I do disaster recovery consulting for small businesses - data recovery, reintegration, tissue box holding. Sometimes I have to send these folks for hair replacement!
I rescue melted computers - computers that look like they've been barbequed, computers that have drown(last year, I did recovery work for a company whose computer sat over a weekend in 1 1/2 feet of raw sewage) Talk about ICKY!
MORAL TO THE STORY: BACK UP YOUR DATA AND STICK IT IN A SAFE FIREPROOF PLACE (no, not in the drawer at the SAME DESK)!!!! I come across companies with over five years of business records on one hard drive - with no back up copies!!!!!! You should hear the gasps when they get the recovery estimates (some data recoveries can approach $15,000 or more!)
UPDATE.....THE LAPTOP GOES IN!!!! THE CAR, NOT ON!!!! THE CAR!!
Ever seen a laptop spun off a car roof going around a corner, especially after being run over by two cars in the meantime? Just take a hammer to a bunch of high impact plastic to get the idea - Insurance agent walks to car, puts laptop on roof, unlocks door, opens door, pulls out cel phone, begins a call, keeps on talking, closes door....you get the picture.........HOW WE EVER GOT HIS STUFF RECOVERED IS TOTALLY BEYOND MY COMPREHENSION to be honest.....$6300 to recover everything, on a junky 3 year old IBM laptop.......
TRUE STORY FROM AN EBAY USEREver heard the term "BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH"?
used by permission
It began Thursday night.
I went to power down my PC, and it just "hung" there, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge my slightest
whim. No biggie -
turn it off with the switch, wait, then boot again. 5 minutes later, we're dangling again. GRRRRRR.
Reboot. PC comes up,
and seems fine, so off to sleep I go.
Friday morning.
What to my bleary eyes did appear? A blue screen saying "Cannot Write to Drive C". kkkkkkkk......
Suspicious, I reboot. We
get to the Windows logo screen and just hang there. More growling, some light cursing. All of this
just HAS to happen before
I've had any Diet Pepsi.... Reboot. Windows logo screen hangs. Ok, NOW I'm getting irritated. So, I
get out my Norton
Rescue Disk set...we'll show this bleeping PC who's boss!
No viruses found. STILL won't boot. Strange clicking sound coming from the tower. Getting a message
that says something
about FAT and FAT32 (creeping feeling up my spine - I KNOW this isn't good). Tried Norton Rescue, but
it turns out that
my Rescue program is on a floppy with...(drumroll) bad sectors. GRRRRR.
Friday midday.
I'm on the phone with HP Tech support. Since this machine is a replacement of my original (which
burned out its serial and
parallel ports), they will only stand behind it for 3 months, not one year. Here's me SCREAMING at
the HP guy "You're
telling me you don't have any more faith in it but that?!?!?!" He sheepishly has me try a couple
things. He hears the clicking
noise, says "take the cover off that tower and see if you can find that noise". We determine it's the
hard drive. He says
"Sorry, it's toast".
Friday afternoon.
I'm sitting on the floor next to my open tower, desperately trying to boot this machine. Now getting
more clicking, and a
message that says "Operating System Not Found". It now hits me that all of my auction data, 300
personal photos, 600 mp3s,
and countless bytes of my family tree are all ... GONE. I called my boyfriend at work, sobbing my
head off. He said "Who
died????" ... I said "My computer!"..more choked sobs.. "all of it - it's gone". Boyfriend says (my
hero) "We'll go get you a
new one tonight". We hang up, and I sit there in shock, mentally reviewing all that I've lost.
Boyfriend calls back, says he's
spoken to their computer guy at work, and that it sounds like the bearings in the hard drive have
frozen up. See if I can bang
on it a bit, knock it loose long enough to retrieve my critical data. OK>>>here's me, banging on the
drive with my knuckles.
Nothing. OK, we'll try a screwdriver handle. Nothing. OK..how about a crescent wrench. Still nothing.
I threw it at the
carpeted concrete slab. STILL NOTHING.
BUT WAIT!! What does that say on the hard drive label? Is that...a phone number for support? Ok,
let's see if they know
how to get my stuff off this drive that has mechanically failed (my data is still there, but the
drive will not spin). Maxtor tech
guy is great. Says, yeah, it sounds like it has frozen up. He is surprised that HP won't stand behind
it. He says "What's the
serial number on that?". After some hunting, I provided it. He says "Oh, well, that was made just
last year. It's still under its
3-year warranty." I said "well, that's great for HP, who would have been the original purchaser." He
says "No, that's great
for YOU - you are the end user." (at this point I'm hearing Handel's chorus) "We'll send you a
replacement FREE, and then
you can send in the defective one."
Well, that was all fine and dandy, but I still had no data, AND couldn't get online to deal with the
auctions that ended
Thursday night.
Friday night.
Boyfriend arrives home, provides much moral support and waterproof shoulder. Then he says "What do we
need to do to get
you up and running?" Well, I need a hard drive. He says "Great, let's go to Best Buy."....I ended up
with an 80 Gig to replace
the 40 that died, and I think when my replacement 40 Gig arrives, I'll put it I ended up with an 80
Gig to replace the 40 that died, and I think when my replacement 40 Gig arrives, I'll put it in as a
slave.
I spent all weekend bringing my computer back to a somewhat normal level of operation. Had to
redownload many, many
programs, and reinstall everything I've got the disks for. My computer still doesn't look like
itself. I'm downloading music like
a madwoman, but it will take several weeks on this dialup thing (broadband/DSL not available here). I
have had to recreate
all my auction data (nightmare - no emails to cross check to see what stage each transaction is in),
and I have yet to redo my
Excel spreadsheets for my auction bookkeeping (fortunately, I have all the paperwork that goes into
those sheets, but I hate
having to recreate all the formulas, etc, etc).
The moral of the story: BACK UP YOUR DATA. I now have several CD-RWs that I have formatted to use
like you would
a floppy. I back all my data up to these every night now. I don't EVER EVER EVER want to go through
this nightmare
again! I had no chance to back up the data once drive failure started. So, please, please, please: if
you value your time and
your sanity, back up your data.
