It started during a beautiful afternoon on November 1st. I'm sitting on the couch watching TV around 2:00 pm when I hear this "click" -- it came from the general area of my computer. My couch sits about 10 feet from the computer desk so it was noticeable. I glanced over and both monitors still show the screensavers running (I normally don't run them, but I have a new dual monitor setup and have the Matrix thing going). Anyway, back to watching TV. About 20 minutes later, things really got interesting.

I see a flash out of the corner of my eye and glance over to see a blue screen on both monitors. Nice. I've been running XP since it came out, reinstalled it maybe twice since, and have only seen one or two blue screens which are usually due to hardware failure. So I knew something was up. I walked over, rebooted and I'm greeted with a "hard disk failure" error.

My computer was running two hard drives. The primary drive is a 40GB which only houses XP and some other minor programs. The secondary 160GB drive houses, well, my computer/internet life. It houses my email storage for Outlook Express, website files for 20+ websites, including clients, (scripts, Photoshop files, misellaneous code, project ideas, etc), pictures (Disney World trips, a recent trip to Miami, a trip up near Chicago, my Mom's trip to Russia...), all of the programs I run (design, games, many others), banking information (MS Money files, etc) -- let's just say everything that has been built up for quite some time and some of which is irreplaceable.

So I begin the process of unplugging hard drives seeing which is causing the problem. Knowing my luck, I already knew which one it was but I had to check. The 40GB drive is upwards of 4 years old and should be the one to go, the 160GB is at best 2 years old. Again, my luck, the failure was with the 160GB. It wasn't a read/write failure, the hard drive would not spin, period. At this moment I begin to experience the worst moment off my life and I've had horrid moments in my life.

I think of the initial stuff, much of what's mentioned above -- website files, pictures, email, banking files. But the more mental inventory I took, the worse it got. You could've stabbed me in the stomach multiple times and it would not have felt worse than what I was already feeling. I woke up around 11:00 am that Thursday morning, I'm still awake at 1:05 am on Saturday morning as I type this section right here.

Recalling a trick I had read about dozens of times before, around 11:00 pm Thursday night I decided to try it. This involves sticking the hard drive in the freezer for a few hours, sticking it back in the computer and praying it temporarily fixed whatever problems may have occurred in order to recover some data. This most often works with drives that still spin but have spin errors, not with a drive that just won't spin.

Fast forward to 2:00 am Friday, this expirement failed. I decided to be more direct and do everything you're told not to do with a hard drive. I plugged the power to it and left it hanging out of the tower. I held it in my hand and not-very gently hit the the hard drive around the edges, thinking I may jar the platters loose. I tapped it on top, on bottom. Went back to my non-gentle hits around the edges. Nothing.

I gave up at this point. So I just laid the drive down still plugged in and went about some business since my 40GB still worked and I could get into Windows, browse the 'net and whatnot. Around 3:00 am I hear a noise, a faint noise, but a noise. I pick the drive up and it's spinning! Thank you Lord! So I plug the IDE cable in, reboot the computer, yet it doesn't detect the drive. I reboot again, go into the BIOS and try to get it to auto-detect the drive, several times. Nothing. Forget it, the drive is FUBAR. I "save and exit" from the BIOS, the computer reboots and on the initial screen I see BOTH hard drives and my DVD drive.

Elation!

Then panic. I get into Windows, the drive is recognized, all the data is still there but now I have to salvage everything I absolutely need. My 40GB only had about 24GB free space, but I copied the most important stuff to it. Then I burned it to DVDs and kept going. I got the major stuff backed up, if it fails again it will hurt but not nearly as bad. I did this until around 9:00-10:00 am Friday morning.

Fast forward to around 10:00 pm Friday night. The drive has never given any indication of failing again and every single file is now copied over to a new 250GB drive I picked up at Circuit City for $75. There was 121GB of information on that drive. Freak out? Nah.

I know, I know. backup. I used to do it often, even if things may have been a couple of months old. My website folders have been in disarray, I kept putting off doing some "spring cleaning" which put off backing them up. But now I just don't care, I'm putting myself on a strict backup program. Just like my first DUI car roll, you only need one time to learn your lessons there on how it can change your life. I mean the 'live' site files I could recover from my server, but the Photoshop files would have been lost, the project ideas, the coding tests, anything not yet live would've been gone -- not only for my sites but client sites.

Some of the pictures I could go and retake, but they don't capture the intial moment of the original picture. That's why you take a picture, capture the moment.

It's now 1:30 am Saturday. I am fixing to go to bed because I am finally not stressed. I don't feel like I'm going to throw up. I don't feel like breaking down. I feel content. Until Monday when I go into to full cleanup and backup mode. I don't care if it takes two weeks. If I could instill in someone what I went through, they would fall apart.

Back your shit up, somehow. And occasionally back that up on to new media.

Comments for "My Life Crashed Before My Eyes"

It stayed running, but I don't use it anymore. I went out the next day and got the new drive and copied everything over to it. But I'm keeping backups of the important stuff.

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Thanks for the extra info, it's pretty humid here all the time so that could make a difference. I'll throw in a couple of dessicator bags.

Your drive has been OK since it started back up again? Bet you have triple copies of everything now. I made a few new email accts. to send a copy of my orders to on another computer so I don't get freaked out again if (when) there's another problem.

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If you try the freezer thing, make sure you put the drive in a sealable freezer bag, and I would throw a couple of paper towels in with it to help eliminate as much moisture as possible. It may still build some up, however, and will quickly melt when you remove it from the freezer. So I would leave it hanging out of the computer.

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