As an admin, I know to save early/ save often, but I just had my main hard drive go down for good. Due to the relative newness of the drive and the laziness of the owner, there was no backup. I’m almost positive that the crash was physical, so if any of you so called nerds have any sort of advice on physical recovery, I’m all ears. All I can tell you is the “raw read error rate” is 1, which I think indicates no throughput from the drive. The information seems to still be there, but the controller might be gone.

If I don’t recover the drive, I’ve lost not only 50+ gig of MP3′s, but all the pictures I’ve taken over the last 2 years. I’m contemplating shelling out $300+ to have the drive professionally recovered.

A solution that saves me that kind of cash will get you a free meal, possible protection from the jocks, and a lifetime membership to the Lamda Lamda Lamda fraternity.

Oh, and if anyone has a PC company or recommendations on a new system, I’m all ears. I’m serious this time. Really.

Thanks for all your help.

Update: It looks like a good portion of the drive is bad and the data transfer is complete crap, but I got 90% of the digital photos from the last 2 years back. That only took 2 days. Tonight is the episode where I spend the third night in a row trying to get the rest of the data. Hilarity ensues.

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