Abort, Retry, Ignore?
Of course, there's a fourth option - "Insert credit card."
Turns out my data loss story has a happy ending. I will tell this story two ways:
Non technical -
I found a company online - BinaryBiz - that claimed they could remotely recover my drive. If they could it would cost $295, if they couldn't it was free. I tried it. It worked. Hurrah!
Technical -
The Maxtor DiamondPlus 8 series of drives is a line Maxtor inherited when they bought Quantum. Quantum did not make good drives. The drive I have is apparently legendary for it's platter problems.
Part of the firmware for these drives is stored in the external control electronics and part is written to the platters. The section of the firmware stored on the platter on my drive got corrupted and voila! the drive disappeared.
After two days of noodling around online looking for information and DIY firmware refreshing tips, I stumbled across BinaryBiz's website. I figured there was no downside to giving them a try and signed up. The next day they recovered my drive. Hurrah!
So, for $295 I got my data back and a fairly expensive lesson in How Much Not Backing Up Your Data Will Cost.
Comments
Ouch!
Glad to see it worked out, though. BinaryBiz sounds pretty impressive... I hope I never need their services.
I've had a DVD burner for a while now (for videos) and have been procrastinating about creating a backup. I think I'll end the procrastination this weekend!
Posted by: Joel | January 28, 2005 10:01 AM
So, I'm assuming you're going to pick up a replacement drive soon... I've had good luck with my Samsung SP1614C and my Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9.
Both are pretty quiet.
Posted by: Dino | January 29, 2005 8:21 AM