If I still drank...

[BruteForce]

Pardon my mini rant. If you've never experienced this type of thing, stick around. Not a matter of IF but WHEN. Just a matter of time before you experience a catastrophic data loss.

Trying to maintain a zen-like calm... seems to be working on the outward appearance but that throbbing at the base of my skull tells me I'm just fooling myself. <SIGH>

Some background... I use PCs everyday in my business. My business depends on PCs. Many years back I learned my lesson (lost 3 years of saved work) and setup my network such that critical data is stored on redundant RAID arrays on a central server and backed up to tape every night. Mapped local drives on the workstations so they are saving files to the server. I've even gone through a multiple drive failure in one of the arrays. No problem, replace the drives and restore. Back in biz in a short time with little or no loss.

Fast forward to yesterday. Working on a custom code job for a client. Only about 2 hours of work, but then again I work fast so its about 1000 lines of VBScript. Usual practice for this type of job is to work on the file on their site and save a copy back to the server at the end of the day. This time, for some unknown reason (complacency? no failures for a while) I was working off a copy on my local desktop. You know... doing all the boilerplate stuff before actually running it live on their web server. You already know where this is headed so I'll just cut to the chase. Left at 5PM. Did not save copy to server. At around 7PM had a hard drive fail in the primary RAID0 array with the C: partition. Toast. No amount of coaxing or back door boot disks will get me that file. There's probably other stuff like desktop backgrounds, etc, I'd have liked to recover but its that little 100K text file that I really need.

:censor:

Ordered 2 replacement drives (UPS overnight) and will spend the weekend reinstalling everything. No RAID0 this time. I'll sacrifice the blazing speed for something with redundancy.

Well gotta go. I have a bunch unbillable work to catch up on. Now if that throbbing would just stop... anyone know any Zen mantras?

[MMM2003]

Sorry to hear about your problem. Not sure if it is worth the expense, but we have used this service to recover data of crashed HD's.

http://www.datareconllc.com/Pages/Recovery.htm
Ask for Brad. You can tell him Peter from Big Sky Engineering send you.

Good luck,

Peter aka MMM2003


Pardon my mini rant. If you've never experienced this type of thing, stick around. Not a matter of IF but WHEN. Just a matter of time before you experience a catastrophic data loss.

Trying to maintain a zen-like calm... seems to be working on the outward appearance but that throbbing at the base of my skull tells me I'm just fooling myself. <SIGH>

Some background... I use PCs everyday in my business. My business depends on PCs. Many years back I learned my lesson (lost 3 years of saved work) and setup my network such that critical data is stored on redundant RAID arrays on a central server and backed up to tape every night. Mapped local drives on the workstations so they are saving files to the server. I've even gone through a multiple drive failure in one of the arrays. No problem, replace the drives and restore. Back in biz in a short time with little or no loss.

Fast forward to yesterday. Working on a custom code job for a client. Only about 2 hours of work, but then again I work fast so its about 1000 lines of VBScript. Usual practice for this type of job is to work on the file on their site and save a copy back to the server at the end of the day. This time, for some unknown reason (complacency? no failures for a while) I was working off a copy on my local desktop. You know... doing all the boilerplate stuff before actually running it live on their web server. You already know where this is headed so I'll just cut to the chase. Left at 5PM. Did not save copy to server. At around 7PM had a hard drive fail in the primary RAID0 array with the C: partition. Toast. No amount of coaxing or back door boot disks will get me that file. There's probably other stuff like desktop backgrounds, etc, I'd have liked to recover but its that little 100K text file that I really need.

:censor:

Ordered 2 replacement drives (UPS overnight) and will spend the weekend reinstalling everything. No RAID0 this time. I'll sacrifice the blazing speed for something with redundancy.

Well gotta go. I have a bunch unbillable work to catch up on. Now if that throbbing would just stop... anyone know any Zen mantras?

[BruteForce]

Thanks for the referral. Last time I priced a disk recovery service (that lovely failure several years ago), they wanted something like $700 just to see if they could get anything off it. Then another $500 per GB for the restored files. That was for a "normal" NTFS SCSI disk. This drive is a member of a 2 disk stripped array. I would imagine, if its even possible, that it would be even more expensive.


Sorry to hear about your problem. Not sure if it is worth the expense, but we have used this service to recover data of crashed HD's.

http://www.datareconllc.com/Pages/Recovery.htm
Ask for Brad. You can tell him Peter from Big Sky Engineering send you.

Good luck,

Peter aka MMM2003

[grampaws]

Been there!!

Its not IF your HD fails it's WHEN!!:alone:

[Mike M]

Gotta mirror those puppys!

[ckadiddle]

When good drives go Bad........

[Breadfan]

How about this? You ever use WinPE? It's easy to use. http://www.runtime.org/raid.htm

Also, maybe there are some linux based utilities...you could try a Knoppix boot CD and see if you can read anything off the partition. Knoppix has read-only on NTFS, you can ftp the files off Knoppix or use a USB thumb drive.

There should be a way to get this back unless the drive is seriously toasted. If the drive is totally dead then might not be do-able...

[BruteForce]

How about this? You ever use WinPE? It's easy to use. http://www.runtime.org/raid.htm

Also, maybe there are some linux based utilities...you could try a Knoppix boot CD and see if you can read anything off the partition. Knoppix has read-only on NTFS, you can ftp the files off Knoppix or use a USB thumb drive.

There should be a way to get this back unless the drive is seriously toasted. If the drive is totally dead then might not be do-able...

Thanks for the suggestion. I've already redone the work file I couldn't get to. All is well for now. I do hate working on a laptop though. Keys are all in the wrong place. :rolleyes:

[Rick-n-Miami]

Use RAID5 or RAID10, or even RAID50 :)

[BruteForce]

Use RAID5 or RAID10, or even RAID50 :)

I think this mobo (Intel ICHR5 raid on chip) will support RAID1 (2 drive mirror). If not then its no RAID for me. RAID0 is nice and fast but its an all or nothing proposition. Both of my servers are RAID5 with daily backups. Now repeat after me... "I will save all work to the server no matter how insignificant it may seem".

[MMM2003]

I think this mobo (Intel ICHR5 raid on chip) will support RAID1 (2 drive mirror). If not then its no RAID for me. RAID0 is nice and fast but its an all or nothing proposition. Both of my servers are RAID5 with daily backups. Now repeat after me... "I will save all work to the server no matter how insignificant it may seem".

Similar setup to what we have. It's RAID5 with 3 HD's, daily backups on tape, and DB stuff gets backed up twice a day to the other server.

Gotta remember to store the tapes off-site. Fire-proof safe is only good for an hour. Hopefully I won't have to test my disaster recovery plan.

Good luck!

Peter

[BruteForce]

All is well again in BruteForceville.

Swapped out the RAID0 (2 x 36G WD Raptors) for a pair of 74G WD Raptors mirrored as a single volume using RAID1. Spent the weekend reinstalling work (& play) apps. I can't tell any significant performance difference from previous setup. Seems just as fast to me. Now I can enjoy that lovely, though fleeting, feeling that comes with an fresh bare drive OS install. I still have a second RAID0 array on a different controller but those are only used for paging file & games so I feel safe letting that be.

[Mike M]

I just finished my new gaming machine. Its a AMD 64/4000 with a Abit Fatality SLI motherboard and 2 gigs of Corsair matched ram, I got a BFG Overclocked Nvidia 7800GT with 256 mgs and a WD 250 gig with 16 megs of cache and a Antec Sonota case and a Sony DRU-810A DVD. This thing is FAST...Battlefield 2 here I come.

[BruteForce]

...Battlefield 2 here I come.

Keep an eye peeled for BruteForceMM when you're playing. He'll be the one with all the stripes on his arm and scalps on his belt. :uzi:

[Mike M]

I was a serious BF1942/Modern Combat player and I am just getting into BF2 now, if you want to meet up on a server sometime let me know.

[05GTMach70]

Don't know any Zen Mantra's and don't believe in them, but whenever I need to be calmed down or am haveing a bad day. i call on the Lord Jesus Christ and he gets me through awsomely :) Also i read the bible :). Hope this help you, I'll pray for you also :)




Pardon my mini rant. If you've never experienced this type of thing, stick around. Not a matter of IF but WHEN. Just a matter of time before you experience a catastrophic data loss.

Trying to maintain a zen-like calm... seems to be working on the outward appearance but that throbbing at the base of my skull tells me I'm just fooling myself. <SIGH>

Some background... I use PCs everyday in my business. My business depends on PCs. Many years back I learned my lesson (lost 3 years of saved work) and setup my network such that critical data is stored on redundant RAID arrays on a central server and backed up to tape every night. Mapped local drives on the workstations so they are saving files to the server. I've even gone through a multiple drive failure in one of the arrays. No problem, replace the drives and restore. Back in biz in a short time with little or no loss.

Fast forward to yesterday. Working on a custom code job for a client. Only about 2 hours of work, but then again I work fast so its about 1000 lines of VBScript. Usual practice for this type of job is to work on the file on their site and save a copy back to the server at the end of the day. This time, for some unknown reason (complacency? no failures for a while) I was working off a copy on my local desktop. You know... doing all the boilerplate stuff before actually running it live on their web server. You already know where this is headed so I'll just cut to the chase. Left at 5PM. Did not save copy to server. At around 7PM had a hard drive fail in the primary RAID0 array with the C: partition. Toast. No amount of coaxing or back door boot disks will get me that file. There's probably other stuff like desktop backgrounds, etc, I'd have liked to recover but its that little 100K text file that I really need.

:censor:

Ordered 2 replacement drives (UPS overnight) and will spend the weekend reinstalling everything. No RAID0 this time. I'll sacrifice the blazing speed for something with redundancy.

Well gotta go. I have a bunch unbillable work to catch up on. Now if that throbbing would just stop... anyone know any Zen mantras?

[BruteForce]

Don't know any Zen Mantra's and don't believe in them, but whenever I need to be calmed down or am haveing a bad day. i call on the Lord Jesus Christ and he gets me through awsomely :) Also i read the bible :). Hope this help you, I'll pray for you also :)

Will Jesus reimburse me for the new hard drives? :P No? Well then how about you? :lol: