend it to you. And of course you can go to our site and pick up any lost freebies. Sharen

I know some freebies are no longer available, I've been collecting them for ages so if there's anything I've got that isn't anywhere else just let me know and I'll send it over. My Email is Nornaddict@aol.com

Data retrieval is possible, and it sounds like, if your computer only experiences a brown-out, a good PC technician might be able to get it for you. There's some pretty good retrieval software out there now just for circumstances like this, so call around. You might be able to save yourself a lot of problems. And in the future, BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP. =)

Contact either your computer vendor or the manufacturer of the hard drive. Most hard drive manufacturers offer data recovery services for broken hard drives. It is usually expensive, but may be worth it of you lost a lot of irreplaceable data. (Perhaps your insurance will help pay for data recovery?)

For a brown out, data recovery is probably a good prospect--the computer's power supply is probably the fried item! And that powers the hard drives as well as the rest of the 'puter. Do try a PC technician. And invest in a CD burner which gets used! :^) --Nan who now thinks SHE should take her own advice & go back up a bunch of stuff!

If you're going to run your 'puter 24/7, then remember these three letters: U P S. It pays to get a small uninterruptible power supply (they're kind of pricey, but the cheapest ones can go for as little as $50.) You don't need enough battery to last you the next three days, but a small one will keep your machine powered-up just long enough for you to shut it down properly (about 5 minutes or so.) The better personal UPS models have a serial port that you plug into your computer, so that when power goes out, a signal goes out to your machine, and it then automatically shuts down all running processes, then shuts itself down... you don;t even have to be there to see it happen. /P

Yes, I have used a UPS for several years now. I lived in Florida for about 4 years, and that is known as "The Lightning Capitol of the World." In my first week in Florida, the power blipped out a few times a day, and I lost my current projects when the computer rebooted. I got a UPS that first week, and am now on my second, more powerful UPS. I live in Maine now. The house wiring is a bit flakey. If you use the wrong electrical appliances at the same time, the power goes out in our upstairs office. I lost some equipment a few months ago when the battery on my old UPS died. I didn't mess around. I got a better UPS. Oh, and another thing: Backup everything to CD!!! CD's are less than $1 apiece now.Buy them in bulk quantities and save. You can afford that, right? It's much better to have a collection of 100 or more CD's than it is to be wiped out by power outages. Oh, that reminds me. It's time to make another CD!!! I don't want to lose the stuff I've downloaded over the past week or so. Oh, and the artwork I created! Can't forget that. I do wish you the best of luck. Ron

I can feel your pain... I lost a hard drive over the weekend. I was in the process of burning back up cds when it died... a little screen flicker then it was gone. I lost Flash, Dreamweaver and Fireworks because I bought them from the tbyb ones that came with Computer Arts and Macromedia won't replace programs that were purchased this way. One big expensive lesson. Ed

Sometimes a dead hard drive isn't totally dead. I gave up on mine, and opened the case to get ready for warranty replacement. I got silly, then unplugged and replugged all the cables, and turned on the computer. Whoopies, all my stuff was still there. You never know?! Ron

Attached Link: http://grc.com/default.htm

If you can possibly get the drive running, Steve Gibson's SpinRite 5 is the best utility for data recovery I've seen. It's worked on every Hard drive I've been able to get spinning, regardless of any other problems (see link to GRC site). If it won't even spin, there are a lot of Data Revovery shops that can open the drive, transfer the disks into a special open drive, & copy off all the data to a new one. I think there's even contact info to a good one on the GRC site. Good luck with it!

Another great recovery program is Recover 98. It even recovers deleted files. It's saved my hide more than once. It doesn't require you to go into DOS mode either. It's a real life saver. I had a huge system meltdown a while back and recovered most of my losses with Recover 98. The weirdest part of the meltdown was that an external 40G drive I had gotten, which was not concerned in the meltdown of my main disc, seemed to have gotten fried, and I hadn't really had a chance to use it. An inquiry to my local shops told me it would probably be cheaper just to buy another. I may just do that.

Attached Link: http://www.midwayisd.org/PDFs/help/200ways.pdf

When you put it in the second PC as a slave, did you change the jumpers on the back (if any) for it to function as a slave drive?

If you've ruled out the basics and aren't willing/able to pay the steep cost of data recovery shop, you might try this link to various things to try.

You would need to check the jumpers on the Master Drive also. And some times drives are just incompatible with each other.

If you're not sure if the drive will spin or not, try just plugging in the power only, and then boot up. If it doesn't even spin, the jumpers won't really matter :-(( If it does spin, but the computer doesn't acknowlege there's a drive there when you've hooked up the cable, try the jumpers. Or, if it was the C: drive in the original computer, try hooking it as the C: drive in the substitute unit. If it's still unbootable, consider getting SpinRite 5 (or Recover98, though I'm not personally familiar with it). With Spinrite you boot from a SpinRite floppy & run it from there. Let us know how things are progressing. Good Luck!

I just realised I can't offer to send freebies to anyone, I'm going to get myself in so much trouble for saying that

How much does it cost to burn a CD once a week ??? What if someone stole your computer ?? What if the house burned down hopefully without loss of life ?? I hope you have not forgoten to insure your car's,house and yourself/family ?? Quite honestly I dont feel sorry for you.

I can't be harsh with someone who lost months or years of work. I can sympathize. I can try to remind them of how cheap it is to backup important data these days. I can even recommend some good software. I am still amazed that people would be in a position where one "act of God" would wipe out all that stuff. It wasn't too long ago that I struggled with a 1GB hard drive. I had to do a project, print it, then delete it. I didn't have enough room to save anything. I was in heaven when I could afford the Iomega zip drive. Oh, and I was even more ecstatic when CD Burners became affordable! Ever since 1997 I've backed up everything that might be remotely important. I recommend everyone do the same. Ron