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Hello all- Computer Died-Need Help


giga01452

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Hello all. My computer has passed on to the great beyond. As such so did my LOR files. I am looking for any and all Halloween and Christmas 16-32 or 64Ch sequences. We do a charity drive each year and my LOR display is a big part of the show. In the past 5 years we have raised close to $100,000 in donations. We fund all of the cost so 100% of the donated funds go directly to the various charities we work with. Any help would be greatly appreciated.  

Thanks in advance for your help

Gig

PS: I have invested in a cloud backup so in theory this should never happen again. Unless hackers somehow find LOR files more alluring than Nudes of celebrities. HAHA Happy Lighting to all. 

Edited by giga01452
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It may be worth contacting a local computer repair person or company. If hardware caused the computer to crash they can swap tour hard drive into another computer. And easily recover your files

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If the drives are NOT RAID, pull them and put them in a USB enclosure.All your files may be intact for use with the new computer.

RAID adds a bit of complexity. Be sure and label each drive with its connection ID (or slot if a card caged RAID)

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As several people suggested, it is quite likely that your data is safe on the hard drive of the old computer.  Any computer nerd should be able to recover them for you.  Likely wont cost much more than a box of twinkies.  If there is no handy nerd around, a computer store should be able to help you.  It will cost a little, but FAR less than the value of your time to rebuild your sequences.

As for backups, suggested reading:

I wrote this last fall...

Good reminder for everybody here.

 

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6 hours ago, giga01452 said:

Hello all. My computer has passed on to the great beyond. As such so did my LOR files. I am looking for any and all Halloween and Christmas 16-32 or 64Ch sequences. We do a charity drive each year and my LOR display is a big part of the show. In the past 5 years we have raised close to $100,000 in donations. We fund all of the cost so 100% of the donated funds go directly to the various charities we work with. Any help would be greatly appreciated.  

Thanks in advance for your help

Gig

PS: I have invested in a cloud backup so in theory this should never happen again. Unless hackers somehow find LOR files more alluring than Nudes of celebrities. HAHA Happy Lighting to all. 

Seagate recovered all of my wifes files from a DEAD HDD. Was it free? No, however the files were picture and videos of my two little boys from birth until last year.

Best of luck

JR

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Definately check into  seeing if you can recover data.  If you have to hire someone, chalk it up as a learning moment in not doing backups. 

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48 minutes ago, mpageler said:

Definately check into  seeing if you can recover data.  If you have to hire someone, chalk it up as a learning moment in not doing backups. 

In my case it was the backup. Not much could have been done. I never figured that WD would sell "brand new" HDD that were 5 years old. Would have never known if the drive didn't fail and I had to open up the cover. The drive was probably only used a total of 2 hours running time and stayed in the safe between uploads.

What I learned~ never buy a HDD in an enclosure!

Now I have 2 backups and 2 clouds. And Seagate also kept a copy in their system.

JR

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I've battled with this for years....

Typically a modern HD dies because the bearings that allow the platter pack to spin eventually wear and either slow the spin down so much that it can't be compensated by the electronics, or they completely seize.   In my experience, which goes back to the mid 1980s, 80% of the HD failues I have dealt with are spin related, about 15% are electronics, and the other 5 are other (including head crashes).

There are 2 schools of thought when it comes to hard drives, since most failures tend to be bearing related.  

  1. Shut them down as much as possible.  It is the total hours that kill bearings.  Less use = Longer life
  2. Keep them running as much as possible.  It is the start/stop cycles that kill bearings.  Long term storage allows the lubrication to separate leading to gunk and seized bearings.  

I find myself more and more in camp 2 - letting them run in a controlled environment 24/7 extends their life.  I have 11 10,000 RPM disks that have been spinning now for 13 years.  I did have one fail a couple of years ago, and quickly replaced it (I love RAID).  

Also, it has been my experience that a drive left to spin will usually let you know that it is failing before it actually fails - by the grinding sound you hear.  You will hear the bearing starting to go and usually have just enough time to copy everything onto a new disk.  If you should ever hear something not right, I would NOT turn off the computer.  Leave it on while you get another drive and start making a backup.  If you turn it off, the bearing may completely seize.  

I've also had drives in storage for a few years (when you help everyone on the planet with their computer, you tend to stack up spare parts).  A few times, but more than you would expect, when I power them up they refuse to spin.  Giving them a light tap will most times get them to spin up (but that is not something I would recommend you do).

Sorry.  A little off topic, but important (I think at least).

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  • 4 weeks later...

Agree with you Mike, the older system drives did do that, but most of the newer drives are getting away from some of this and becoming totally electronic with no moving parts, so, since there are no moving parts, no bearings to wear out or lock up a drive if it sits too long.

  Next time I replace any HD's in my computers, I'm using these newer all electronic drives, much more reliable in the long run. {or so I've heard!}

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14 minutes ago, Orville said:

Agree with you Mike, the older system drives did do that, but most of the newer drives are getting away from some of this and becoming totally electronic with no moving parts, so, since there are no moving parts, no bearings to wear out or lock up a drive if it sits too long.

  Next time I replace any HD's in my computers, I'm using these newer all electronic drives, much more reliable in the long run. {or so I've heard!}

I respectfully disagree with '...most of the newer drives'.  While SSDs have become more and more prevalent (I use them in several of my own computers, and love them), physical spinning disks are still the norm in many/most new computers - especially the pre-built 'value' computers that are sold in big box stores, etc.  When looking at Amazon, 7 of the top 10 true laptops (where an SSD really makes sense due to power consumption) still have spinning disks.  I did not look, however I would expect that desktop machines would be even higher (say 9 of 10).

When I said 'Modern HDDs', I was more referring to HDDs that run at or above 5400 RPM, as opposed to the slow disks of the late 80's early 90s that ran around 3200-3600 RPM.  In my experience, drives of that vintage had more issues with head crashes than bad bearings (usually attributable to the slower rotation speeds that made them much more susceptible to shock).

BSDs (Big spinning disks) are also still the norm when it comes to large file stores - My 10TB file server (which is actually 12TB since it is raid) is all spinning disks.  The reason for that is cost.  Even a high density cheap SSD like the MX300 is running approximately $300/TB, where as a high quality spinning disk , one that is data center grade, clocks in around $48/TB.  $600 vs $3600 is a big difference.

If you move to lower quality consumer-centric drives, the price per TB is even lower.  I can find HDDs for $23/TB.  

Remember too that SSDs (more correctly flash memory) have their own downsides as well.  Cheap flash memory can have access times lower than that of a spinning disk.  Flash memory also 'wears out' after so many re-writes.  

Quality SSD drives, like the Samsung 950 Pro m.2 that I personally have in my LOR development computer, can have outstanding specifications as well as exceptional durability.  Mine is warranted to last for 400TB of writes/5 years - which is a TON.  I've had mine for over a year now and have just reached 2.2TB written.  The problem is of course cost:  $600/TB.  When you look at needing 12TB worth, that's $7,200 vs $600 (or even $280 if I used cheap spinning disks).

So while the SSD has definitely made inroads, it has not yet replaced the spinning disk.  Eventually I predict that it will but right now most modern computers are still coming with traditional HDDs.  The reason is cost:  A quality 1 TB SSD, and nothing else, will run approximately $600.  A COMPLETE 1TB spinning hdd Laptop computer can be had for $350.

 

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Of course, the best config is a compromise with a relatively small couple of hundred GB SSD for the operating system and applications for lightning fast boot times. Then add a  big, possibly external spinning drive for data. You will never go back.

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13 minutes ago, PhilMassey said:

Of course, the best config is a compromise with a relatively small couple of hundred GB SSD for the operating system and applications for lightning fast boot times. Then add a  big, possibly external spinning drive for data. You will never go back.

That's what I have in my server.  C: is a pair of 120GB SSD (in RAID 1 configuration) with the OS and application.  D: is a pair of 1TB spinning disks (also in a RAID 1 configuration).  I can't cost justify SSDs in the TB + range.

 

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Got  120GB SSD boot drives in my server and production machines, and 2 TB spinners in my server, synced to Dropbox.

 

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18 hours ago, PhilMassey said:

Of course, the best config is a compromise with a relatively small couple of hundred GB SSD for the operating system and applications for lightning fast boot times. Then add a  big, possibly external spinning drive for data. You will never go back.

Absolutely.  

I have to be truthful - My server as well.  My boot drive is a 120gb SSD, and the 10TB storage section is a 6x2TB WD Datacenter-Grade RAID 5 array.

The last server I built for my neighbor's company (Domain Controller/Exchange Server) has 2 512GB SSDs in a RAID 1 configuration, and 6TB with 3 spinners in a RAID 5 (3x3TB).  The SSD array is the boot & DB storage for Exchange, the 6TB array holds backups of the SSDs as well as the file shares for the office  [Ok, MS domain nerds:  I know they shouldn't have their DC on the same server as Exchange :P.  Even worse -- they only have a SINGLE DC :P:P

Edit:  So I was looking around some more, and found an article that said that Amazon just dropped the price of the 1TB Sandisk Ultra II.  It's a very nice drive that is selling right now for $270.  It's not an m.2 drive like the Samsung 960 Pro (which is approximately 5 times faster), but the speeds are very respectable and very good for SATAIII.  It's also less than 1/2 the price, and doesn't require a special motherboard that has an M.2 slot.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Cost always makes sense, everyone usually wants to go the cheaper route, but sometimes that "cheap" route isn't as cost effective as one would like.  As the old saying goes, you get what you pay for.   Unfortunately the better something is, the higher the cost in most cases.    Sometimes you get lucky and find a deal.   Interesting info on all of it to say the least.   Thanks for added info on the drives Dev. Mike, that helps us make better decisions on what HDD upgrade we may want to go with when needed.  Gave me some additional thought on it, that's for certain.

Edited by Orville
typed right instead of route after "cheap" ~ DOH!
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