Just how on earth did I manage to lose not one, not two but three hard drives in as many weeks?
Easy. One just went poof! And is no longer readable. The two others are even worse off, they don’t respond at all, consequence of a PSU’s untimely death. I blame our power utility for numerous brownouts and surges. This despite having invested into a more than decent surge protector.
All three drives contain data which I’m very sorry to have lost. I don’t have the money or the optimism to try data recovery by the experts, especially since a first estimate shows that for the two drives that died when the PSU expired there’s not much hope at all. At least one of them is under warranty, so the manufacturer will have to send me a new one.
It’s such a shame. Of the two drives that died simultaneously, one was a backup to the other one. The other drive that may not be totally dead (will have to try to see what may be doable with it), was itself a backup of an older video project that has been finalized.
My theory is that I am experiencing these HD deaths because I’ve taken to leaving my PCs on all the time. This, at least in my case, has resulted in way too many HD crashes. Of course the PSU expiring was the nail in the coffin for the last two drives. But its death was also due to having been on for days and weeks without respite.
A couple of months ago I found out why one shouldn’t leave a laptop on for extended periods of time, especially with the sleep feature disabled (as I had mine). They overheat and the drive can get damaged. I almost lost that laptop’s hd that time too. In fact all I could do with it was use the restore cd, so in fact I lost all the data I had on that laptop – luckily it wasn’t much. (Mental note to self to get that laptop cooling pad I’ve been meaning to get – and couldn’t make up my mind on which model to order).
Off to the stores I am to get myself some external HD’s to use for backing up other drives. No more backing up to a second internal drive, it hurts too much if both die at the same time.
