I really hate you right now, Seagate

[Draper Mel]

BACKUP DRIVE HAS BEEN SAVED.

Backup drive has now left the library.

Backup drive has been saved.

Oh, thank goodness! My jaw literally dropped when I read that earlier about your files disappearing.

Pretty much like that.

[Racket_Man]

I had something similiar happen a little over a year ago.

On my previous PC I had a Seagate USB external backup drive hooked to the PC. One night I noticed that the scheduled backup had been running for quite a long time (usually only took 10 - 15 minutes for new/changed stuff to be backed up).

When It finally "completed". I I tried to browse the drive to see if anything was wrong. I could not even get to the drive. I completely freaked out as all of my download, program file, pics, videos, documents, etc. were backed up on that drive. I then started to notice that my PC was now acting funny. I posered down the PC and unplugged the external USB drive but the PC was still freaking out now by continually rebooting itself.

It turns out that the HDD in the PC decided to kill itself.

Trudge to the big yellow price tag and plunk down some $$$$'s for a new system and a couple of NEW external USB drives. after setting things up, I plugged the old drive into a USB port and crossed my fingers, burnt some sage and incense, and said a prayer mantra.

the drive got recognised AND Win7 reported that the drive was repairable and started the process.

It took 48 hours to repair/rebuild a 640G drive

AND

I got EVERYTHING back as far as I can tell

as a last resort was I prepared to put the main HDD into a USB cage and try from there.

I now have 2 seperate backups.

[charred]

WHY DO I KEEP LETTING YOU OUT OF MY SIGHT?! Geezel peezel, kid!

[sms001]

Just out of curiosity Seraph, what did you use to recover/undelete the files on the bu drive?

(And happy that you did.)

[Seraph]

We have a bad update now....

So, last night, I'm copying over files, and I get an odd error, that I can't remove, copy, or delete a folder because "the directory is not empty". As I'm looking up the error, I noticed a faint clicking noise.

....Yep. My external backup is failing. And the error is from bad sectors on the hard drive. They are EVERYWHERE.

I managed to copy files over by hand and retrieve 99% of my work (the only couple of things I wasn't able to save were from 2008, and a both one-off clients)...but now I'm going to need to do a new backup. Guess I'm going to be sucking it up and upgrading my Dropbox.

It just figures, of COURSE I'd need to have a backup of my backup of my backup. /facepalm.

Just out of curiosity Seraph, what did you use to recover/undelete the files on the bu drive?

(And happy that you did.)

I actually used a rollback program that was buried in the external. Which, apparently, did not do such a good job, but it worked for what I needed.

[Crossbow]

At least you were able to recover most of what you lost. And it sounds like an upgrade to Dropbox or some other cloud backup is in order.

*edit* Did a quick Google search and found a *rather* involved DIY fix that *might* do the trick. If not, it sounds like you haven't lost anything but time...
http://www.overclock.net/t/457286/se...-fix-with-pics

I'm not that technical and I make no guarantees it'll work, but if the drive is just a target for a high-powered rifle at this point, it might be worth looking into.

[Chromatix]

This is why larger businesses use RAID arrays. A drive can go bad, but the files are still there, just waiting for a new drive to complete the array. You can use RAID-1 with just two identical drives, or RAID-5 with more than that.

Backups are also a good idea even with a RAID array, but these now protect mostly against user error and software glitches rather than hardware failure. Again, larger companies like to have multiple backups, alternating between them to ensure that one mistake doesn't erase both at the same time.

Since your livelihood depends somewhat on your data, I think you should make investments in this direction.

[wolfie]

The big problem with RAID (and what Seraph was doing is close enough to have the same problem) is common-mode failure. What this means is that a flaw that takes out your main drive will also take out your backup. Typical problems of this nature include:

- Same model and age of hard drive for both, so they tend to fail around the same time.
- Physical damage (house burns down, etc.)
- Theft of the entire computer

As an alternative to cloud backup, have you considered periodic (daily would probably be overkill, but weekly or monthly should be good) backup of your files to recordable DVD media, with the backups stored off-site? You'd eliminate the issue of your backup device wearing out by continuous running, it's fairly inexpensive, and in a worst-case situation (having to restore onto a "virgin" machine due to theft/destruction of original) you're using industry-standard media, rather than a dedicated backup device (e.g. tape drive) where a compatible model may not be available when you need to build a new machine.