Large scale data loss
Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 10:36 pm
My PC suddently started acting up, it randomly crashed, mostly during large data transfers. When it did crash, the C drive would corrupt and I'd have to reimage. After about 10 times I concluded there was simply nothing I could do, so I decided that before bed I'd backup my entire D drive to be safe, and order parts to build a new PC from scratch... well hours before I would have started the backup, it crashed, but instead of taking out the C drive, it took out the D drive, and no recovery tool was able to find traces of any files on it. Everything GONE. The crash literally shreded the partition to bits. I've never seen anything like it.
It's not bad memory, it's not the HDD failing, and I'm almost positive it's not the PSU as the voltages are very stable. So I've been without a main machine for a few days while I wait for the new parts to come in. Once they do then I'll keep these as spare and see if I can figure out wtf is wrong with it.
Or I might just put linux and never look back, linux is just like that, it will work, I can almost guarantee it. If it infact does work and lasts for a while I will add in a few 300gig drives and use it as a full backup server. I cannot afford to loose my D drive again and this was a very harsh lesson to do more intensive backups.
Thankfully some data is backed up such as
- documents
- p2p stuff (downloads + shared stuff)
- pictures (backup outdated though
)
- application data stuff (bookmarks,etc)
- Iceteks and anythingforums (all other sites (customers/misc) are gone though, but less important for me to have anyway)
I lost lot of programs though, I had a directory with tons of standalone programs, some of which are unreplacable, and I can't believe I did not have a backup task for that, but unfortunatly I did not.
To make things worse, my PC at work did the EXACT SAME THING, a few weeks before mine did it. Only thing that is similar between the two is that they have a 200GB hard drive with a 20ish GB partition (actually mine was more like 40GB) for OS, and the rest for data. So as the data partition got more full, maybe windows did not like it, or something. On both machines they crashed while large amounts of data was being transfered to the data partition.
It would just BSOD and reboot, and then I'd get "Operating system not found".
Well some of the crashes were slightly slower, what would happen is that individual files on the C drive would become corrupt. So I'd start getting popups "cannot read c:[blah blah] because it is corrupt" and the program associated would just freeze up or close. Then once system programs like explorer would get hit, it would just freeze up and I'd have to hit reset, and then the partition would be missing. When the D drive got taken out, C was 100% healthy afterwards, I could actually boot up and all, but not see the D drive because it was gone.
This is why I have not been around much lately, I'm posting this from what is suppost to be my firewall, but for now that project has been put on hold until I get my mainbox up and running.
What's bothering me is the fact that it happened at work, then at home, and this is a problem that has never happened in history before. Yes it has, but it has a cause, such as a bad hard drive. Just for stats, that HDD was installed maybe like a month before, not even, and it used to be the main data drive in my highly productive intranet server. So if it was dying, it would of been in that server.
So the lesson learnt here is that ALL DATA should be backed up on multiple SYSTEMS.
I think what I'll most likely do is just buy a bunch of 300GB drives and plug them in my external enclosure and do monthly backups, or what not. with a 300GB drive I can most likely backup both workstations, and with another 300GB drive I can backup the whole server, and if I buy a 3rd drive I can just rotate, so when I do another backup, during the process there's still a full backup that exists, in case there happends to be a failure of some sort during that backup.
If I had the money I'd just get a powervult tape drive. but those are VERY expensive! Maybe once I have a full time job and my own house, I'll have my own server room with rackmount toys.
For now I just have to compromize with what I can afford.
Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:3537, old post ID:28772
It's not bad memory, it's not the HDD failing, and I'm almost positive it's not the PSU as the voltages are very stable. So I've been without a main machine for a few days while I wait for the new parts to come in. Once they do then I'll keep these as spare and see if I can figure out wtf is wrong with it.
Or I might just put linux and never look back, linux is just like that, it will work, I can almost guarantee it. If it infact does work and lasts for a while I will add in a few 300gig drives and use it as a full backup server. I cannot afford to loose my D drive again and this was a very harsh lesson to do more intensive backups.
Thankfully some data is backed up such as
- documents
- p2p stuff (downloads + shared stuff)
- pictures (backup outdated though
)- application data stuff (bookmarks,etc)
- Iceteks and anythingforums (all other sites (customers/misc) are gone though, but less important for me to have anyway)
I lost lot of programs though, I had a directory with tons of standalone programs, some of which are unreplacable, and I can't believe I did not have a backup task for that, but unfortunatly I did not.
To make things worse, my PC at work did the EXACT SAME THING, a few weeks before mine did it. Only thing that is similar between the two is that they have a 200GB hard drive with a 20ish GB partition (actually mine was more like 40GB) for OS, and the rest for data. So as the data partition got more full, maybe windows did not like it, or something. On both machines they crashed while large amounts of data was being transfered to the data partition.
It would just BSOD and reboot, and then I'd get "Operating system not found".
Well some of the crashes were slightly slower, what would happen is that individual files on the C drive would become corrupt. So I'd start getting popups "cannot read c:[blah blah] because it is corrupt" and the program associated would just freeze up or close. Then once system programs like explorer would get hit, it would just freeze up and I'd have to hit reset, and then the partition would be missing. When the D drive got taken out, C was 100% healthy afterwards, I could actually boot up and all, but not see the D drive because it was gone.
This is why I have not been around much lately, I'm posting this from what is suppost to be my firewall, but for now that project has been put on hold until I get my mainbox up and running.
What's bothering me is the fact that it happened at work, then at home, and this is a problem that has never happened in history before. Yes it has, but it has a cause, such as a bad hard drive. Just for stats, that HDD was installed maybe like a month before, not even, and it used to be the main data drive in my highly productive intranet server. So if it was dying, it would of been in that server.
So the lesson learnt here is that ALL DATA should be backed up on multiple SYSTEMS.
I think what I'll most likely do is just buy a bunch of 300GB drives and plug them in my external enclosure and do monthly backups, or what not. with a 300GB drive I can most likely backup both workstations, and with another 300GB drive I can backup the whole server, and if I buy a 3rd drive I can just rotate, so when I do another backup, during the process there's still a full backup that exists, in case there happends to be a failure of some sort during that backup.
If I had the money I'd just get a powervult tape drive. but those are VERY expensive! Maybe once I have a full time job and my own house, I'll have my own server room with rackmount toys.
For now I just have to compromize with what I can afford.
Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:3537, old post ID:28772
