Hard Drive Crash 2021 edition - opinions pls

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Carpet_pissr
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Hard Drive Crash 2021 edition - opinions pls

Post by Carpet_pissr »

Welp, it's about time to test out if the $60/yr I've been paying iDrive to auto back up my shit has been working, and worth it. Skip to the questions below if my rambling pisses you off as much as it does me :p Or if you are REALLY pressed for time, skip all the way down to OPTIONS. It's a CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE(TM) post!

I think this may be the second HD failure I've ever had in all the years I have been PC'ing out of probably a couple dozen drives (rode HARD, if you know what I mean!) if not more. On the bright side, I consider that pretty lucky?! I've been out of the computer hardware loop for quite a while now (years?), so I am more than a little rusty. Gone are the days when this would not have phased me at all, knowing that I could be back up and running within a couple hours without having to look anything up.

Brass tacks:
It was my biggest and only mechanical drive on my Windows 10 desktop (as opposed to the kids' desktop which is working and running Win 10 if that matters at all) Thank God it wasn't my boot drive, but maybe interestingly, now when the computer goes to sleep (hybrid?) it takes FOREVER to wake up. Not sure if Windows is looking for the lost drive (but it's not even seeing it from the storage admin tool, so not sure about that).

I mostly used it for photos and videos and music. Well, I STARTED with that in mind, but as drive space tightened on my other two (smaller, SSD drives), I began to cram this drive full of Steam games and who knows what else. In any case, the large majority of the space would have been media. The other two SSD drives are a 120GB (?!), and a 500GB. I'm guessing that 120 is quite old given that weird and tiny size.


So a few questions, here:

1. Since I was already running out of space (not really, I am sure if I spent the time I could free up a CRAP ton of space, and that 1TB + 120GB + 500GB would have been PLENTY), should I get a 2TB mechanical? Just saw a Barracdua SATA III 6GB/s 256 cache, 1TB on Amazon for $45. DAMN! Do they even make money on those at those prices?! Other options: 2TB SSD, which is around $170. So the SSD option is at least double the speed of the mechanical (3-4x faster, more? can't remember, don't care), the same amount of storage, and 4x the price.

Thoughts on that: money is a bit tight right now as I am currently looking(ish) for a job. Let me rephrase: money is not tight CURRENTLY, but it could be within a few months if I don't get off my ass (which I wlll, don't you worry, you judgy, eyes narrowed Overlords, you!) $130 difference is not a HUGE deal to me financially is all that matters here I guess, but certainly makes me pause, if you feel me.

2. Should I just change out the 120GB drive for another one I have around? It's likely old, it's so tiny, etc. Hopefully it's not the boot drive, though, but I suspect it is, bc that sounds like something I would have done: get a tiny SSD JUST for Windows boot (which of course I also started cramming it with other stuff when I started to get low on overall space). I currently have on hand: a 1TB SSDNVME m.2 and a 250GB m.2 I was planning on putting one of those in my laptop which crashed a while back, and I think it was likely due to an overheated SSD (NVME m.2) that I put in it. I read somewhere that nvme drives aren't great for laptops due to increased heat and decreased battery life - this was several years ago, no idea if that was true then and continues to be now).
Thoughts: IF the 120GB SSD is the Windows boot disk, I think leaving it alone is probably the best option for now. It's working, why screw it up.

3. I am not sure what the capacities are for m.2 drives with my current aged motherboard. I THINK the format of the two SSD's that are in there now are the older style, not m.2. I am also 90% sure that it will support m.2 drives, since I was planning on adding one of these I have laying around...eventually.

OPTIONS:
1. Replace 1TB mechanical w 2TB mechanical: cost: $40 Total new storage space, all drives: 2.6TB (+1TB from what I had)
2. Replace 1TB mechanical w 2TB SSD: cost $130 Total new storage: same as now, 2.6TB (but super fast!)
3. Replace 1TB mechanical w 1TB SSD I have on hand: cost: 0$ Total new storage: 1.6TB (little space, but fast!)
4. Replace 1TB mechanical w 1TB SSD I have on hand AND ADD in the 250GB m.2 SSD I have on hand (leaving me with nothing to put in the laptop when I get around to repairing it). Total cost: $0, Total new storage: 1.8TB? ish
dfs
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Re: Hard Drive Crash 2021 edition - opinions pls

Post by dfs »

3+1 Put in the SSD for the speed and current needs. Spend the $40 for the 2TB of extra space.

FWIW the secondary drive in my workstation just started failing this week. A quick swap of that 1TB drive with a 4TB drive and a drop box restore Saturday morning and I was back in business quickly.
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Daehawk
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Re: Hard Drive Crash 2021 edition - opinions pls

Post by Daehawk »

In 27 years Ive had 2 hard drives fail.

The first one was the 210mb WDCaviar that came in my first PC in 1994. It suffered a full on head crash the very next year.

The second time was an external 10,000 rpm Velociraptor drive that I had bought off someone online. Maybe here on OO. I used it for a couple years and it just gave up on me. I was able to stick it in the freezer and get about 5 min use off it two times to save my data.

My current 2 mechanical drives...both I think WD Blacks....one may be Maxtor but dont think so......one 1tb and one 500gb have been in my system 10 years or more. Each was the original main drive that I would move to storage as I got a better one. The last one is the 1tb which I changed to storage after I got my first SSD abound 2016. And both have run 24/7 for all these years. Plan to just stick the entire system in storage history when I build new.
Last edited by Daehawk on Sun Jan 02, 2022 2:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Kraken
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Re: Hard Drive Crash 2021 edition - opinions pls

Post by Kraken »

I've been computing since before hard drives existed and never had one go bad. My backup solution is AWS via an app called JungleDisk. I'm confident that some of my data is in the cloud and a lot less confident that I could figure out how to get it back. AWS costs around $5/mo.for two computers, so yay for cheap backup. I'm the kind of weenie user who probably ought to overpay for something easier to use.
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Carpet_pissr
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Re: Hard Drive Crash 2021 edition - opinions pls

Post by Carpet_pissr »

Kraken wrote: Mon Dec 20, 2021 2:20 amI'm confident that some of my data is in the cloud and a lot less confident that I could figure out how to get it back.
This is our concern, Dude. I’m not sure I’ve ever had to restore an entire volume before.
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Kasey Chang
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Re: Hard Drive Crash 2021 edition - opinions pls

Post by Kasey Chang »

Right now spinning disks still wins on data density.

I've had a WD external "MyBook" something fail on me. Not fun at all. Tried opening it and turns out it's integrated so I can't swap the drive at all. It's basically paperweight.

I ended up getting a SATA dock so I can slide my HD in and have a backup program run weekly to backup stuff to it.
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Carpet_pissr
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Re: Hard Drive Crash 2021 edition - opinions pls

Post by Carpet_pissr »

dfs wrote: Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:03 pm 3+1 Put in the SSD for the speed and current needs. Spend the $40 for the 2TB of extra space.
I like it. So much so that I just ordered the 2TB drive and it says if I order within the hour (before noon) it will get here by today....WOOT! That doesn't happen very much for my address...at least for the things I have ordered in the past.
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Carpet_pissr
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Re: Hard Drive Crash 2021 edition - opinions pls

Post by Carpet_pissr »

Two issues so far, one appears to be with iDrive itself maybe, and the other is my own stupidity/carelessness.

1. iDrive keeps locking up after a hundred gig or so of restoring (which seems to otherwise be going fine, and is restoring as I had hoped). Really starting to piss me off because it makes me babysit this process, which will suuuuuuuck considering how much I am restoring. There were also about 50 files that were checked to be restored that just...weren't for some reason. This is disturbing for obvious reasons. What ELSE that was checked, didn't get restored? Fuuuuuuck. Manually double checking restoration of this much content? Yay!!!

2. Apparently, I had only selected top level folders on my failed F: drive to be backed up, NOT the entire drive. Why, oh WHY would I have not done that?!? This was my "media" drive, and I had folders labeled "MUSIC", "PICS" and "VIDEOS", but I am pretty damn sure I had stuff outside those folders. My biggest fear is that, in a hurry trying to free up some memory space on my DSLR memory cards, I hurriedly dumped all contents into a catchall folder in the root, without bothering to put said folder under PICS. Probably told myself "I'll go through and cull pics and move the folder to the right place later". @^#^$%@^#@$^#$ Would love just to see an IMAGE of the dead drive's directory even if I couldn't recover any data, just to see what was outside those main three folders.
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