Hard Drive Blues - back it up

 A couple of months ago, I had two drives go out.

The first was the 4TB WD  Passbook Ultra. Two subdirectories containing over four hundred videos, disappeared.

The second was my archive drive. The drive contains all of my work since the late '90s. Beginning in the late 90's, I started burning what I considered worthy data, to CDs. Later, when CDs had been replaced by DVDs, I copied all my CDs to DVDs. Most recently, several months ago, I decided to use hard drives as a storage medium. I copied all my DVDs to a hard drive and destroyed the DVDs, except for the ones with videos and operating systems. I have since discovered M-disks. These are supposed to be good for hundreds of years where other mediums lose data after a decade or so at most. This does not include the possibility of surface scratches. Those hazards still remain. But without physical damage the disks should last indefinately. These disks are expensive, but will be my choice for archiving historical data.

I moaned and groaned and waited. When I was emotionally and phisically ready, I began the process of discovering and implementing solutions.

The 4TB WD drive had been 'repaired' by my LG oled, with my approval. I think that is when the drive developed a lost memory. At any rate, I read a post on the web that refreshed my memory.

Windows software did the repair. I know this because I modified the file system sto show hidden and protected system files and discovered a hidden root directory. That directory contined the two missing subdirectories and their contents. I altered the system policies' permissions for the directories, renamed the two subdirectories and moved them to their original location. The operating system had left behind two extensionless files in place of the directories. I deleted those. I reset the system and was done.

I was able to restore the lost videos.


The archive drive was different. I had connected the drive to the LG oled TV using one of the USB ports. A power interruption occurred and the drive became inaccessable. I used recovery software to copy the contents of the drive to another hard drive purchased for the occasion. I re-formatted the originall drive and have used that drive, in addition to others, to duplicate my holdings. Now, if there is another loss, I have duplicates that can be copied. Had the recovery software not worked, I had a hard drive of the same make and model and similar year that could be used in:

 1-a circuit board exchange, in the event the circuit board had been damaged electrically

 2-extraction and exchange of the magnetic disks themselves, as a last resort.


Note that in both cases, I made no attempt to alter the drives. I did not add or remove anything from the 4TB WD until recovery had occurred. The archive drive was also unaltered prior to recovery.

The moral here is an old one in computer circles: backup your data. Make copies in case there is an accident.


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