Spot,

Don't EVER use defrag on a sick drive. The absolute rule in drive recovery is to never let the drive write anything back to the disk. Defrag does nothing but read, and then write, virtually every bit on the disk. In addition, it stresses the heck out of the drive as the head flies all over the place. If you have any kind of physical failure, then that head is going potentially going to collide with something as it goes back and forth.

It sounds like you are getting your files recovered, but if you are ever faced with this again, my strong advice is to not defrag.

Riredale

Your info on backup software is very useful to me. Thanks!

One question: I also own BackupMyPC and like it. However, it comes with an image backup program called Drivebackup. I have never been happy with this. Did you ever use it, and if so, how does it compare to DriveImage?

If you want to "fix" or recover what's on a hard drive you think is dead, get Spinrite. Its been around in one form or another for over a dozen years and it works. I've used it several times. If you can hear your drive spinning, charges are good the data, at least most of it is OK.

If you send your drive out for "recovery" surprise many of the outfits first use Spinrite themselves. You can pick up a copy for under $100, which is a fraction of what the recovery scams....oops outfits charge.

The one down side is it can take over night or every DAYS to do its thing and during that time you can't touch your computer.

Does it work? Yes. You typically can recover from 70-90% of your drive

Spinrite isn't un-delete on file recovery in the traditional sense. It works its magic by getting down to the bit level, totally bypassing the operating system. Like any application it needs some OS to boot and do it uses DOS, but once booted its like no normal program which in part is why it takes so long to work.

Read this review for more specifics.

http://www.kickstartnews.com/reviews/utilities/spinrite_v6.html

Kind of make you want to take that up as a hobby doesn.t it?

John:

The only disk-imaging programs I've used have been DriveImage and Ghost, but I'm sure there are lots of other ways of doing it. Try your program out and see how you like it. The only hard part is getting the courage to do a complete restore the first time. But if you use a different backup such as BackupMyPC ahead of time, in a worst case you can reload Windows manually, then run BackupMyPC to get to your last backup state.

Spot, my question was if you had recently defrag before disk failure, as stated by others, do not modify the disk during recovery attempts.

The only disk-imaging programs I've used have been DriveImage and Ghost, but I'm sure there are lots of other ways of doing it ... The only hard part is getting the courage to do a complete restore the first time.

I know what you mean about restore. I've had to restore from Drivebackup (the Stomp image program) a few times, and it didn't go smoothly, mostly because of a flaky boot disk procedure (it uses a "DOS" boot disk and this doesn't always recognize the DVD or CD media properly -- there were other problems as well. Took me three hours before I could even get the restore started).

I'll try the Driveimage demo (I think it gives me 30 days).

John:
I hate to say it, but your results may differ from mine. I have used many different versions of DriveImage, but I stopped upgrading at version 5, I guess because I saw no reason to upgrade. I think I heard somewhere that more recent versions have had some issues. I'll be as curious as everyone else regarding your backup experiences with the most recent version.

In general, though, my rear has been rescued so many times by DriveImage that it's made me more aggressive in a sense, knowing that if I trash my OS I can always go back. I have a 30GB drive mounted in a removable tray that I use strictly for DriveImage backups and as a "graveyard" for the various downloaded utilities and other programs one tends to accumulate over time. I also burn one image to DVD-R, and keep that copy in a different building, so no matter what happens I can be back up and running in a reasonable amount of time.

I have used many different versions of DriveImage, but I stopped upgrading at version 5, I guess because I saw no reason to upgrade. I think I heard somewhere that more recent versions have had some issues. I'll be as curious as everyone else regarding your backup experiences with the most recent version.

Symantec bought them, and the product overlaps other things they already own. They definitely do not feature the product as much as they used to. They are now at version 7. I briefly scanned the manual, and the only issue that comes up is that they only support NT-based O/S (NT/2000/XP), but they include Driveimage 2000 (version 6, I think) in the box, which is the last version that supported 95/98/ME.

Spot, this may not help you if you only have dial-up, but it may be good for others:

I like Connected Online Backup (http://www.connected.com) for everything except media.

For $25 per month, they automatically backup whatever folders and/or files I specify to two separate geographic locations, via Internet. Only what's changed is even considered, and only the actual changes are transmitted (so if you only change 1KB out of a 10MB file, it only sends 1KB).

The $25 buys me 10GB of storage, where it keeps up to the 10 most recent versions of each file, retrievable at any time from your PC, or you can ask them to send you backup CD-Rs if you need to recover a lot.

I have used it for several years and really like it.

An interesting use: did you ever get a document clobbered in Word?

Perhaps not if you only write letters, but more complex documents (like large book manuscripts) have a tendency to croak. Then it's nice to go back to the previous version within minutes, and if that's not it, go back to the version before that, etc.

For media, I mirror to a second high quality HD, but I plan to add taking home a portable disk enclosure with a weekly copy of the most important media.

Both my office and my home have some of the very best fire protection I have ever seen: my office notably has competent fire doors around the elevator lobby where many fires rise through the shafts, and my home has smoke detectors every 10 feet in all directions, automatic sprinklers, an 8-inch water riser accessible from every floor, and an automatic fire alarm that brings a fire truck in about 4-5 minutes.

Hopefully there won't be an earthquake, because then it will all collapse (my home, not the office). Note to those who live in earthquake territory (California, Washington, Missouri(!) and a few other states): if your office is hit by a major earthquake, you may not be allowed in afterwards to retrieve any physical backups. This was a huge setback for several L.A. businesses in the 1994 Norhtridge quake.

Spot, Have you try contacting your service provider about recovery of your email, at least the list of email contacts you have recieved over the last 6 weeks or 6 months?

For mail, we're our own provider....Sucks in these situations.
Here's where I'm at.
Ontrack does a good job. Spinrite does a good job. Ontrack's Outlook tool is AWESOME.
Drive is indeed fried, clicking away to where I can hear it outside the cooled box. But, I've recovered a lot of data. Nearly 70%. I can only work on it for about an hour at a shot, because the drive overheats and then is no longer seen by the host computer. I've since put it in a Firewire enclosure and put it back into the cooler. Seems to let me go longer.
Thanks so much to everyone for their help and suggestions. This is mostly my personal stuff, the business stuff is stored on a tape backed up system. I guess I need to be a lot more diligent about backing up...
Damn, these forums are awesome!