AKA - Our entire apartment ended up under a foot of water while we were away visiting family due to our landlord's sump pump dying.
Soooooooooo, I'm going to be gone for a while while sorting through sunken personal effects and fried electronics.(Including both our desktop PCs and most of their data)
Just finished rinsing 5000 points of eldar under a tap a couple models at a time - now even more in love with Liquitex Varnish.
On a serious note - anyone have any options for restoring data from a hard drive with a destroyed circuit board but in theory platters that are fine? Cauuuuuse I haven't backed up in a few months and that contained most of my data, including this site's source.
Gotta look on the bright side of things and move forward though, because there's no turning back time. We're in surprisingly good spirits. Turtles are fine, most of our stuff survived by being high enough off the floor, and it could have been worse - it could have been a fire.
You can sure bet that once I'm up and running again I'll have an offsite backup plan in place, (I've slacked over the last while on backups, though TheWife pointed out that if my backup machine had been running, it'd be dead now too) GFIC's on more than just my turtle tank and will be building a water alarm hooked up to a dialer.
And now, relax in our hotel room... tomorrow, buy a new digital camera to replace the water logged one, and document the process of indexing all my fried and busted stuff. That, and ignore the very good time someone on the other side of the wall is currently having.
Damnit Dave. It's a shame to read such awful news =(
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear about this.
Well, I wish you and TheWife the best. Good luck with the data restoring and all the stuff. Sadly I've no idea how to restore data from an overflooded pc. I hope you didn't lose family pics, at the very end, those are the most missed things in such catastrophes.
So, good luck and best wishes!
As an IT Guy, when things like water happen you have 2 options
ReplyDelete1. Give up and write it all off.
2. Go to a dedicated Data Restore company that will charge you ~2,000 for the restore.
You can try it yourself, but I don't know anyone who has ever succeeded. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
Long shot on the harddisks, but if you want to avoid some beastly spending I would do this:
ReplyDelete1. Put each hard disk in a bag of rice (dries them out)
2. Try them
3. If they don't work, you can get an exact copy of the disk and swap the logic board. If it all possible (might be too hard) that is.
You need to keep them in the rice for quite some while I'm guessing to really get the water out.
And don't do anything rash. Seldom is it a good idea:)
Acutally, I'm told freezing them sometimes works too.
ReplyDeleteSaying that @Flekkzo - have you ever pulled a HDD apart to try and do a swapsies? It's not much fun let me tell you.
DavidG,
ReplyDeleteBe careful with those figures. as long as the water in the flood wasn't contaminated you should be able to salvage your minis. How ever, if their was any type of contamination, you may be better off tossing the minis and claiming them under the insurance. Last year here in middle Tennessee we were hit by a massive flood and one of my friends lost 80% - 90% of his stuff from contamination. Since most of our figures are made from porus materials, they will hold onto the bacteria in the water even though they look fine. Then every time you handle them you expose yourself to the bacteria. Even the foam and the cases they are stored in can suffer the same fate. Just be careful, and sorry for your loss.
Ouch, sorry to hear that Dave! Best of luck with salvaging what you can. As you say, better than a fire.
ReplyDeletethanks for the kind words folks. i think Im going to look at replacing the board. tried some recoveries last night. Thewifes hdd survived so her work stuff is safe but I've got about a tb of stuff that won't even spin up. the controller is full of blackened explodey bits. a bunch of it i believe i have backed up across old drives, which Im just going to have to hunt through and try recovering.
ReplyDeletethanks.for the tip about contamination. i think we are good because its just rainwater but its certainly something to keep in mind.
I can't help on the technical side I'm afraid, but for what it's worth I'll put the request out.
ReplyDeleteSeems you have the situation well in hand and are taking what must be the best approach in a situation like this, calmly resetting at the new base and building back up.
You've reminded us all about the value of being prepared even for unlikely events, and of making backups, and hopefully more good will come of it too, especially at your end.
Dave,
ReplyDeleteI am glad everyone is safe! So sorry to hear such distressing news.
This is a long shot, but I have heard of people transplanting parts of hard drives from a damaged unit to a new but identical model # unit.
ReplyDeleteIt would likely require a lot of time and some special tools, but I believe you could try transplanting the 'platter assembly' to an undamaged drive, but you have to really research to make sure the you get a copy of the exact hard drive model.
I would try other rescue methods first, but hard drives are so self-contained, that as long as the data is intact, you might have a chance.
The platter 'unit' should be air sealed - if you know the platters are fine then the data is still on them.
Very sorry to hear about your problems, best wishes to you getting back on drier footing.
ReplyDelete@fester I've pulled real old harddisks apart :) Never tried the transplant myself. Know that others have, but that was a long time ago. I know it's a long shot, but sometimes that one in a million chance is what does it. About 999,999 times it doesn't though:)
ReplyDeleteI'd keep that disk in some rice though, for maybe a month, as trying it out can short a bunch of stuff out if that hasn't already happened.
Dont Freeze them buy another of the same exact hard drive and swap the boards..has to be exact model number same version ect..
ReplyDeleteWe do it all the time. If you want you can contact me we start at 150 in labor and 50-100 for parts. www.cpsmi.com I stay away from such projects because I do not have the patience required.
Feel free to email me at the google account attached to this post or chris @ the above domain.
Ouch, most unpleasant. And to think that I was bitching about electricity outages in my neighborhood lately. As a person whose family narrowly missed a similar disaster (fire-related though) a few years back, and killed a dozen or so data-filled drives over the years, I can only offer my deepest condolences.
ReplyDelete