A quick PSA about your old home burned CD-R discs

[BiscuitsandGravy]

So are you telling me that the 30MB (Megabyte) external HD for my old Mac+ from college will still boot? I believe its up in the attic having a fun time of going through its hot-cold temp cycling.

Probably a museum piece now. I'm old. That's pre-Google for all you young whippersnappers...

 

[RobbyMaQ]

So are you telling me that the 30MB (Megabyte) external HD for my old Mac+ from college will still boot? I believe its up in the attic having a fun time of going through its hot-cold temp cycling.

Probably a museum piece now. I'm old. That's pre-Google for all you young whippersnappers...

Cmon, get with the tech! You could have used DoubleSpace and increased that capacity!

 

[oldpink]

Cmon, get with the tech! You could have used DoubleSpace and increased that capacity!

Doublespace is so dated.
Go with Stacker instead!

 

[K_W]

So are you telling me that the 30MB (Megabyte) external HD for my old Mac+ from college will still boot? I believe its up in the attic having a fun time of going through its hot-cold temp cycling.

Probably a museum piece now. I'm old. That's pre-Google for all you young whippersnappers...

If it doesn't read remember drives that old a stepper actuated and do not self compensate for thermal expansion. If it errors out, it may read better if you heat or chill the drive. No Joke... it's literally the 3rd oldest trick in the hard drive data recovery book other than checking BIOS setting and reseating cables.

 

[BiscuitsandGravy]

Doublespace is so dated.
Go with Stacker instead!

Those look to be for DOS! 'Dudes'... I'm talking Apple Macintosh!

 

[K_W]

I just lost another flash device. A couple year old barely used 32 GB SanDisk Ultra flash drive. It had a redundant backup of our wedding photos and some tax files. It now reads as an unformatted 64mb drive.

 

[K_W]

Just lost ANOTHER SanDisk card. The 32gb Ultra class 10 in my G4 just went haywire. Lost all vacation photos and other stuff I hadn't yet backed up.

I am done with SanDisk. Too many failures.

 

[Caleb]

What are CD-R?

 

[w_ADAM_d88]

Just now finding this and wish I would have found it sooner. Took 2 CPU's (4 hard drives) into Geek Squad to have all the files and data backed up onto a new external hard drive... no luck at all. Lost a ton of pictures and music.

 

[w_ADAM_d88]

With that ^ being said... if there are any hi-tech guys out there that can out-do the Geeks let me know. Or if you have someone or something else to recommend, please fill me in.

 

[Cameramonkey]

Oh dear. Never go full Geek Squad. They are the worst.

I'll recommend ANYONE but GS. They tried to swindle a buddy out of a data recovery he couldnt afford by telling him the software I recommended didnt exist (even though they had dozens of copies on the shelf, they just wanted his money in their shop, not on a cheap peice of sw). He took them at their word and couldnt afford the service so he didnt get what he needed. His drive failed the rest of the way 3 days later. Had he not been lied to, he likely would have been able to use the software to clone his data and be up and running again.

In fact I'm sitting here trying to coax data out of my wife's old laptop hdd by cooling it. It fails when it heats up.

I can take a quick look at them if you want me to. just PM me and we can talk details.

 

[RobbyMaQ]

multiple backups for sure...
No single one is foolproof... harddrives, portable harddrives, dvd-r, sd cards... I've at least one of each for everything, constantly rotating WHEN one fails.

 

[rhino]

Oh dear. Never go full Geek Squad. They are the worst.

I'll recommend ANYONE but GS. They tried to swindle a buddy out of a data recovery he couldnt afford by telling him the software I recommended didnt exist (even though they had dozens of copies on the shelf, they just wanted his money in their shop, not on a cheap peice of sw). He took them at their word and couldnt afford the service so he didnt get what he needed. His drive failed the rest of the way 3 days later. Had he not been lied to, he likely would have been able to use the software to clone his data and be up and running again.

In fact I'm sitting here trying to coax data out of my wife's old laptop hdd by cooling it. It fails when it heats up.

I can take a quick look at them if you want me to. just PM me and we can talk details.

What is the software you recommend?

 

[Cameramonkey]

Acronis True Image. Its not so much for data recovery per-se, but with the advent of SMART sensors, it can be used to save your bacon. (what my buddy was experiencing)

SMART motherboards/drives talk and track performance metrics. When the motherboard sees the drive is wearing out and predicts a failure, it warns you. You typically then have time to migrate the data to a new drive before it fails outright. True Image copies the data from one drive to another so you dont have to reinstall everything.

In my case, her drive was having read issues. I wasnt able to get it all back, but I was able to recover by migrating to a new drive. (and telling the software to ignore/skip sectors it couldnt read) Its now running comparisons between whats on the new drive and what microsoft thinks should be on the drive to replace the system files that couldnt be read on the old drive.

https://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/computer-backup/

 

[rhino]

Acronis True Image. Its not so much for data recovery per-se, but with the advent of SMART sensors, it can be used to save your bacon. (what my buddy was experiencing)

SMART motherboards/drives talk and track performance metrics. When the motherboard sees the drive is wearing out and predicts a failure, it warns you. You typically then have time to migrate the data to a new drive before it fails outright. True Image copies the data from one drive to another so you dont have to reinstall everything.

In my case, her drive was having read issues. I wasnt able to get it all back, but I was able to recover by migrating to a new drive. (and telling the software to ignore/skip sectors it couldnt read) Its now running comparisons between whats on the new drive and what microsoft thinks should be on the drive to replace the system files that couldnt be read on the old drive.

https://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/computer-backup/

Reasonable price too!