Nathan and Case of the Not-So-Hard Drive

by Nathan Stout

[9-15-2010: I have inserted the links to all the related blogs at the bottom of this blog for ease of future reading since there are a few blogs related to this blog (and incident).]

Nathan sits at his computer, eyes red with strain, wrists on the verge of carpal-tunnel syndrome, room dark and seedy (OK, maybe not that last bit). Things are going well. Season 3, Episode 1 is 99% done. Nathan sits there, reviewing and tweaking the episode. The opening credits, intermission are a particular triumph and out-do Season 1 and Season 2 while keep the feel similar. This is good work. Nathan is pleased. The 10 week goal was to have the first episode up and on the web by Sunday night before 11:59:59. Oh yes, he would make it. Nathan moves his mouse over to the timeline to readjust an edit. His elbow moves just a half-inch too far. It bumps the external hard drive sitting on his desktop. This hard drive contains everything. Not ‘most’ everything, not ‘some’, but absolutely everything. The raw video files for the episodes, the music, Nathan’s personal files, even the small amount of pornography he owns. The hard drive tips from it’s vertical standing, and falls flat on the desktop.

Buuuuuzzzzzzz… clip clip… fuuuuurrrmbuuuuuuuzzzzzz… clip clip… etc…

Nathan quickly saves the project (a lot of fat good that will do at this point) and unplugs the hard drive. He raises his hands in horror to cover his mouth. Thing have gone badly…

I was having a really good weekend. Maybe that’s why things went so badly. Candice gives me shit for not being overly emotional (or even slightly so) and will get excited if she thinks I will cry about something. I don’t cry at funerals. I get sad and such, but I’m just not much of a crier. If any situation would warrant a good cry, it would have been this one. Everything from the show is on there. Everything I have ever saved to a PC was on there too.

Now I do have backups of my personal stuff (which amounts to 6 DVDs worth) which includes family photos, documents, programs, etc. The backups are old and I would be missing a lot of newer stuff, but I could live with it. The show material would be the biggest blow. It represents hundreds of hours of work.

I tried turning the drive back on, but it did the same thing. I unplugged it again and removed the drive from the enclosure to examine it. Nothing outwardly wrong with it, but I decided not to open it any further. I am too worried about what will happen if I ruin the data trying to get the data.

I knew what I was going to have to do. I knew the moment it happened that I would have to send it to be recovered, and get anally raped in the process (money wise). Data recovery is not cheap. You get charged a per gigabyte fee for the recovered data, and there is somewhere between 500-700 gigs of data there. I think I will need some extra lube for this one.

What else can I do? Nothing. If I want the data, I will have to pay. Simple as that. When I got to work the next day, I started looking for companies that do this recovery. No one will quote you a price until they ‘evaluate’ the hard drive. I decided on a place in Colorado that did not have an evaluation fee. I filled out the forms and mailed the hard drive off.

I will update when I get the evaluation and price (but after a good cry).

Click here for Update #2
Click here for Update #3
Click here for Update #4
Click here for Update #5
Click here for (semi) Update #6

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