Oh {bleep}....

[Uncle Matt]

Well, here I am in the U S of A.

I brought everything (computer data wise) with me on a portable USB2 hard drive. Everything. All my music, my photos, my documents and everything I've downloaded off the net since 2003.

Everything went fine. It made it over here OK, and I've been happily working away, listening to music and so on for over a month.

Until this morning.

It seems that a few dud sectors have appeared right where the MFT is stored, and it's completely knackered it (at least form Windows point of view). I don't think the actual data has been destroyed, just the file table.

Backups? Well in reality, this portable HDD is the backups. The original everythings are back on the HDDs in the server (which got relocated before I moved).

I can't really live without my music. Photos I could probably manage, but music? No chance.

I've downloaded a program called RecoveryFix, and thats been chugging away all morning, and seems to be fixing it...

[andyb]

Any luck yet Matt?

How big is the HDD?

Is it partitioned?

[Uncle Matt]

Andy, its a 250 gigabyte drive, partitioned into one big lump. only about 30 gigabytes used, though..

I normally only used it for backups, but it was easier just to bring it with me when I moved.

Its saving most of that to the HDD inside the laptop, so we should be OK.

[Wooley]

I hope it's all recoverable Matty,

 

 

Woo

[Uncle Matt]

Well, I've recovered the important stuff that's not on the server back home.

I haven't been able to get everything else, but I'll be able to live now. Everything that I've lost is on the server back in the UK, so it's safe. Unless the house burns down, or something 

When I've got a bit more cash available, I might go and get a Buffalo linkstation or something to act as a new backup drive. When the time comes for me to move back to the UK, I'll use shove it back in the box and get work to ship it back to the UK for me. Hopefully, it'll come with a universal switcher power supply.

The worst thing is, Up until this point, I've been very impressed with the reliability of Seagate drives. Haven't had a single one fail on me (although my dad is fond of moving them when they're switched on, and has therefore wrecked one). I've had random failures with Western Digital, so I'm not going back to them.

Does anyone else have any suggestions if I can't find a linkstation?

Matt

[Uncle Matt]

Well, there's a new phrase I've heard around the office... "***** ( Ed Bot! ) and giggles".

Urban Dictionary sayeth:

"To do something for amusement or to annoy someone else"

This would describe the recent activities of my IT equipment quite nicely....

After recovering the recoverable from my portable HDD, I thought "Lets re-format it and try and get some use out of it."

So I go into Device Manager, and start up the disk management applet. Portable HDD jumps into life, and starts trying to autoplay. Odd, I think. The damnation thing wouldn't do anything (and I mean anything - I couldn't even get windows to recognise the partition. It new the drive was there, but couldn't see the data..) this morning. I tried every trick in my book, up me sleeve and even off the t'interweb. Nothing. Yet now, all of a sudden, it pretends like nothing has happend and skips it's merry way down the information superhighway.

I check a few files that were supposedly "unrecoverable" by the disk recovery program I've just spent $60 on, and they're all OK. Normally, most folk would be jumping for joy at being able to recover their data. I am a little bit, but I do get the feeling that my laptop is possessed by a demonic being, and it's sat inside giggling at me for spending sixty bucks on data recovery software so that I can have my music collection back.

I'm going to run a full disk check overnight just to be safe.

[Bamawing]

Dang, dude, have you {bleep}ed off any gremlins lately?

Glad you got it sorted. Spending $60 on useless software, not so much.

***edit***

Dan: Wow. What is it about moving internationally that causes computer problems?

[Nick]

That's really weird Matt.
I'm just glad you got the drive to cough up the data.
It sounds like the portable HDD ate its MFT but Windows donated a new one
As a thought, could you have tried booting the laptop in to BIOS, change the 1st boot device on the laptop to DVD, then use an XP disk to repartition the portable HDD?

[Uncle Matt]

That was one thought that crossed my mind, but I have no XP disk.

See, it's my work laptop that has become redundant whilst I'm in the States.

3 days on and it's still behaving :touching wood too: