Tag: Seagate

Like a Phoenix

I am slowly but surely rising from the ashes of a dead hard drive.

About a month ago, my brand new 1.5 terabyte Seagate hard drive crashed.  I tried a few tricks to try to recover the data, but none of them worked.  I didn’t want to spend the $700 to $2700 I was quoted for data recovery, as I am a person of simple means.

Luckily I had old data from my old computer stored on 4 separate hard drives.  I used my “old” hard drive dedicated to video work and installed it, and then started transferring data.  Unfortunately my “backup” drive decided to crap out as soon as I got most of the data off of it.  That drive is the only other Seagate I have.  Their reputation isn’t doing so well with me.  I think I’m going to stick with Western Digital from now on.

I now have almost every episode from season one of ROX on my computer and edited.  There are a couple I’m having problems with, but this time around things have been much smoother than before.  It’s a shame because I spent 3 years working on that stuff.  The video is crisper, the audio is clearer – just a better product all around.  I think this disaster was actually a blessing in disguise.

Once I get these “trouble” episode problems resolved, which are:  Family Values Special, A Festival of Fools and Mom, Dad, I’m Getting Married.  I can start on DVD menu authoring which is a tedious process.  The more time I spend on it, the better the end product will be though.  I want this season to be the standard, not the example.

Season One will be made up of two volumes of 4 discs each.  This is mainly due to quality concerns.  In the set will be all 25 episodes!  Also included will be special commentary on episode 31, A Toast to Poverty by the shows’ producers – J and Editor B.  Plus a few surprising extras.  It should be a hit for all!

I finally have a backup plan so this shouldn’t happen again.  With some help I have purchased a backup hard drive for ROX and I will have my server up and going soon.  With those two options, I hope I have enough redundancy for this not to happen again.

I hope to have season one finalized within a few months, so be on the lookout!

Crash and Freeze?

Over the past couple of weekends I’ve been working hard at getting ROX season one to the production phase.  I’ve authored all the DVD menus and have done most of the design of the case inserts.  I had all the episodes ready.  It was just a matter of rendering all of the discs and making sure I had all of the extras we wanted before it would be finished.

All of that work took an extreme turn for the worse the other day.  I had been having troubles rendering video.  I thought it was a Sony Vegas or Quick Timeissue, so I removed and reinstalled.  I then went on to think it was a codec issue, so I removed every media codec I had (quite a few), still didn’t fix it.  I had given up for the night out of pure frustration as to why my 2 month old computer wasn’t working properly.

The next day I woke to something I’ve never seen before.  A black screen with a message:  Cannot read disk on SATA 0 and Cannot read disc on SATA 3.  WTF!

I restarted the machine to hear a distinct “clicking” noise.  One of the hard drives was toast, so I removed the secondary one (the one with all the important data on it) and the computer would then boot into safe mode.  Apparently, my virus software which I get from Indiana University somehow became corrupt and became “Incompatible with my version of windows.”  So I wiped it and am still installing my programs.

My 1.5tb drive which has all of my personal, business and ROX data was clicking.  What do I do?  I could not initialize the disk.  My first thought was disk recovery, so I called the only computer service place I trust and they referred me to Drive Savers.  They gave me a code that cuts 10% off the price and gives you a no data – no cost guarantee.  I called them up and the estimate was quite shocking, $700 to $2700.  Anybody want a large Seagate drive on the cheap?

Is the data worth that?  It contains 3 years of blood, sweat and tears on this project.  I conferred with my partner in crime, Editor B.  He said he would help, which was a relief.  My homeowners insurance policy will cover anything over $1000.  After much thought and searching my other hard drives for data, I’ve decided to try something a little ‘home brewed’ to alleviate my situation.  Freezing the drive.

Not like this picture though.  The moisture from the ice will ruin it.  I scoured the interwebs looking for “freezer trick hard drive” and came across many posts about how this can help you retrieve the data you need.  Sometimes it works for just a few minutes and sometimes it works for a few hours.  There is no definitive amount of time, I think it’s limited to just how damaged the hard drive is.

I put my hard drive in the freezer last night about 6pm and I plan on taking out about the same time tonight.  I wrapped it with some paper towels and placed it in a vacuum bag.  This will help with any moisture issues that could result.  I plan on keeping the hard drive in the bag and placing it in a larger bag with ice.  When I connect the drive the computer, this will help keep it cooler longer.

I have about 500 gigs of data that I would like to get off of this drive.  But I have prioritized what I am retrieving.

Wish me luck.

UPDATE: This did not work in my circumstance.  However I’ve been told it does.