Computer HDD recovery & backup thread?

Wasn't there a thread on HDD data recovery and backup programs for windoze here recently? I recall reading it somewhere (could have been on an email list I'm on but couldn't find it in my messages there).

As luck would have it a friend came round with a dead HDD - well not so much dead as it kept spinning up with a rather uncertain sound as if the motor speed was fluctuating, accompanied by loud clunking noises as if the heads kept getting parked (sort of sound you get when a HDD powers down). Completely inaccessible, but probably recoverable if she wanted to pay £loadsa to the sort of folks who can take the platter out and read it in another drive.

As I recall there was also a discussion of snapshot-type backup progs for windoze, of which there seemed to be quite a few. Which of course is what she should have been using and ought to from now on. I just wanted to find out what's available. (I have a hand-rolled 'copy with hard links and rsync' type snapshot backup to external HDD on my own linux system.)

Reply to
John Stumbles
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Not sure, but I need the occasional Windows backup (I use it spasmodically, Windows that is).

I've been using Paragon Hard Disk Manager, seems to work fine. I've done a couple of total restores with it. Free copies in cover CDs, about 30 quid for latest version.

Reply to
Bob Eager

A friend's hard drive was doing that and was unreadable. I managed to get all the data off the drive. Here's how: Put the drive in a plastic bag in the freezer for a day. Then quickly plug the drive into the computer and start it up. It may help to put the drive upside down or on its edge. Copy all the data to another drive. You have a few minutes until the drive warms up again. You can repeat this process several times. It took me three sessions to get all the data.

Reply to
Matty F

Blimey - that's extreme data recovery. I was lucky last time it happened to me. Drive went all clicky, and about half an hour later failed completely. Fortunately, I had all partitions on that one mirrored, and had a spare, new HDD to drop in in place. Will remember your freezer trick though.

JW

Reply to
John Whitworth

Paragon Drive Backup is a good bet, a little more tailored towards archiving - and again often available on a freebie cover disk. I've been using the 2004 version for years.

There's also a free version on Paragon's website - don't know how useful it'll be or what features have been disabled.

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Reply to
Stephen Howard

The full version has the 'non archiving' (i.e. individual file) features. I reckoned it was worth the 30 quid. It can build a (linux based) recovery boot CD, which can talk to the network and recover from another machine if required.

Reply to
Bob Eager

I have found this one works well for snapshots and it's free.

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also use Recuva if it is possible to access an ailing disc, also free.

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Reply to
Corporal Jones

Thanks to the recommendations on here, I'm now a Dropbox convert. If I ever need more than the free 2 gig, I'll be happy to pay for it to avoid all this backup hassle.

Reply to
stuart noble

If you try that I recommend leaving the cables hanging out the bag and taping the bag closed to avoid getting loads of condensation on the drive. You can extend the time the disk is cold by including a freezer pack. I have never seen it work BTW.

Reply to
dennis

In message , Corporal Jones writes

it seemed to work really well.

I previously tried some Paragon backup program, but abandoned it after I had a problem, went onto their forum and had a reply from someone from Paragon asking me to post some files onto said forum. I was unable to post the files because of some difficulty that I can't now remember with the forum software and my question on how to follow through went unanswered. I thought the support was better than I expected on a free program, but.......

With any of these free programs, I would now do thorough full tests before trusting them.

Reply to
Bill

I wish I'd known that. I used to have an image storage device which included a 40 GB hard disk. I had three quarters of the images from a two-day shoot in Cornwall stored on it - the rest were still on flash memory cards. It became unresponsive as soon as I got home (Buckinghamshire) and I'm pretty sure it was never dropped or knocked in between.

I ended up paying several hundred pounds to a data recovery service. There was no alternative as I could not re-shoot the job.

Now I carry a netbook and portable hard drive and I copy all the images to both. I've never had a problem with this system.

Reply to
Bruce

Well some of us did point out that HD aren't good backup devices. Yours wasn't even a backup device but an extension to primary storage which is not a good idea at all. Even now I would invest in more flash cards for the camera and keep them as well as the copy on the computer and its backup. Keep the flash cards in your pocket in case someone pinches the bags with the cameras and laptop in. I bet you keep the backup disk with the computer.

Reply to
dennis

Yes, John, it wasn't that long ago, maybe 6 or 8 weeks. Like so many of us (!) I occasionally backup my data files to an external USB HD, but am aware that I should do it properly.

I've managed to find the scrap of paper I made a list of back-up apps. that came off that previous thread.

Karen Replicator EMC Retrospect MS Synctoy Cobian Backup Memeo Secondcopy

As is usual I haven't done any more than make a list !!

Rob

Reply to
robgraham

Should have done this first - on the basis that 'Synctoy' is a pretty unique search target, I found hits in early April and early Feb this year. Rob

Reply to
robgraham

Memeo isn't a system backup tool, its a data backup tool. It doesn't do images, it copies files to another location immediately after they have been updated.

Reply to
dennis

And often /during/ the update, resulting in a corrupted backup. It's also a big resource hog. Otherwise it's a decent file backup utility.

Reply to
Mark

8<

I have never seen that. It uses file locks, I suppose a badly written app could ignore the locks.

It uses a few percent of cpu and about 20M of ram on my system, not much of a resource hog.

Reply to
dennis

That's what they told me. I don't accept this argument however. The program needs to work in the real world not just in some utopian software heaven. Most applications do /not/ lock their files.

I don't understand why they don't have a scheduled mode or wait to backup files.

Often up to 50% of CPU here and I've seen it use nearly 500M of memory. In addition it seriously slowed boot up times, despite me having a reasonably fast machine.

Reply to
Mark

I needed to recover data from a badly corrupted disc with thousands of bad blocks recently. Windows could not see any partitions on the drive. I tried several recovery programmes, but they all choked on the disc controller lockups that they were getting from the drive.

Finally I used GNU ddrescue under cygwin on a W2k machine. There were still some problems because the recovered data could not always be written to a drive on the same interface as the failed one. This was overcome by putting the defective drive on a USB interface, so even if the dead drive locked up it did not take the whole computer down with it.

After about 3 weeks most of the data was successfully recovered. I had hoped to continue for longer, but the PC locked up and I had to reboot it. At this point Windows could see the drive that I was copying to and it insisted on trying to repair it which meant that any further use of ddrescue would have been counterproductive.

So two lessons (apart from being more rigorous about backing up the things that can easily be forgotten such as emails):

1) ddrescue (which is free) can work when several commercial offerings have failed.

2) It would be better to run it from within Linux rather than from cygwin under Windows so that the target drive does not get messed up by the operating system being stupid.

John

Reply to
John Walliker

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